Interesting event happened Tuesday

An interesting event took place Tuesday in Grand Island, Nebraska.  Swift has a huge meat processing plant there and employs hundreds of immigrant workers.  Tuesday morning, buses pulled up to the doors, Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers entered the buildings and arrested and removed 261 employees.

Ramifications below:

After a ten month investigation into idenity theft, the arrested were accused of using forged or false Social Security Cards.

Business is down:  the owner of a Mexican Grocery Store reported she did not have one customer Wednesday.

Absenteeism was high Wednesday.  During the raid, the superintendent of G.I. schools had a virtual lock-down, stating schools are where children are supposed to be safe.

"Social Services brace for numbers" and reported that some families are "sleeping in their cars."

The Nebraska Cattlemen Association issued a statement "With much of the nation's agricultural industry dependent on migrant labor, comprehensive reform of immigration laws are needed."

To the great credit of the G.I. Police Captain, he refused to allow his officers to participate in the raids on Swift.  Paraphrasing here, he said these people are members of our community and I'll no part in making them afraid of the police.  I gather the ICE officers did not agree and faulted them for not helping in the arrest of their community members.

The numbers of the arrested men and womens' families is staggering, shocking, and distressful.  A Latino couple who were friends of ours were deported (Dec. 23) and we kept their three little "illegals" for six months while their parents sought to come back to the US legally.  I was much involved with legal aid, and attornies who specialize in immigration issues, my state Senator, INS, all to no avail.

These people have absolutely no legal representation. If a red flag goes up in the INS, they are g.o.n.e.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

•  Josh Marshall

  over at TPM wants to hear from locals on this.

  by ROGNM on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:27:05 AM PDT

  •  Madder than Hell

    I have no idea how to cross post, but you can tell him from me, that I am madder than hell but mostly just dispairing for all the children.

    by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:33:31 AM PDT

    •  You'll have to email him

      ""talk @ talking points memo.com""

      by ROGNM on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:47:30 AM PDT

    •  no one wins

      That's what some people just don't get about Pat Buchanon-type arguments for zero tolerance in illegal immegration. There are just no winners here.

      It won't be until pissed-off, knee-jerk Right-Wingers start to feel the effects of the sudden crackdown on food production and construction that they will even acknowledge the need for real comprehensive reform, including cracking down on the corporations that take advantage of illegal workers here and Latin American workers in other countries. And by then the race to the bottom will already have taken its toll on our country.

      Until then millions of families are threatened to be ripped apart and sucked under the weight of our cheap consumer goods based economy. Illegal immigrants being hounded at Christmas, middle to low class workers one paycheck away from financial ruin, and the only ones that the government cares about listening to are the extremists and the rich.

      Thanks for the diary. It's depressing, but we need to expose all sides of this issue.

      by blueintheface on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:56:58 AM PDT

•  And wages in the meat packing industry

  have declined from an average of $19 to an average of $9 because.........

  by deepsouthdoug on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:30:11 AM PDT

  •  Greed?

    How much have CEOs' salaries risen in that same time period?

    
    Also, how much are the salaries in the meat packing industry going to be now that Swift is going to shut down their U.S. operations and do all their work overseas?

    by theboz on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:40:37 AM PDT

    •  Don't know money

      I don't know anything about the money angles, except how this sort of event affects the community.

      There were on Tuesday, 5 other raids on Swift, but all 6 are up and running today.

      by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:48:27 AM PDT

      •  The money angle

        In 1982, CEOs made about 42 times as much as the average of non-management workers.  In 2004, CEOs made about 431 times as much as the average of non-management workers.  The money angle is of vital importance if you want to understand what is going on and who is responsible.

        
        Also, all six may be up and running, but I bet they are nowhere near the productivity levels they were last week, and will probably never return as long as the U.S. keeps going down this path.

        by theboz on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:26:26 AM PDT

  •  They couldn't move the plants

    to cheap labor, so they imported less costly workers. For example, in the early '90's meat packers came to refugee communities in California looking for people willing to butcher hogs and cattle in the Midwest.  Some even made their pitch in adult school classrooms and showed slides of homes the refugee workers had been able to buy.  There was also some U.S. government help with "relocation costs."

    by ybruti on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:48:25 AM PDT

    •  Ads

      Farmland, the pork processing plant, places ads for workers in Mexican newspapers.

      by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:01:28 AM PDT

    •  You got links on that?

