Posted on 06/29/2007 9:43:34 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
Those of us in the conservative movement have always been friendly to the business community. We believe in low taxes, a light touch on regulation, and we're stalwart champions of the free market.
When liberals start talking about limiting CEO pay, harassing Wal-Mart, beating up on oil companies, or generally trying to place new burdens on the businesses, it's always movement conservatives who rise to their defense, even though it's sometimes not in our best political interests.
Yes, we probably do fight a little harder because we view businessmen as political allies, but we genuinely, in our hearts and souls, believe in capitalism and an America where people can still get rich. So, philosophically, we're the best allies the business community in this country could ever have.
That's why it was so disappointing that none of that seemed to mean anything to the "Chamber of Commerce" crowd when it comes to the illegal immigration issue. Their attitude, right from the beginning to the bitter end of the bill in the Senate yesterday was, "We want to bring in as much cheap labor as humanly possible now, next year, and forever more to fatten our wallets and we want everyone else to pick up the tab for it. If it puts American workers out of a job, we don't care. If it drives their wages down, so much the better, because that means we make more money. If we have to leave the borders open and risk another 9/11, that's fine with us. If we have to get the bill through by demonizing as racists the very people who have staunchly defended us on issue after issue, it doesn't bother us a bit. Long story short, if anyone doesn't like what we want to do, tough, because we bought these senators with our campaign contributions, we own them, and it's our way or the highway." In other words, for a lot of these companies that knowingly hire illegals, this is all about raw, unbridled greed.
Now, I don't begrudge a company making a big profit or get all upset because some corporate CEO gets paid more money in the time it takes him to walk from his office to the bathroom and back than I make in a year. That's just what Churchill referred to as capitalism's, "unequal sharing of blessings," and I don't have any problem with it.
But, what I do have a problem with are businesses that want to put an enormous burden on the rest of the country just to inflate their bottom lines. These businesses that are knowingly hiring massive numbers of illegals are criminal enterprises, not much different from crack dealers in my book, and not only do I want to see them getting fined, I want to see the people running those companies doing hard time in a federal penitentiary.
You know why?
Because these illegal aliens are not coming to this country to see the sights. They are coming here because crooked businesses are willing to ignore the law and give them jobs. Then these illegals that they're drawing here drive up the cost of health care and car insurance by refusing to carry insurance themselves. These illegals are having anchor babies and using those children to get welfare, food stamps, and other government goodies that the rest of us pay for. Enormous numbers of American citizens have been raped, robbed, and murdered by illegal aliens who came here in the first place to work for these crooked corporations. Our taxes also pay for keeping illegals in jail, we pay for their kids' schooling, and we have to pay a lot of money to keep these illegals out of the country and away from these businessmen who want to hire them. So, these crooks make a mint by paying slave wages to illegals and the rest of us have to pay the price for it.
Free enterprise? Free enterprise is great. But, free enterprise doesn't mean a lot of businessmen get rich by willfully breaking the law, pass the costs on to the rest of us, and then pay off senators with campaign contributions to legalize their victimization of the rest of the country.
Bingo.
Ping of interest.
ping
Demand a border fence! Build it NOW!! Beef up the border patrol and close our borders!
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Courtesy of a pro-amnesty group, no less!!
Free enterprise doesn’t mean allowing companies to go outside the country for cheap labor while making it illegal for citizens to go outside the country in search of cheaper medicines.
I don’t know what you would call it but it’s a clear double standard.
I saw a woman on the news who was the owner of a landscaping company out west, in CA, I think. She was going on and on about how she couldn’t find Americans or legal immigrants to do the work so she HAD to hire illegals that would do the work.
She begrudgingly admitted that she started them at $7 an hour. Why would anyone work out in the heat of summer for $7 an hour when they could go to any fast-food chain, restaurant or a retail store and make that much working in the A/C?
As my wife said, she won’t meet the market demands for her labor costs and wants the government to legislate her a way to keep paying lower wages than the market demands.
I believe the business community was more interested in the uniformity of enforcement and the ability to have a guest worker program that they could rely on, but was willing to give a little on the eventual citizenship thing as part of the compromise. The next bill in 2009 won’t be so business friendly, but will be much friendlier to the citizenship part.
Terrific article!! The author hit every nail there is right on the head!
We all know that not all business plays into the illegal labor game and many are suffering from unfair competition the illegal labor rates contribute. The participating members of the “Chamber of Exploitation” are sell-outs.
Vote NO on amnesty for illegal businesses!
If you local taxes dollars are being wasted and misspent, many times you can find that Chamber of Commerce was exploiting the incompetence and crookedness of local pols. It is kind of like welfare for business, but Republicans are not supposed to ever ever make that connection.
“The next bill in 2009 won’t be so business friendly, but will be much friendlier to the citizenship part.”
I agree 100%.
And as bad as that is, it would be tolerable if they’d just close the darn borders. But it won’t happen. This is the backdoor into:
Yes of course. Meanwhile WE pick up the tab on her employee healthcare 'benefits' by providing welfare to her illegal alien employee's wife or live-in girlfriend who stays at home with their 6 or 7 children. Their "family" probably gets $30,000 worth of handouts from the government in the form of "food stamps", healthcare, fuel assistance, and public education while the employer pays her illegal alien employees $7 per hour. Our politicians need to grow a dammed spine and put a stop to this, and I mean NOW!
By the way, did McCain ever pay anyone $50/hour to pick lettuce like he claimed he would because no one would take that job for even that much. I know he had lots of responses.
Strange how GW Bush’s strong sense of wanting to spread democracy doesn’t count in cleaning up the corrupt Mexican government so these folks don’t have to leave home in the first place?
Raise the minimum wage then circumvent it with illegal labor, we get votes from labor and money from business what a great strategy!This how these clowns think they’ll get reelected by playing both sides of the fence never mind that our country’s economy is destroyed.
FANTASTIC bump. The Chamber of Commerce and the Wall Street Journal would bring back slavery if they could just call it by another name.
“It might have been that woman, but there was one landscape company owner who was complaining about not being able to find landscapers even when she was paying up to $20/hour (if I recall correctly). A little digging found out that the $20 was one position for a manager of multiple crews with years of experience, while all the other jobs were at or near minimum wage.”
I believe it is the same woman. I used to have a neighbor who was a landscape architect who headed up landscaping crews. That was 8 years ago and in MS. Guess what they started at? Yep, $7...8 years ago...in northern MS, home of the lowest wages in the nation. He made pretty good money as did his bilingual Hispanic team leader but everyone else made scratch.
This woman is paying people in California today what people in MS were paid 8 years ago. That is sad.
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