Posted on 05/28/2014 4:56:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi, former head of the Republican National Committee, now a political fixer and influential voice in GOP circles, says he first became seriously interested in immigration policy after Hurricane Katrina.
Thousands of homes in Mississippi were destroyed, "down to the slab," Barbour said at a recent conference on immigration hosted by National Journal in Washington. Construction workers were overwhelmed; many were homeless themselves. And then, almost out of nowhere, came help.
"We were blessed with a huge influx of Spanish speakers, and I'm sure a lot of them weren't in this country legally," Barbour said. "I don't know where we would be in Mississippi if they had not come."
The "Spanish speakers" were willing to live in terrible conditions while at work building new homes. The experience led Barbour -- who favors raising the number of high-skilled immigrants admitted to the United States -- to realize that "there is also essential lesser-skilled labor that we need."
The National Journal panel reflected much of the discussion about immigration reform. Of eight speakers, Republicans and Democrats, seven favored comprehensive reform along the lines of the Senate "Gang of Eight" bill. That's what passes for balance in Washington today.
The level of agreement was so high that some pronounced the immigration policy debate to be "over." All that is left is for lawmakers to find a political agreement to enact universally accepted principles.
That view, it turned out, was too much even for a former member of the Obama administration's economic team who supports reform. "There are a lot of people who believe ... that immigrant competition has hurt them in the economy," said Jared Bernstein, once an economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. "We can't leave those people out of this debate because (the Congressional Budget Office) and lots of other economic analysis, including much of my own, has found otherwise. The policy debate is far from over."
Much of the discussion focused on skilled workers -- immigrants in the so-called H-1B and STEM categories, whose numbers Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other tech titans would like to increase. It's a given among reformers that the U.S. needs to admit more of them, but Bernstein reminded the panelists that there remains a lot of slack in the American labor market.
"When you look at the skills shortage -- quote -- carefully, what you find is a lot of employers saying, 'I can't find the workers I need,'" Bernstein noted, "and what they're not saying is, 'at the wage I'd like to pay them.'"
It was a remarkable bit of candor in the like-minded group. But the real candor came from Barbour, who was quite open in his belief that the country needs more low-skilled workers to do awful jobs for low wages.
"If you go in a chicken processing plant in Mississippi, there's nobody in there who speaks English," Barbour said. (Poultry is his state's biggest agricultural industry.) "There is a very loud radio hanging from somewhere playing Spanish-language music. And this is hard, dirty ... work."
In fact, Barbour said, even prisoners in Mississippi's work-release program stay away from the chicken plants. "We have never had an inmate make it two days in a chicken processing plant," Barbour said. "They'd rather be in prison, literally, then work in a chicken processing plant."
"I am not very sympathetic to the idea that we're taking these jobs away from Americans," Barbour concluded.
Speaking after Barbour, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies -- the only participant who opposed reform -- raised a critical objection. Why don't some of the agricultural interests that Barbour mentioned, the ones that need so many low-skill workers, modernize instead? With more mechanization, they'd need far fewer workers.
"I've been to chicken plants, in Delaware, and most of the people there are Americans," Krikorian said. "It's not a horrible, filthy place to work ... much of it is actually automated."
American agriculture could adopt new technology rather than focusing solely on immigrant workers, Krikorian argued. "When you have unending sources of low-skill foreign labor, the incentive to automate is weaker."
The discussion reflected a core reality of the immigration debate. The elites of both political parties support reform. But even so, there are a few voices -- not just Krikorian, but Bernstein, too -- to remind them of the costs involved.
"Those of us who support comprehensive reform," Bernstein cautioned, "if we don't listen more carefully to those on the other side, who believe that immigrant competition hurts them, regardless of what the studies say, we're going to miss the boat and we're not going to get this right."
Or two weeks without a welfare check.
At one time all those plants had Americans working in them. Nobody wants to work with Mexicans in them.
When I was young I worked in a turkey plant. When the Mexicans started moving in I left. I went to a potato shed and worked the onions in that same shed. The Mexicans started moving into the onion shed and eventually into the potato sheds. Now a white person can’t be found.
No one wants to work with them. That’s the truth.
H1-B visas work pretty much the same way. Some corporations are eager to sell out America.
We never hired anyone there as the skill level was above the average worker.
Don Tyson is the King of bringing bus loads of Mexican labor to NW AR. To staff his Chicken and Turkey Plants! Which ultimately affected the Construction industry with cheap underbid projects. Not all Mexicans wanted to stay Chicken Plant workers.
Haley, that's because the taking away of jobs started in the 70s and 80s while you weren't watching. Today, it's a fait accompli and you're a fool for advocating that we wash, rinse, & repeat the cycle through amnesty.
In Arkansas BLAME WALMART!
Back in the dark ages this area was in the economic stranglehold of the Chicken Men! you worked at their starvation wages or you didn’t work. People here were too poor to go to where jobs were.
Then Sam Walton started his Walmart stores and things began to change. He offered better wages than the Chicken Men so workers deserted the chicken plants to work for Sam.
