I was listening to Terry Gross's Fresh Air today and her guest was Jeff Goodall who wrote "Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future". I did not hear the entire interview but what I heard was really interesting.
He spoke mostly about the coal industry and electrical power generation. He also spoke about the miners who actually bring the stuff out of the ground. He has a lot of respect for these workers and what they do. The aha moment came when he mentioned that most of these workers are 50 years old or older. There are no young people going into the mines, and all the miners he spoke with do not want their children to become miners. So in the near future we will not have any people willing to go into the coal mines, unless they are paid more than miners get now.
Suddenly bush's focus on immigration and his position on it makes sense now. I always think of the hard work of meatpackers or nannies and other jobs as being carried out mostly by our neighbors from the south.
An energy industry in need of future cheap labor is the missing link in my understanding of bush on immigration.
Have others realized this before. Am I late to the show? Now that summer is here I spend less time in front of the computer and more time outside. So I am perhaps missing some important political things.