The elevator speech is "For every undocumented worker there is an employer breaking the law, why don't Republicans enforce the law? I got my letter published, more commentary at the end.
http://dailycamera.com/...
Fat cats are more to blame
One of the seductive appeals of the anti-immigrant argument is to the rule of law. Republicans like Tom Tancredo and Marilyn Musgrave, in their veiled or not-so-veiled racist appeals, can say, "But they broke the laws." There is just one little inconvenient truth they never seem to mention. For every undocumented worker, there is an employer. Does anyone believe all of them hire in ignorance?
Let's start talking about criminal employers, people who offer money to starving people, squeeze American wages and pocket the fat profits. (Saving $5 an hour on 8 million workers is $800 billion a year.)
Let's jail the Wal-Mart executives who hire subcontractors who hire undocumented laborers to clean Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart takes pride in its micromanaging of suppliers and contractors. Does anyone believe they didn't know?
Under Bush and the Republicans, enforcement of criminal hiring practices has almost stopped (three notices of intent to fine in 2004) and there is no economic cost to criminal hiring practices. Business, the free market, does what pays, unless government intervenes to enforce the law.
Work is a contract between two parties, the employer and the worker. Why are we so eager to punish the vulnerable ones and never mention the fat cats who hold all the cards? Some employers make honest errors, but right now there is no cost to business to break the laws. After all, we do enforce certain business laws (requiring surgeons to have medical degrees, not selling drugs to children, or liquor to minors), so why not write and enforce laws on an issue so seemingly important to Republicans? Due diligence, enforcement of the law and accountability instead of racist rhetoric are what are needed, but that would take effective government, not a Republican objective.
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Commentary and backup
I believe what we have here is a moral hazard. http://en.wikipedia.org/...
An unfair trade policy that had kept Latin American in poverty while enriching their wealthy elite and the intentional failure to enforce employer violations http://www.vdare.com/... has
created a situation where 8 to 10 million people have been lured in by two factors 1) what is to them a living wage compared to their homelands and 2) the de facto lack of enforcement of the employee laws.
Now hypocritical politicians like Tancredo (who started his career as a fighter for term limits and broke his promise on them as soon as he would have to give up power http://tancredowatch.blogspot.com/...)
and Bush (who is for signing the Anthem in Spanish before he is against it http://thinkprogress.org/...)
are taking advantage of the problem the Republicans and Bush helped cause.
I think this is one of the many messes like Iraq, ineffective corrupt Homeland Security, the Deficit, Global Warming, a Medicare drug benefit written for the drug companies, secret warrantless wiretaping, rebuilding New Orleans, a consumptive energy policy etc. where Bush and the Republican Congress has created a problem that American is going to have to live with. I feel suddenly, in time for the 06 elections, demanding that the weaker one half of the law breaking contracts, winked at by authorities should, suddenly be demonized in what is clearly a Republican wedge issue is immoral and hypocritical.
I think we have to close off the employment lure, then start dealing with the 8 million people we have lured here. It is to American the moral, the benificent that I am appealing. I can't read the words:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
without having tears come to my eyes. It is in the words of a Republican, the likes of whom we have not seen for a long time, an appeal to the better angels of our nature.
http://www.bartleby.com/...