The reason the war on drugs is on going, and may be an eternal fight, is we do little to address the demand. As long as their is a population who will pay, and pay well, for the drugs, there will be another segment of the population who are willing to take the risk to make the profit in selling drugs.
The same applies to the current illegal immigration debate.
building a wall will not work, refusing drivers licenses, medical care, access to education or any of the direct attacks on those who are here will not work. Only by removing the economic incentive will you start to slow the flow of labor across the US borders.
And, it appears that our nation is starting to try to do this.
Federal authorities announced the arrests yesterday of four construction supervisors and 76 illegal immigrants at a Kentucky home-building company, continuing a promised government crackdown on employers that rely on illegal labor.
The arrests at Fischer Homes, a leading builder in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, followed the April 19 arrests of seven current and former managers and more than 1,100 workers for Ifco Systems North America Inc., a subsidiary of a Dutch manufacturer of plastic crates and wooden pallets.
Of course, you do have to ask, why now.
From 1999 to 2004, the number of criminal employer cases referred for prosecution by the federal government fell from 182 to four, and the amount of fines collected dropped from $3.7 million to $212,000, according to a congressional report.
during Bush's first term in office we stopped enforcement of the law. Only now, when the debate is hot, do we see new attempts to uphold current law. If we had been doing this for the last 4 years there can be little doubt that the current immigration debate would be vastly different.
If there were no companies willing to hire illegals, if there were no executives conspiring to find low wage workers from other nations, if there were no jobs to be had in the US, there would be no incentive for the vast majority to try to come to this country.
Don't attack those who are just following the American dream, they are just trying to improve their families lives. Go after those who are looking for the cheap labor that these workers represent.
I would be very interesting to see where the immigration issue stood after a few years of aggressive enforcement at the management level. By destroying the demand, we may also end the debate.
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Immigration
4 comments:
We don't really want to stop the "drug war". Think about it a minute.
There is a huge constituency of law enforcement personnel who are committed to nothing but drugs. If we actually did something effective, they'd lose jobs/budgets/power big time. So we keep doing the same strategery over and over and over ..... even though they know it's not working.
exactly
the current immigration debate is being played the same way. The right talks tough (we will stop this) but they have also stops enforcement.
Big buisness likes cheep illegal labor, and they pay the freight for the right.
so we have this disgusting and racist flare up over illegals, when the only real fix is to address those who are creating the demand for them.... the american business man
We are being disingenuous if we do not recognize that we all benefit from this cheap labor...we pay lower prices for everything from fresh fruit and vegetables picked by immigrant laborers, to services such as having our lawns mowed, to our fast food prepared by those willing to work for minimum wage. How willing are we---as a country---to pay more for all that? We, who have made Walmart what it is on the strength of low prices.
But Robert.
Some of us refuse to shop wal-mart.
There will be some jobs that will remain the domain of imported labor. Field work is clearly one that will have to rely on a unskilled uneducated labor force, a force that doesn't exist in the needed numbers within our current population.
But
These other jobs, from masons and construction, to industry to cleaning to lawn work, were, at one time, atractive to segments of our labor force.
The shift to ilegal labor is driven by the profit motive of the companies, and they are the ones, the consumer of the cheap labor, that corrective action must focus on.
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