      Our... constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds. Thurgood Marshall

      by bronte17 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:18:27 AM PDT

      •  No Links

        A college mate of ours who was an administer at Farmland told us there were ads for work at the Texas/Mexico border.  So, it is an anecdotal comment.

        by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:43:02 AM PDT

        •  Thanks anyway. Was hoping you might

          have some links.

          Our... constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds. Thurgood Marshall

          by bronte17 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:22:48 PM PDT

          •  For a start...

            try here.

            The reference to recruiting tactics is about half way down.

            by leolabeth on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:03:10 PM PDT

            •  great link!

              by Duke1676 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:56:52 PM PDT

  •  Vertical integration and the Farm Bureau

    An independent farmer's worst nightmare.

    And hog farmers face the worst prices for their swine since the depression-era prices.  Independent farmers have been driven out of business.

    Our... constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds. Thurgood Marshall

    by bronte17 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:17:59 AM PDT

•  Interesting Indeed.

  This is a sad story all around. We have the immigrants themselves, most of whom probably did nothing wrong, and their families. We have sympathetic local law enforcement. And we even have a federal law enforcement apparatus that is only doing the bidding of an American public that seems to be in a "crack down" mode on immigration, but seems unwilling to pay more to have American workers do these jobs, assuming they can even be filled. And I am no fan of the meat processing industry, but they are caught not only between looking the other way at what may be illegal immigrants and facing discrimination litigation, but more fundamentally between looking the other way and falling behind competitors that are almost certainly using similar hiring practices.

  When you add up the human costs involved in a saga like this, and the environmental damage wrought by factory farming, I have to wonder:

  How expensive really is that cheap meat?

  by Answer Guy on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:32:22 AM PDT

  •  Additional Note

    Within the space of a few weeks last year, I read both Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" and Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas."

    Neither was exclusively about the meatpacking industry, and neither focused much at all on immigration policy, but that was quite a 1-2 punch of books that touched on meat processing, in passages that were very tough to read.

    by Answer Guy on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:35:25 AM PDT

  •  Illegals

    Nebraska would fall apart if all the illegals left the state.  The school system in my town has a 30% diverse population.  My town has a pork processing plant and at any given time, 11 different languages are spoken.

    The children we had went to school in a town ten miles away and when I talked to the Principal there about them being here illegally, he said if all the illegals were taken out of the school system, the school would have to be shut down.

    by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:39:26 AM PDT

    •  Perhaps if They Left Tomorrow.....

      ....that would be the case, but that's a pretty shallow justification for the apartheid our culture continually looks the over way on (and in many cases actively advocates).  Deportation and attrition solutions strike me as impractical and perhaps immoral, but I take umbrage to the oft-cited premise that we "need" this undocumented and impoverished subculture to continue its subservience to our middle class consumers and to the robber barons that hire them for $9 an hour while people like my dad get priced right out of the business.

      by Mark27 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 09:41:33 AM PDT

•  This is the end of our food supply

  The U.S. government is conducting these raids and have mostly shut down legal immigration from latin America with one result in mind.  They want to completely destroy any food production in the U.S.  It seems like the goal is to import produce and meat from other countries for much cheaper prices, even if the quality of the food is lower.

  
  All those people who talked about how you would be paying $50 for tomatoes if the undocumented workers were all kicked out are wrong.  The reality is that there simply will be no tomatoes at all.  The same goes with all of our meat.

  by theboz on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:37:57 AM PDT

  •  Time to go back

    to Victory gardens.   I think I'll follow Claude's lead and add some chickens as well.

    by marykk on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:02:18 AM PDT

  •  Also, we could make sure

    that all toys from China have sufficient lead content to poison the kids.

    by Compost On The Weeds on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:10:52 AM PDT

•  Annex Mexico?

  A wag in the Lincoln newspaper suggested the way to solve the immigrant problem is to make Mexico our 51st state.

  by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:44:34 AM PDT

  •  'Deep integration' google it. It's already being

    planned by the money class, without Congressional input.  It's being called the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership. There was a secret meeting in Banff last summer, attended by Rumsfeld and other bigwigs from US, Mexico and Canada. Some links.

    by Halcyon on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:32:27 AM PDT

  •  Why not? It's working well in Iraq.