An accountant working for the Chicken Men found a way to increase wages in the processing plants .25 cents an hour(which was worth a couple of dollars in today’s money) and it would not affect the bottom line of the companies.
I still remember the words of the President of the local Chicken company...”I’m not going to give them .25 cents an hour raise!”
He was the first Chicken Man to go to Mexico and bring in bus loads of workers to replace those who had gone to Walmart.
175 years ago Barbour would have been extolling the virtues of owning negros. Big Chicken, Big Sheetrock, Big Cotton... the tune is the same.
The quote is from Mark Krikorian, a senior executive at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Krikorian used to be one of the people I admired most in the Immigration debate.
Unfortunately, about 6 months ago, Krikorian wrote a long essay at National Review Online where he advocated that “several million” of the 12 million illegal aliens be put on a path to citizenship.
He also advocated several other compromises with the “Gang of Eight” Amnesty.
Literally - there is NO one in the GOP leadership who can be completely trusted anymore on the Immigration issue!
Anyway, Bill Clinton started Basic Pilot and Tyson was one of the first companies to use that. Tyson(or any company participating) checks their new hires against fedgovs list and if the new hire is on the list, they can't hire them. It catches a lot of them, but it wasn't foolproof so some illegals slipped thru the system. They all knew it wasn't perfect. Tyson knew it, Clinton and fedgov knew it.
But Clinton thought Tyson was gaming the system. That Tyson was targeting illegals in their recruitment programs, knowing that a percentage of these illegals they were targeting would slip thru the system.
So in 1998 Clinton went after Tyson on a criminal prosecution. Before this the govt only used civil prosecutions. And Clinton was going after corporate management. The Justice Dept ended up with over 200 indictments but when the case got into court the judge thru all but a few of them out.
The verdict came down in 2004 when Bush was prez and there were only two convictions with the jury foreman saying that if fedgov can't accurately say who is legal and who is illegal, how is Tyson supposed to know or say who is or isn't. They convicted a couple of local Tyson plant managers in MS and LA for knowingly hiring illegals.
That decision set the precedents for Bush and Obama. Criminal prosecutions are few and far between. Mostly civil prosecutions.
The guy up the street is a skilled union tradesman who, about a year after Obama got elected, managed to scam his way onto SSI/SNAP and now spends his days sitting around drinking and watching porn.
Get every single guy like THAT off his duff and out there rebuilding hurricane-ravaged areas. Then if we still need more immigrant help, we can talk.
There is no more hostile work place for a non-"spanish speaker" than one where "spanish speakers" have taken over.
Re: “Immigration reform” isn’t intended to bring cheap labor into this country. It’s aimed at bringing a new generation of consumers here — which is why the automation argument doesn’t hold any water in this debate.”
You make an important point, Alberta.
But I disagree with your math.
Immigration is the political subject I know best, and I think mass LEGAL immigration serves four purposes, all of them with some level of importance.
(1) Cheap and docile labor
(2) New consumers for American business
(3) Temporary income stream for Baby Boomer’s Social Security-Medicare
(4) Democrat Party voters
I think #4 is the most important.
New immigrant citizens vote 80% for the Democrat Party.
If they voted 80% Conservative, the Democrat Party would totally shut down legal immigration, and they would do it INSTANTLY.
Cut off welfare and there will be riots. There was a glitch in the EBT cards in a GA county and the angry baby mamas breathing fire were lined up outside the welfare office before it opened the next morning. One of them actually said, “what about my children? Sombody’s got to pay for my children; somebody has to be responsibile .” No one put a mirror in front of her to show her who that somebody ought to be. The social worker just assured them the money would soon be available.
This situation occurred less than 8 hours after money was supposed to be deposited in their accounts. Two weeks without funds and I imagine our major cities would burn.
Funny, I don't recall a power in the Constitution that allows Congress to function as an accessory to extortion (hint: the "welfare clause" isn't it). Once it starts, there is no end to it without paying the price of blood. Therefore, the disastrous results are inevitable.
So the real question is: Pay it now, or pay more later?
From de Tocqueville observing the difference between slave state Kentucky and free state Ohio:
“Upon the left bank of the stream the population is rare; from time to time one descries a troop of slaves loitering in the half-desert fields; the primaeval forest recurs at every turn; society seems to be asleep, man to be idle, and nature alone offers a scene of activity and of life. From the right bank, on the contrary, a confused hum is heard which proclaims the presence of industry; the fields are covered with abundant harvests, the elegance of the dwellings announces the taste and activity of the laborer, and man appears to be in the enjoyment of that wealth and contentment which is the reward of labor.”
Why don’t Americans want to work with them? Language barrier and only friendly to each other? Or is it something else?
Language barrier is one reason. Younger Mexican men leer at young white women and show them no respect. Then the Mexican women don’t like you because their men do. I also worked with South American men. Only thing that saved me was I was in a position that could give them orders. Boy do some of them hate that. It is all cultural. Part of their macho man thing.
Haley Barbour ping.
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