cinema_babe (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cinema_babe) wrote2006-02-20 11:05 pm
cinema_babe) wrote2006-02-20 11:05 pm
Entry tags:
There is no illegal immigration problem in this country
The problem is middle class avarice and a desire to 'live large'.
I keep hearing this piffle about, “Illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do” What does that mean? It means that so called ‘Americans’ won’t work for long hours at less than sharecropper’s wages at dirty and dangerous jobs. So instead we farm it out to the brown and black people who have become almost invisible to us. Whenever I hear that phrase, I wonder if the speaker really understands he exact words hey are saying or are they parroting something they’ve been told (Like “the evil empire” or “the vast right wing conspiracy”. Not saying they do or don’t exist, just that these phrases have lost their meaning and have taken on a subtext of their own.)
So what would happen if tomorrow our entire border became like steel?
Many things that the McMansion crowd take for granted wouldn’t be so easy to come by so cheaply: nice lawns, clean houses, weekly manicures, and houses built on the cheap. God forbid one has to pay 50 cents or a dollar more for a head of lettuce. God forbid landscapers aren’t able to pull up in a parking lot and get a 5 man crew to tidy up your lawn. Sorry, you’ll have to pay more, maybe a lot more.
Or just maybe if there was no else to take the jobs Americans *would* do them? If anyone out there reading this can point to a (relatively) unbiased study *proving* that Americans (or immigrants who are here legally) would not do the fruit picking and house cleaning, etc and the reasons why they wouldn't, please tell me where to find it.
We do our best to keep these folks away from us. I live in a nice commuter town and I see the maids and nannies and manual laborer’s file in early in the morning and then leave at night. “God forbid they *live* in our town”
Behind the cut is an enlightening article about the invisible men who stand on the street looking for work. It’s from an op-ed piece published in the New York Times on February 12, 2006.
Op-Ed Contributor
Wanted: Day Laborers
by CAROLA OTERO BRACCO
Published: February 12, 2006
Mount Kisco, N.Y.
IMMIGRATION is the face of this country. In Westchester County and on Long Island, it influences everything from traffic patterns and the kind of ethnic foods we eat to the character of the historic enclaves and towns we live in.
Unfortunately, the benefits that immigrants bring to this country are being forgotten on Long Island and in Westchester as battles erupt over the free-flowing and informal labor force that has sprung up in response to our insatiable appetite for cheap labor.
Towns like Brewster, Farmingville and Mamaroneck face rising tension between residents and day laborers who line the sidewalks looking for work. And town leaders must balance appeasing irate citizens with providing labor for the businesses that form their tax base.
This tension and frustration, which run throughout our country, was certainly one of the reasons that the House of Representatives in December passed a bill that would criminalize, detain and deport the nearly 11 million undocumented workers in this country. Such a simplistic and overreaching approach does nothing, however, to deal with the reality of our economic needs and our broken immigration system.
Instead, it helps to perpetuate the ugly myths surrounding these workers, fueling animosity and misunderstanding in communities across America struggling to integrate new immigrants.
Fortunately, an antidote to these myths is at hand: "On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States," the first comprehensive nationwide study of the day labor phenomenon. Written by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and elsewhere, it has important implications for towns and localities across Westchester and Long Island. Among its findings are these:
Myth: Day laborers get a free ride because they don't pay taxes.
Reality: By some measures, day laborers pay more than their share of taxes. Day workers rarely earn more than $15,000 a year, placing them among the working poor. If they were documented, this income would make them eligible for earned income credits and maybe even a tax refund.
They also pay property taxes through the high rents charged by the landlords in this area. A bed in a shared apartment can cost $400 a month in Westchester County. Laborers also pay the same sales taxes as everyone else.
Myth: Day labor is a choice that these workers favor.
Reality: The largest segment of surveyed laborers is employed in the day labor market for less than one year. For many of these workers, day labor is a stop gap until a permanent job opens up.
Myth: Day laborers are itinerants and have no ties to the towns where they seek work.
Reality: According to the study, about one in three day laborers has lived in the United States for six or more years. They attend church regularly and are involved in sports clubs and community centers.
Myth: Hiring sites are magnets that draw unwanted immigrants to an area.
Reality: Day labor markets are driven by the simple economics of supply and demand. They develop in areas where there is a need for pools of low-cost labor.