    Typical of a podunk newspaper editor to suggest something as idiotic and bloodthirsty as overthrowing democratically elected governments.

    by theboz on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:19:37 AM PDT

  •  About 15% of Mexico Lives Here Already....

    ....and open borders advocates are only too willing to reward the Mexican government's eagerness to pawn off their poor on America rather than weed out the corruption in their own economy, we couldn't do any worse than we are now by annexing the other 85% of Mexico before they arrive here a week from Sunday.

    by Mark27 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 09:46:50 AM PDT

•  I wonder what political contributions

  Swift & its management made (or didn't make) in the last election cycle.

  by ROGNM on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 06:58:34 AM PDT

  •  Without Looking...

    ...and at the risk of being labeled a cynic, I'm pretty sure they lavished money on the GOP.

    In all fairness, they probably didn't throw much dough at the Tancredo types.

    by Answer Guy on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:05:17 AM PDT

•  NewsHour last night

  Had a long discussion of the event, pbs.org/newshour...

  GWEN IFILL: Describe Basic Pilot. That's which the companies voluntarily decide to actually compare Social Security numbers to a federal database. Is that about correct?

  JULIE MYERS: That's right. That's right. And so if a company is using Basic Pilot, I'd go in the company to apply for a job. I'd give them my name, Social Security number, and date of birth. It's then sent and compared.

  What Basic Pilot will do will tell you if the card and the number that I submit is valid. What it won't do is it won't tell you if I submit your name, and so it won't deal with those individuals who have stolen real identities.

  GWEN IFILL: So Swift was participating in that program, and yet this happened. They estimate that 40 percent of their workforce could be affected. Why should any company participate in this kind of program if, in the end, they're still going to get raided and have their business disrupted?

  Makes you wonder if Homeland Security has botched it again.

  by Compost On The Weeds on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:19:28 AM PDT

  •  Swift

    It's a "don't ask, don't tell" sort of arrangement.  
    And indicative of exactly will do this really awful labor, and it's not the "They are taking our jobs" crowd.
    And as I mentioned, all six plants are up and running today.

    by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:24:07 AM PDT

    •  Both Sides of My Family.....

      .....were gainfully employed in the meatpacking industry until the early 1990's when the freefalling wage rates, largely made possible by the industry restructuring and relocation into anti-labor states such as yours, priced the local workers right out of existence through the course of multiple bankruptcies and corporate pariah takeovers.  I take it as a direct insult to every hard-working member of my family when I hear that these are "jobs Americans won't do", and suspect that many more Americans currently sympathetic to that logic will find themselves "former employees" within industries whose labor force has since been reclassified as "jobs Americans won't do".

      by Mark27 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 09:52:41 AM PDT

•  Another diary on this ICE raid, yesterday.

  Immigration Raids: One Police Chief gets it right.

  by Halcyon on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:24:50 AM PDT

  •  Should I delete?

    I did not see this yesterday or I would have ranted there.  I have been so angry about this that I forgot to check with Search.  My first real diary, but that is no excuse.  Should I delete?  Very sorry for the repeat.

    by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:29:16 AM PDT

    •  actually there have been three

      Sorted by Skin color

      An Immigrant Christmas with Poem and lots of Photos

      Immigration Raids: One Police Chief gets it right

      Each one adding more information about this horrendous story. Comments in these are especially enlightening. Anyone following this story should definitely check these diaries out.

      I don't think you need to delete... this is a big and important story...it's not like we don't have numerous daries here at dKos about any one given news story. Just look at how many Tim Johnson daries have been written in the last 12 hours.

      by Duke1676 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:48:00 AM PDT

      •  Here's another, just posted

        Nursing Child In Limbo After DHS Raid

        Children were left behind by these raids and ICE won't let anyone contact the workers they took to Camp Dodge.

        by Halcyon on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:23:45 AM PDT

    •  Don't delete. Your diary has new info.

      The ID theft angle wasn't in yesterday's diary, nor your personal input. I was just providing more info to add to the discussion. Sounds like ID theft is the legal justification.

      In the other diary someone pointed out that all the Christmas hams were canned, and this is a layoff time anyway; they'll just hire a new batch next year. I had a similar experience in the advertising industry, being fired when the Christmas catalogs were done. I had been hired in March, the beginning of the season.

      by Halcyon on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:49:12 AM PDT

•  I go through Grand Island

  a couple times a year on my travels between Wisconsin and Colorado, and often spend the night there; as charming a town as the Great Plains offers (and, if I'm not mistaken, in NE-03, the congressional district that my future husband, Scott Kleeb, will represent in another couple of years).

