illegal aliens and cryin' indians

So, my daughter posted a cartoon up on her Facebook today that made me react to it in a couple of ways. It's funny how you will react to a cartoon. It is important to gauge your initial reaction, because that is what the political cartoonist is trying to do, evoke a reaction. My initial reaction was, Ha -- he should have made the American Indian the "Crying Indian" from the '70's Ad Council commercials. Here's one of the best ones, but they all end in the Amerind crying.



Beyond your initial gut reaction, try to see if there is anything else going on. Look at the cartoon again... there was this deep tickle in my brain. Why did I think I had heard this before? I knew that there was an immigration bill being worked on, but the gut reaction (as lampooned in the carton) was that the Tea Party was viscerally against the bill. One of my uncles sent an email that basically said the same thing as the guy in the cartoon. Being one of a few middle-of-the-roaders in our vast family, I get a lot of emails from both sides. And phone calls. My Dad, God love him, is pestering me to watch Glenn Beck. I just tell him I don't want the brain aneurysm that will come within 15 minutes of watching Glenn OR Keith Olbermann. I grow tired of reading that this is a "Socialist Regime" and that this President doesn't know how to govern because he was just a "community organizer" in the "Chicago Mafiaoso." At least once a week, I get at least one forwarded email sent from at least 3 uncles. I finally sent a message to a dearly loved (even though I disagree with him) uncle saying I was done, because it took me more time to research the truth than reading his emails. Of course, the email I sent was debunking another one of the forwarded (thrice) emails, and I got no response back. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

ANYWAY, back to the political cartoon. So when I saw the cartoon, I was still processing an earlier fwd'd email. So my secondary reaction to the cartoon was I think they "doth protest too much, methinks" (to use Shakespeare's line). Or was it that someone had said something about pardoning illegals during my daily read through blogs? So I researched it (duh). Go ahead, google "Immigration Reform and Control Act" -- I'll spare you all the time I was researching this so that you can cut to the chase. This bill, signed into law in 1986 by... RONALD REAGAN. In this law, which gave us the lovely I-9 that every new employee must have 2 sets of ID to prove that they are a legal US citizen, it also pardoned any illegal aliens that had lived continuously in the United States since 1/1/82. Let me repeat: the Demigod Republican President Reagan pardoned * illegal aliens* that had worked continuously in the US since 1/1/82. I don't think you'll hear that on Fox News.

Of course, there was a process that had to be undertaken to allow the illegals to become registered legal immigrants. As this 2006 article for the Washington Post by the original authors of the bill, describes it as a 3 legged stool that never could stand on it's third leg: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401179.html. Of course, they were talking about a bill that was still in the works in 2006, and it never made it to Dubya to sign.... OH, that's right: another Republican President tried to guide another immigration bill through. Again I save you the research (but you can always google "George W. Bush +immigration), and send you to http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2742643820070629.

So obviously, the paradox of again folks beating down a bill before it even gets a chance to get to signature obviously makes the conservatives happy. So again, we sit here 24 years later, with no true immigration bill that makes anyone happy. And we need one. So where do I stand on illegal immigrants? I don't think it is fair for us to ration out immigration to the rest of the world while our southern neighbors send workers over our porous borders.

Shocked? Well, wait for it... back in 1994, my now ex-husband had a landscaping business. He watched other landscaping businesses beat his bids on new lawns while their trucks drove by with a passel of Mexicans in the back. One of his builders told him, when he asked how is it that they could bid so low, "you need to get you some Mexicans." My ex was a pretty good joe, even if we did end up divorced, and we talked about what to do over and over again. The problem was we couldn't get good employees to do the menial work of throwing sod and sifting pine bales. It's hard, dirty work and you really have to enjoy making a mud pit beautiful. Very few self-respecting white or black men wanted the jobs. We paid for ad after ad in the AJC and local papers. We visited labor pools. If we got someone to work, most likely they were passed out after lunch or begging to be let go. So, one day, when my ex had won a bid, he discovered that he had no workers to install the lawn and bushes. So he approached a builder who had Mexicans framing up a house and asked if he knew of any Mexicans looking for work. He was provided with a phone number of a Mexican who spoke English pretty well, and the next day, two earnest young men was dropped off a pickup truck at the job site. Miguel and his cousin Manuel worked circles around my ex and his one hired hand (a project manager). My ex tried to do the right thing by asking for SSN and driver licenses, but nobody seemed to understand what he needed. When he explained it to his contact, then we were given a SSN and a drivers license with one of the guys' names on it. Didn't quite look like Miguel in the picture, but we had what we needed to pay SSN and payroll taxes. Manuel we let go because he couldn't provide the information. Somewhere a Mexican legal immigrant has a SSN account that is probably bulging. One day, the INS showed up on the job site and took our Mexican away, along with dozens of others. Mexicans were scarce after that, and we went back to newspaper ads and labor pools, but my ex's business never recovered. His business went bankrupt, he had to let go his one project manager, and he went back to work.

So... what do you think? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of American companies who knowingly employ illegal aliens because they can provide a SSN and Drivers License that are not legitimate. The 1986 law did not have the clause that put verification onto the shoulders of the company employing the aliens (which is why we didn't have to verify that the SSN and DL was legit, nor did anyone else). The problem is not the illegal immigrants. It is that there is a source of labor jobs that no American seems to want to do: dangerous, filthy, dirty jobs that most white and black people do not want to do, and these wretched heaving masses of humanity would give up their life for a chance to do it.

If the current immigration bill would have the teeth that caused companies to have to actually verify the employ-ability of a candidate before the first pay check is issued, this would be a short discussion. Verifying could be as simple as a photo being taken of the SSN holder, with pertinent data like sex, age, and last known city/state, that an employer (or more likely a contractor) could query the SSN and up pops the pertinent data and picture. Easily verifiable. Heck, use the customer service/contact center software that is already out there -- this is do-able, use the technology that large firms already use to identify their customers. Just use it for the federal government agencies that employers have to deal with anyway.

We will never solve the problem of illegal aliens unless we go after the companies that use them, or we come up with a way to make it easier for the companies to hire their allotment of temporary workers, and ship them back when they are done... unless there is another company who can't find workers to do the dirty, dangerous jobs. I think any bonafide company who can show the feds that they have tried to fill their positions with verifiable Americans should be allowed to hire temporary immigrant workers. All they have to do is show that they have tried and failed for a period of time.

Some will scream that it still doesn't fix the problem of the illegals flooding over the border. No, but it sure cuts down on the open spigot of jobs that they fill.