Without these laborers we would be hard pressed to find nannies in Chappaqua, gardeners in Glen Cove, kitchen workers to prepare food in our favorite restaurants or home health care workers to help keep our elderly parents at home in Wantagh. And we means you and me, not just contractors: On the East Coast, which has the second largest percentage of day laborers, individuals hire 42 percent of day laborers.
There are proven solutions to managing this labor demand. Chief among them are day-labor worker centers, 63 of which now operate in 17 states. Communities sponsoring formal worker centers find relief from the tensions between the day workers and residents. These centers also help prevent labor and civil rights abuses, provide improved working conditions and help workers recover unpaid wages.
In 2000, when the proliferation of informal hiring sites raised tensions in Mount Kisco, community leaders formed my organization, Neighbors Link, as a formal day labor hiring site. Since then, we have expanded into a center that offers workers and their families computer training, English classes and other community-building activities — a possible model for other towns seeking to integrate workers.
Without a doubt, the day laborer phenomenon is one of the most vexing challenges facing our region and our country, raising issues of economics, immigration and human rights that will bedevil policymakers for years to come.
As long as our need for cheap labor continues, immigrants will come to our borders. But the House bill that seeks to criminalize day laborers, now pending in the Senate, does not fix our immigration system nor does it absolve us of our responsibility to put a human face on this complex problem.
Carola Otero Bracco is the executive director of Neighbors Link.
This is not new phenomenon. My grandfather stood on street corners with other young black men in towns like Red Bank and Freehold and Colt’s Neck during the Great Depression. Waiting for someone to give them a bit of work picking fruit or corn so they could buy some food or pay for a room.
I’m not sure if I agree with the solution proposed in the op-ed piece 100%. I think people who are here illegally need to be protected from exploitation, however I also think that if you aren’t supposed to be here, you should go home. Period. If I shoplift something, I’m not allowed to take it home and use it for a few weeks and then bring it back. I don't think they should be allowed to hang around. It feels like they are being rewarded for beating the system. (I'm not saying it doens't happen, I'm just saying it doens't feel right to me)
If we’re going to have a dialog about illegal immigration and really look for solutions, then we need to have an frank conversation with the middle class who vote and pay taxes and go up to the necks in debt for the house with the big shiny, chandelier and an SUV because they are the ones who would feel the pinch. The truly wealthy can always afford to get the help they want. The faux wealthy reap the benefits of people who will work for cheaply and for cash.
What will we tell them they have to give up in order to reduce our dependence on illegal immigrant labor?
I keep hearing this piffle about, “Illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do” What does that mean? It means that so called ‘Americans’ won’t work for long hours at less than sharecropper’s wages at dirty and dangerous jobs. So instead we farm it out to the brown and black people who have become almost invisible to us. Whenever I hear that phrase, I wonder if the speaker really understands he exact words hey are saying or are they parroting something they’ve been told (Like “the evil empire” or “the vast right wing conspiracy”. Not saying they do or don’t exist, just that these phrases have lost their meaning and have taken on a subtext of their own.)
So what would happen if tomorrow our entire border became like steel?
Many things that the McMansion crowd take for granted wouldn’t be so easy to come by so cheaply: nice lawns, clean houses, weekly manicures, and houses built on the cheap. God forbid one has to pay 50 cents or a dollar more for a head of lettuce. God forbid landscapers aren’t able to pull up in a parking lot and get a 5 man crew to tidy up your lawn. Sorry, you’ll have to pay more, maybe a lot more.
Or just maybe if there was no else to take the jobs Americans *would* do them? If anyone out there reading this can point to a (relatively) unbiased study *proving* that Americans (or immigrants who are here legally) would not do the fruit picking and house cleaning, etc and the reasons why they wouldn't, please tell me where to find it.
We do our best to keep these folks away from us. I live in a nice commuter town and I see the maids and nannies and manual laborer’s file in early in the morning and then leave at night. “God forbid they *live* in our town”
Behind the cut is an enlightening article about the invisible men who stand on the street looking for work. It’s from an op-ed piece published in the New York Times on February 12, 2006.
Op-Ed Contributor
Wanted: Day Laborers
by CAROLA OTERO BRACCO
Published: February 12, 2006
Mount Kisco, N.Y.
IMMIGRATION is the face of this country. In Westchester County and on Long Island, it influences everything from traffic patterns and the kind of ethnic foods we eat to the character of the historic enclaves and towns we live in.
Unfortunately, the benefits that immigrants bring to this country are being forgotten on Long Island and in Westchester as battles erupt over the free-flowing and informal labor force that has sprung up in response to our insatiable appetite for cheap labor.