  I spend much of my growing years in a Colorado version of Grand Island, and if the Bush administration continues to pursue tactics like this, it's going to have a drastic and negative impact on many mid- and near-west plains towns like Grand Island - places that barely survive on agriculture and one or two rural industries like meat packing.

  It reminds me of the hard times agricultural towns faced during the Reagan era, in fact.  More than once, my father (an administrator with one of the departments of the USDA, had his life threatened and his office barricaded by the tractors of family farmers.  The movement towards corporate farming and rural industries helped some of these towns survive that disastrous time, but the kind of crackdown we've seen at Swift, if maintained, is going to finally be the death knell of these communities.

  (On a more selfish note, I invested about as much in Scott Kleeb's campaign as I did in two others, but imagine my amazement when I actually received a personal, handwritten thank you note from Scott, as opposed to the computer generated mail-merged thank you letters I received from the other two.  That's good, old-fashioned class.)

  by aggieric on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:49:25 AM PDT

  •  Smile

    Actually, Nebraska has banned corporate farming in a step to maintain the small farmer.

    That was gracious of Scott.  However, the other day he said he was looking for a job, so he must have a lot of time on his hands. :) (Is that a smile?  Don't know my emoticons.)

    by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 07:58:03 AM PDT

    •  He has a PhD.

      Tell him that his future husband (I know, I know.  But a guy can dream, can't he?) is waiting for him at the U. of Wisconsin in Madison.

      And yep, you've got the emoticons down just fine.
      :-p (that's a goofy smile with tounge)

      But I find the banning of corporate farms interesting.  How can a state do that, really?  If the owner of a section wants to sell, and a corporation wants to buy, that's capitalism and free enterprise.  I'm a bit surprised.

      by aggieric on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:12:17 AM PDT

      •  Initiative 300

        In today's paper, that law (Initiative 300) banning corporate farms was found to be unconstitutional.  But, Ne.'s Attorney General will ask the entire 8th circuit court to rehear the case.  If the court refuses to hear or if it affirms the panel, the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to hear the matter.  Meanwhile, the law will still be in effect.

        by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:20:45 AM PDT

        •  Ah. I had almost said in my last comment

          that I was surprised that it wasn't under litigation.  And so I see that it is.  

          The loss of family farms is devastating and drives the de-populating of the Plains, for sure.  My sibs and I are all proof of that.  Much to our distress, our parents chose to retire on the high plains, while all of us used college as a way to "get out".  I still go back twice a year, of course, but I watch my old home town slowly dry up.

          by aggieric on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:29:09 AM PDT

•  When I visit Mexico

  When i visit mexico, i'm required to have proper documentation. if i don't, i can be fined, property confiscated, imprisoned and/or deported. even if i have my paperwork, la mordida [bribes] routinely cost me $20-40 each.

  So, what civilized country doesn't retain control of their own borders? here in arizona, illegals pour over the border like water. undoubtedly, some of them are named ossama, or similar muslim monikers.

  My mother's family is from guanajuato, mexico, and she thinks illegals are, well, illegal and should obey the law. what's the disconnect here?

  by tohbi on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:35:02 AM PDT

  •  Democrats

    Do you recall when Atty. Gen. Gonzales was asked if his grandparents came here legally?  He answered that he didn't know.

    Too, most of the immigrants from Latin America that I know are doing nothing illegal.  They are working, living their lives, kids go to school, learn English, and the only difference I see  between "me and thee" is that I was born here and maybe "Thee" wasn't.  To me, that is not a crime.  But then, like thee and me, we are Democrats.

    by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 08:45:14 AM PDT

    •  A Reply

      I think that, if you are consistent in this attitude, while I may disagree with you, I can not fault you on your logic.

      That is to say, if you are:

      • for open borders
      • for offshoring
      • are not anti WalMart
      • do not care about the notion of a citizenry, and therefore do not care about the notion of a social safety net

      Then again, while I may disagree with you, I can not fault you on logical grounds.

      However, if you are saying that you are going to rail against the exportation of a job to cheap labor, but advocate for the importation of cheaper labor to a job, then I have a problem with your logic.

