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In Reply to: Re: come again? posted by CB on December 13, 2005 at 16:29:36:
There was a report today about a town in New England where fisheries are the biggest employers - only they are staffed mainly by illegal immigrants. The report didn't explicity said that they were mexicans but it was implied by the mentioning of a couple of Spanish sounding names.
It turns our that the INS sowed up one early morning and got a few people who either didn't have an id or it was obviously fake. (Yes folks, no ID and thanks to the Homeland Security Act, the police state has the legal power of taking you to jail). The story goes to mention how in the next few hours, thanks to cell phones and immediate communications hundreds of workers left town and left the business operations to fend for themselves and without workers.
The point of the story was to show how complex thihs issue really is because the pay grade for these jobs (in the cold and long hours) is an average of US$8.00 per hour. They interviewed somecitizens who said they would never take that kind of job for that pay. Then they interview industry representatives who said they coule not afford paying much more and without those immigrants (the implication was that they were illegal) they would not be able to survive.
I have been travelling a lot lately and the same type of integration is happening all over the world wherever there is a little surplus of low paying jobs. If the jobs don't go to the third world, the thirld world goes to the jobs. The advantage for the would-be workers is that they go to a place with higher standard of living, even if they are the poorest of the poor.
I don't know if it clear but the point is that there is integration at some level, very low level maybe, and legislation to support that integration is slow to come.
This is creating a situation where only those in some upper classes (social, intellectual, finantial) will be able to enjoy the pursuit of happiness. Businesses keep flowing from high salary countries to low wages places around the world hwile those very same high salary countries reduce immigration (or low wages workers) so that most of the jobs left are either very high paying jobs for some elite and very low jobs were vacated by the immigrants who are not there anymore.
One soluton is to get rid of borders, like Europe has done but it is such controversial measure. The alternative is scary unless one belongs to one of those elites.