Towns like Brewster, Farmingville and Mamaroneck face rising tension between residents and day laborers who line the sidewalks looking for work. And town leaders must balance appeasing irate citizens with providing labor for the businesses that form their tax base.
This tension and frustration, which run throughout our country, was certainly one of the reasons that the House of Representatives in December passed a bill that would criminalize, detain and deport the nearly 11 million undocumented workers in this country. Such a simplistic and overreaching approach does nothing, however, to deal with the reality of our economic needs and our broken immigration system.
Instead, it helps to perpetuate the ugly myths surrounding these workers, fueling animosity and misunderstanding in communities across America struggling to integrate new immigrants.
Fortunately, an antidote to these myths is at hand: "On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States," the first comprehensive nationwide study of the day labor phenomenon. Written by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and elsewhere, it has important implications for towns and localities across Westchester and Long Island. Among its findings are these:
Myth: Day laborers get a free ride because they don't pay taxes.
Reality: By some measures, day laborers pay more than their share of taxes. Day workers rarely earn more than $15,000 a year, placing them among the working poor. If they were documented, this income would make them eligible for earned income credits and maybe even a tax refund.
They also pay property taxes through the high rents charged by the landlords in this area. A bed in a shared apartment can cost $400 a month in Westchester County. Laborers also pay the same sales taxes as everyone else.
Myth: Day labor is a choice that these workers favor.
Reality: The largest segment of surveyed laborers is employed in the day labor market for less than one year. For many of these workers, day labor is a stop gap until a permanent job opens up.
Myth: Day laborers are itinerants and have no ties to the towns where they seek work.
Reality: According to the study, about one in three day laborers has lived in the United States for six or more years. They attend church regularly and are involved in sports clubs and community centers.
Myth: Hiring sites are magnets that draw unwanted immigrants to an area.
Reality: Day labor markets are driven by the simple economics of supply and demand. They develop in areas where there is a need for pools of low-cost labor.
Without these laborers we would be hard pressed to find nannies in Chappaqua, gardeners in Glen Cove, kitchen workers to prepare food in our favorite restaurants or home health care workers to help keep our elderly parents at home in Wantagh. And we means you and me, not just contractors: On the East Coast, which has the second largest percentage of day laborers, individuals hire 42 percent of day laborers.
There are proven solutions to managing this labor demand. Chief among them are day-labor worker centers, 63 of which now operate in 17 states. Communities sponsoring formal worker centers find relief from the tensions between the day workers and residents. These centers also help prevent labor and civil rights abuses, provide improved working conditions and help workers recover unpaid wages.
In 2000, when the proliferation of informal hiring sites raised tensions in Mount Kisco, community leaders formed my organization, Neighbors Link, as a formal day labor hiring site. Since then, we have expanded into a center that offers workers and their families computer training, English classes and other community-building activities — a possible model for other towns seeking to integrate workers.
Without a doubt, the day laborer phenomenon is one of the most vexing challenges facing our region and our country, raising issues of economics, immigration and human rights that will bedevil policymakers for years to come.
As long as our need for cheap labor continues, immigrants will come to our borders. But the House bill that seeks to criminalize day laborers, now pending in the Senate, does not fix our immigration system nor does it absolve us of our responsibility to put a human face on this complex problem.
Carola Otero Bracco is the executive director of Neighbors Link.
This is not new phenomenon. My grandfather stood on street corners with other young black men in towns like Red Bank and Freehold and Colt’s Neck during the Great Depression. Waiting for someone to give them a bit of work picking fruit or corn so they could buy some food or pay for a room.
I’m not sure if I agree with the solution proposed in the op-ed piece 100%. I think people who are here illegally need to be protected from exploitation, however I also think that if you aren’t supposed to be here, you should go home. Period. If I shoplift something, I’m not allowed to take it home and use it for a few weeks and then bring it back. I don't think they should be allowed to hang around. It feels like they are being rewarded for beating the system. (I'm not saying it doens't happen, I'm just saying it doens't feel right to me)
If we’re going to have a dialog about illegal immigration and really look for solutions, then we need to have an frank conversation with the middle class who vote and pay taxes and go up to the necks in debt for the house with the big shiny, chandelier and an SUV because they are the ones who would feel the pinch. The truly wealthy can always afford to get the help they want. The faux wealthy reap the benefits of people who will work for cheaply and for cash.
What will we tell them they have to give up in order to reduce our dependence on illegal immigrant labor?