      If you are going to rail against the 'cheapest possible labor no matter the social cost' practices of WalMart, but are going to advocate for the importation of the 'cheapest possible labor no matter the social cost' into this country, then I have a problem with your logic.

      I have read the opinions of many here on Daily Kos who have said that they would advocate for what they call a sane immigration policy. I don't know what their definition of sane is, but I am pretty certain that if a country is going to have any immigration policy at all, that country is going to have to be willing to enforce it. I suspect that when many people here talk about a sane immigration policy, that policy includes amnesty for anybody here 'today', whatever 'today' may mean, and that is about as far as it goes. I suspect that for many, their definition of a 'sane' immigration policy does not include deportation, which then in effect boils down to no immigration policy at all.

      Am I concerned for the families affected here, yes I am. However we have the socialist/globalist wing of the Democratic Party here on Daily Kos advocating for what they call 'free trade' every day, which I believe is no less destructive to families than what we have witnessed in the past few days. Yet nobody seems to give a tinkers damn about what happens to those families.

      I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be whole lot more than 1200 people who will been affected by the House Democrat's recent vote on 'free trade' with Viet Nam.

      Where is the gnashing of teeth and the wringing of hands for those families?

      I personally had to stand by in 2002 and watch as a man with a PhD in Mathematics, an American citizen, a Navy veteran, lose everything he owned, watched as his family fractured, watched as this man was reduced to living in the YMCA.

      Why did this occur? Because of this countries desire to import cheaper labor, 'free trade', and the exportation of jobs to offshore labor. Policies which many here on Daily Kos espouse here every day.

      Nobody cried for this man. Nobody cried for his family. This man, myself, and many others like us having careers decimated, in many cases losing everything were simply told to 'deal with it'.

      If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow - G. Bush

      by superscalar on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 09:34:46 AM PDT

      •  Logic out the window

        OK, I readily admit the faulty logic inherent in that last argument. My reaction is based on a very emotional level that screws with logic every time.

        I do not know what to do about the immigration issue, but snatching people from their work place, and then deporting them within a day and a half doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.  And building a 700 mile wall is the looniest idea ever heard.

        You are much weightier on issue than I and I cannot offer arguments against your ideas because I happen to agree with all of them.

        I just see this snatch and grab as horribly inhumane.

        by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 09:51:58 AM PDT

      •  "Roll Over and Die"

        That's the message being conveyed to the working class today by smug free-trade cheerleaders and, increasingly, "open-minded" limousine liberals pushing for an expansion of the cheap labor revolving door.  "There is no room for you in the America of tomorrow unless you are stocking shelves at Wal-Mart without health insurance or a retirement plan."

        With all that said, I concur with you that these kind of raids and deportation/attrition schemes are not the solution as they amplify the sympathetic nature of the illegal immigrants plight and push even more middle-class acceptance of the ongoing cheap labor apartheid....and scorn for those who dare dissent against it.

        by Mark27 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:00:43 AM PDT

        •  Unions Now

          It seems every time there is a diary posted on the current and demanding needs for UNIONS, there are about 10 or so commenters.  But from what I understand, until the unioneers can take back their unions from management (right word?) they will be ineffective.

          by JFinNe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:08:39 AM PDT

          •  They'll Be Ineffective.....

            .....so long as dues-paying is optional in right-to-work states.  Nobody's gonna be willing to subsidize freeloading non-dues payers.  Beyond that, I sense that the notion of sacrificing for collective gain is lost on my generation, and unions will fail if people aren't willing to step up to management without buckling at the knees following the first threat.

            by Mark27 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:15:51 AM PDT

          •  How can you do this?

            But from what I understand, until the unioneers can take back their unions from management

            When you have an effectively unlimited supply of labor?

            Would unions have thrived after WWII with and unlimited supply of labor?

            Would an middle class have risen up in this country after WWII with an unlimited supply of labor?

            I don't think so. In fact I think that both the middle class and the unions thrived in this country after WWII precisely because the supply of labor was limited.

            This is why, at least to me, the socialist/globalist wing of our party makes no sense on so many levels - they want to:

            1.) Allow an unlimited supply of labor into this country
            2.) Have an unlimited supply of social programs and lift the poor up out of poverty
            3.) Work towards increased unionization of labor

            In that order. When one points out that their task order is backward the typical response is 'your just a racist who doesn't like brown people'.

