This is not a defense of open borders. But this is a diary about the systematic exploitation of workers, both American and immigrant, by abusive corporations. This is a debate about corporate abuse of power and how certain corporations have engaged in a systematic campaign to suppress wages and return this country into the dark ages and back into the old cycle of boom and bust before the rise of the New Deal gave us a measure of checks and balances against the systematic corporate abuse of power in this country.
Illegal immigration is a red herring in this country. It is a red herring that diverts focus from the massive wage suppression, exportation of jobs, and union busting that is taking place on a daily basis around this country. It is a red herring because of the fact that it focuses downward instead of upward. Everybody, for instance, loves to whine about the "illegal invasions" and "broken borders" that are supposedly such a big problem. But nobody talks about the exploitation of American workers by people such as Rite Aid.
And people like Tom Tancredo are exploiting this situation so that they can ride a wave of scaremongering to victory. They would turn government into Big Brother, making illegal immigrants the enemy. Vote for us, he says, and we will deport all the "illegals" back home. Ron Paul would go so far as to repeal the 14th Amendment so that children born in this country would no longer be US citizens.
But neither do we support the guest worker plan supported by George Bush. The problem is that it would create a permanent underclass of people who are totally dependent on corporate exploiters who pay them just enough to keep them alive. It is not a pathway to citizenship, but a pathway to complete and total dependence on the corporation for survival.
And corporate America would be totally happy with Tancredo as president -- it would simply create a black market where corporate America would rule completely by fear -- they could bring illegal immigrants into this country and tell them that if they utter one word of complaint, they would send them on a plane back home to Mexico. They could pay them $3 an hour, and pay them just enough to keep them alive in this country.
We reject both of these approaches because neither one of them addresses the real problem in this country -- the systematic destruction of people's livelyhoods for exercising their Constitutional right to free speech and freedom of assembly. Situations like this:
ILWU Organizing Department Communications Specialist Marcy Rein describes efforts by workers at a Rite Aid warehouse in California to form a union in the face of employer intimidation and harassment.
Nacho Meza walked in to his job June 8 at the Rite Aid distribution center in Lancaster, Calif., to cheers and hugs from his co-workers. He had been out of work since Rite Aid fired him Jan. 30 for helping co-workers join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). He and another union supporter, Debbie Fontaine, were rehired after the ILWU filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The corporate execs like the ones at Rite Aid are the real criminals in this country. They have organized crime rings far greater than anything a common thief or criminal could accomplish. People who break into people's homes and steal valuable and steal cars harm only a few peoples' livelyhoods. The massive and ongoing suppression of wages by corporate America destroys millions. Yet, who is flying around in their plush jet planes and and their million-dollar mansions and their private yachts, and who is doing time in jail?
And their willing allies at hate radio play a part as well; by demonizing and scapegoating immigrants and corporate welfare enablers like Neal Boortz advocating violence against them, they divert attention from the real problem in this country -- thuggish behavior like this, from the link:
Managers spied on union activities and interrogated people about their feelings for the union. They threatened that employees would lose their regular annual raise if the union came in and routinely referred to union supporters as "union pushers." They posted a memo throughout the plant that listed the union organizing committee members and advised them it would do anything necessary to protect against "threats, harassment and intimidation...damage to any property...theft or misappropriation of property...any violent acts or acts of insubordination." They disciplined several union supporters and fired Fontaine for "causing controversy."
Fontaine recalls the frightening minutes before she was fired:
My manager had me in his office and called me an ‘agitator’ and a ‘pot stirrer’ and asked, ‘Are you a builder or a wrecker?’ He pounded on his desk and said, ‘My father once told me something when I was young and he used to knock me around, and that is ‘never, never pass up an opportunity to shut up.’
Workers were protesting the practice of hiring "at will" and mandatory overtimes:
More than 600 people work at the Lancaster warehouse, the distribution hub for Rite Aid’s largest market. A group of them first approached the ILWU in March 2006. They were tired of working "at will" (employer-speak for being fired at any time) and of the mandatory overtime piled on to their already 10-hour days. They were sick of punishing production standards and of freezing in the winter and frying in the summer because the warehouse lacked adequate climate control.
"More than anything, we wanted them to respect us as workers," Meza said.
This is why it is far more important to pass laws like the Employee Free Choice Act currently in Congress than it is to scapegoat immigrants. It is not immigrants who decided that they could get away with wage suppression and theft. It is not immigrants who decided that they wanted to live high off the hog in their corporate jets, yachts, and mansions while workers lived in freezing conditions in the winter and extreme heat in summer.
And demonizing immigrants is nothing more than a continuation of the repackaged segregation of the Republican party. Segregation, instead of dying a natural death, was revived by the Republican Party by rewording it to make it more palatable to people and by finding people like immigrants and Muslims who it was more acceptable to hate.