            If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow - G. Bush

            by superscalar on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:25:53 AM PDT

            •  are you blaming the demise of unions

              on "illegal" immigration and an "unlimited supply of labor"?

              a bit of a stretch don't ya think.

              Unionism in this country only exists because of the unions abilities to organize the huge numbers of immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries... those eras "unlimited supply of labor"

              The middle class was born of those unions of immigrants coupled with the post war social policies of the new deal, regulation of business,  and the GI bill.

              The demise of the unions came with the deregulation, right to work policies of modern conservatism.

              you are fully aware of organized labor's positions on immigration reform ... and they wouldn't have those positions if they thought it further diminish their power.

              by Duke1676 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:40:53 AM PDT

              •  The SEIU

                and they wouldn't have those positions if they thought it further diminish their power

                Has the position is does precisely because a large portion of its workforce is illegal immigrants. Union membership is declining in this country and the unions see illegal immigrants as a way to stop that decline.

                If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow - G. Bush

                by superscalar on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:43:34 AM PDT

                •  and unionizing these workers would be a bad thing

                  because?

                  Particulary if they had legal status as the unions wish them to have.

                  How can having more union members be bad for American workers?

                  by Duke1676 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 03:11:24 PM PDT

                  •  You assume the predicate

                    How can having more union members be bad for American workers?

                    Why is having more low-wage workers good for American workers who currently work in low-wage low-skilled jobs, and as more and more workers move into lower-wage lower-skilled jobs how is it that you justify the importation of even more low-wage low-skilled workers?

                    This is the logic I don't now nor have I ever been able to follow.

                    You want to import more low-wage low-skilled workers, virtually an unlimited supply of additional low-wage low-skilled workers, and then work to improve working conditions.

                    If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow - G. Bush

                    by superscalar on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 04:42:18 PM PDT

                    •  and you assume the predicate that

                      and as more and more workers move into lower-wage lower-skilled jobs how is it that you justify the importation of even more low-wage low-skilled workers?

                      the downward spiral must continue. Why not work from the premise that a change in trade policy and some common sense restrictions placed on the free trade,  globalization, wealth transferring camp would result in stopping the downward that spiral. How low on the food chain must American workers go, how crappy a job are they expected to fight for?

                      You must remember that low-wage workers are such because they do low-skilled jobs that require little or no education and training. The very jobs the undocumented take.

                      If we are to eventually become a nation of low-skilled workers fighting over low-paying jobs... then I will yield the field to you, admit defeat, and get my bricks ready to build that big old wall.

                      Perhaps I am overly optimistic to think that that scenario can change, but I would sure like to think we can prevent it from happening.

                      by Duke1676 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 05:17:11 PM PDT

              •  Not Really a Stretch....

                ....and the meatpacking industry is a perfect case study.  If not for the unlimited supply of labor entering the slaughterhouses revolving doors every day, every week, every year, the decimation of wages and deunionization of the industry would not have been possible.

                by Mark27 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:46:17 AM PDT

              •  By the way

                in the late 19th and early 20th centuries... those eras "unlimited supply of labor"

                This is incorrect. This nation was a manufacturing powerhouse at that point in our history, and were creating manufacturing jobs, not exporting them.

                This is precisely my point - there was no "unlimited supply of labor".

                If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow - G. Bush

                by superscalar on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:48:02 AM PDT

      •  Question

        I personally had to stand by in 2002 and watch as a man with a PhD in Mathematics, an American citizen, a Navy veteran, lose everything he owned, watched as his family fractured, watched as this man was reduced to living in the YMCA.

        Why did this occur? Because of this countries desire to import cheaper labor, 'free trade', and the exportation of jobs to offshore labor.

        Did he lose his job to a legal immigrant, offshoring or did he lose it to an undocumented immigrant?

        this is an important question because each of these are in fact separate issues that can and should be addressed separately.

        if he lost it to a "legal" immigrant that goes to the inherent problems in our totally dysfunctional immigration system.

        if his job was outsourced overseas that goes to the failed policies for globalization which in fact have helped foster the destruction of not only the middle calss here, but destroyed the economies of sender nations in regards to their lower classes. The transfer of wealth to an ever decreasing portion of the population is not a phenomenon that is exclusively American. It is going on all over the world fostered by the policies of economic elites that favor free trade, globalization, corporate control and transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top.

        If he in fact lost his job to an "illegal alien" (which I highly doubt) then your argument holds water.

        The problem of "illegal immigration" is only a symptom of a global transfer of wealth that is destroying the middle class...not the cause of that destruction.

        Mexico:
        Mexico's well-heeled get richer

        Mexico's rich and powerful got even more rich and powerful during the six-year term of outgoing President Vicente Fox.

        That's the conclusion of a World Bank study released this week that said Mexico's business elite and powerful public-sector unions were a major drag on the nation's economy.

        The net worth of Mexico's billionaires soared, from just over 4 percent of gross domestic product in 2000 to about 6 percent in 2006, according to the study. Strong earnings at big corporations have driven the stock market to repeated highs.

        But those benefits haven't been widely shared. The concentration of economic power in few hands has saddled Mexican consumers with high prices, exacerbated income inequality and retarded economic growth.

        Over the past six years, Mexico's gross domestic product has expanded only about 2.3 percent a year on average. The nation has created less than a quarter of the 1 million net new jobs it needs annually just to keep up with growth in the working population.

        Attacking the nation's monopolies and bringing competition to important sectors of Mexico's economy are crucial for the nation to raise living standards, generate employment and compete in a global economy, said economist Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva, one of the study's authors.

        US:

        The Great Wealth Transfer,Paul Krugman

        The reason most Americans think the economy is fair to poor is simple: For most Americans, it really is fair to poor. Wages have failed to keep up with rising prices. Even in 2005, a year in which the economy grew quite fast, the income of most non-elderly families lagged behind inflation. The number of Americans in poverty has risen even in the face of an official economic recovery, as has the number of Americans without health insurance. Most Americans are little, if any, better off than they were last year and definitely worse off than they were in 2000.

        But how is this possible? The economic pie is getting bigger -- how can it be true that most Americans are getting smaller slices? The answer, of course, is that a few people are getting much, much bigger slices. Although wages have stagnated since Bush took office, corporate profits have doubled. The gap between the nation's CEOs and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago. And while Bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year -- the richest five percent of the population -- will pocket almost half of the money. Those who make less than $75,000 a year -- eighty percent of America -- will receive barely a quarter of the cuts. In the Bush era, economic inequality is on the rise.

        Rising inequality isn't new. The gap between rich and poor started growing before Ronald Reagan took office, and it continued to widen through the Clinton years. But what is happening under Bush is something entirely unprecedented: For the first time in our history, so much growth is being siphoned off to a small, wealthy minority that most Americans are failing to gain ground even during a time of economic growth -- and they know it.

        When people finally start to make the connection between these two stories and see that it's all part of the same problem, than and only then will true progressive populism take root that can solve these problems.  Not the simplistic faux populism of Lou Dobbs with his reliance on blaming the victims of globalization and wealth transfer for all the problems in the US. But a true populism, that sees that those on both sides of the border are being played against each other, just as Dobbs plays native born working class people off against the newly arrived immigrant workers who are unable to gain legal entrance due to the inequities and built in failures of our fixed immigration system.

        This whole immigration issue needs to start to be veiwed in a much broader context. The worlwide flow of economic migrants caused by wealth transfer and policies of the economic elites will never stop whether it is here in America or anywhere else in the world until the policies that have fostered it are challanged and changed.
         

        by Duke1676 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:24:14 AM PDT

        •  He lost his job to cheaper labor

          If he in fact lost his job to an "illegal alien" (which I highly doubt) then your argument holds water

          To try and disconnect the exporation of a job to cheaper labor from the importation of cheaper labor to a job has at this point become nonsensical in my opinion.

          Both are cases of labor arbitrage. I know it makes it easier for one to believe that they have a more morally superior argument - in that they can tacitly oppose offshoring, while tacitly supporting illegal immigration. Beyond that I see little difference.

          Is this country creating more low-wage low-skilled jobs, or more high-wage high-skilled jobs?

          Are the people who were recently layed off from Ford likely to get higher-wage higher-skilled jobs which pay more - or are they more likely to get lower-wage lower-skilled jobs which pay less?

          I strongly suspect that the latter is going to be true in most cases.

          In the midst of all this job sector compression, wholesale elimination of higher-wage higher-skilled job sectors, and people moving from formerly higher-wage higher-skilled jobs into lower-wage lower-skilled jobs - you keep trying to convince me that we need to import more low-wage low-skilled labor.

          But you never tell me, given what I have laid out above, why we need to import more low-wage low-skilled labor.

          If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow - G. Bush

          by superscalar on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:40:52 AM PDT

          •  This is the exact arguement

            that those behind these policies want to hear.

            Are the people who were recently layed off from Ford likely to get higher-wage higher-skilled jobs which pay more - or are they more likely to get lower-wage lower-skilled jobs which pay less?

            I strongly suspect that the latter is going to be true in most cases.

            In the midst of all this job sector compression, wholesale elimination of higher-wage higher-skilled job sectors, and people moving from formerly higher-wage higher-skilled jobs into lower-wage lower-skilled jobs - you keep trying to convince me that we need to import more low-wage low-skilled labor.

            as long as burger assembly at McDonalds is classified as a manufacturing job and the American people can be distracted by the "war on ilegal immigration" the powers that be will be happy. Only when people start to open their eyes to see that the problem is not one of who's coming to do the shit jobs, but rather why are there only shit jobs left, that we will start to make any headway.

            If you were to ship out all 7.5 million working undocumented tommorow...it would not change the real dynamic one bit. The good jobs would still be gone, the manufacturing sector would still be shot, unions would still have no power and the American worker could still get the only "manufacturing job" left in town...building those Big Macs.

            by Duke1676 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 11:09:39 AM PDT

        •  Don't Know As I've Ever Watched Lou Dobbs....

          ...but is it fair to say he "blames the victims"?  Does a nation really not have a right to secure its borders and choose who gets to cross and who doesn't?  Can you be against the Bush-McCain-Kennedy immigration plan on principle without being simultaneously guilty of "blaming the victims of wealth transfer"?

          by Mark27 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:42:44 AM PDT

          •  neither McCain -Kennedy

            nor 4437 ever address the real root causes of the "immigration problems".

            And it's not about support for the terribly flawed Senate bill.

            The Dobbs/4437 solution is in fact no solution at all. Lou loves to say "you can't secure the nation if you can't secure the borders" ... but that argument has a fatal logic flaw.  The real fact of the matter is that you will never secure the borders until you address the real root causes of economic migration. All the walls and fences in the world will do nothing until the conditions that force economic migration are changed.

            McCain-Kennedy fails miserably on that account also.

            If anyone was to actually take up this issue in a serious manner and say we need to look at what is really driving this migration and address it... that would be true comprehensive reform.

            Until then, both sides of this debate are essentially pissing in the wind.

            by Duke1676 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 12:57:40 PM PDT

            •  Is 4437 the House Immigration Plan?

              I'm no fan of that either, as deportation and/or attrition are pie-in-the-sky fantasies.  I disagree with you about border fences though.  Obviously, a fence wouldn't quell our illegal immigration problem by 100%, but I'd settle for an 80% reduction.  And the concept that some seeking border passage will make it even with a fence strikes me as tantamount to saying that since some prisoners are able to break out of their respective penitentiaries, we might as well admit defeat and tear down the prison walls.

              by Mark27 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 03:45:10 PM PDT

              •  On walls and fences

                In 2004 (the most current year recorded) a total of 155,330 immigrants were granted employment based permanent residence status. Out of those green cards issued, only 5000 were allocated for "unskilled" labor and out of those only two went to Mexicans in that "unskilled" (EW3) class.
                NYT alternate link

                Yet nearly 500,000 unskilled Mexicans immigrants entered the country illegally that year. Most if not all finding jobs waiting to be done.

                You can't have a system that allows only two unskilled Mexican workers a year to enter legally and not expect the whole thing to blow up in your face. And all the walls in the world won't change that fact.

                Fix the laws to more realistically reflect some semblance of reality and address the root causes of the economic problems that send half a million Mexican workers across the border each year. That would be a good starting point towards comprehensive reform. After that we can deal with how to process the flow of the now increased legal immigration through the border so that it is secure. Then deal with 12 million already here. Trying to stop the flow of immigration through the border right now is like tying to fix a leaky pipe with duct tape...the water just comes out somewhere else.  Fix the reasons for the flow of economic migration and that flow would become a trickle.

                by Duke1676 on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 04:57:53 PM PDT