Posted on 06/12/2007 8:18:05 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Rush Limbaugh has been expecting liberals to start "whining" about the $5000 fine undocumented immigrants will have to pay to gain citizenship under the new immigration bill, but most liberals have been too busy chortling about the immigration-induced split in the GOP to make their own case against the bill. So let a mighty whine rise over the land: Undocumented workers shouldn't be fined; they should get a hefty bonus!
All right, they committed a "crime"--the international equivalent of breaking and entry. But breaking and entry is usually a prelude to a much worse crime, like robbery or rape. What have the immigrants been doing once they get into the US? Taking up time on the elliptical trainers in our health clubs? Getting ahead of us on the wait-lists for elite private nursery schools?
In case you don't know what immigrants do in this country, the Latinos have a word for it--trabajo. They've been mowing the lawns, cleaning the offices, hammering the nails and picking the tomatoes, not to mention all that dish-washing, diaper-changing, meat-packing and poultry-plucking.
The punitive rage directed at illegal immigrants grows out of a larger blindness to the manual labor that makes our lives possible: The touching belief, in the class occupied by Rush Limbaugh among many others, that offices clean themselves at night and salad greens spring straight from the soil onto one's plate.
Native-born workers share in this invisibility, but it's far worse in the case of immigrant workers, who are often, for all practical purposes, nameless. In the recent book There's No José Here: Following the Lives of Mexican Immigrants, Gabriel Thompson cites a construction company manager who says things like, "I've got to get myself a couple of Josés for this job if we're going to have that roof patched up by Saturday." Forget the Juans, Diegos, and Eduardos - they're all interchangeable "Josés."
Hence no doubt the ease with which some prominent immigrant-bashers forget their own personal reliance on immigrant labor, like Nevada's Governor Jim Gibbons, who, it turns out, once employed an undocumented nanny. And as the Boston Globe revealed late last year, Mitt Romney's lawn in suburban Boston was maintained by illegal immigrants from Guatemala.
The only question is how much we owe our undocumented immigrant workers. First, those who do not remain to enjoy the benefits of old age in America will have to be reimbursed for their contributions to Medicare and Social Security, and here I quote the website of the San Diego ACLU:
Undocumented immigrants annually pay an estimated $7 billion more than they take out into Social Security, and $1.5 billion more into Medicare.... A study by the National Academy of Sciences also found that tax payments generated by immigrants outweighed any costs associated with services used by immigrants.
Second, someone is going to have to calculate what is owed to "illegals" for wages withheld by unscrupulous employers: The homeowner who tells his or her domestic worker that the wage is actually several hundred dollars a month less than she had been promised, and that the homeowner will be "holding" it for her. Or the landscaping service that stiffs its undocumented workers for their labor. Who's the "illegal" here?
Third, there's the massive compensation owed to undocumented immigrants for preventable injuries on the job. In her book Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights, Jennifer Gordon reports such gruesome cases as a Honduran who died from inhaling paint while sanding yachts in Long Island and a Guatemalan worker whose boss intentionally burned him with hot pans of oil for not washing dishes fast enough. "Death rates for Latino workers," Gordon reports, "have risen over the past decade even as workplace fatality rates for non-Latinos have fallen."
When our debt to America's undocumented workers is eventually tallied, I'm confident that it will be well in excess of the $5000 fine the immigration bill proposes. There is still the issue of the original "crime." If someone breaks into my property for the purpose of trashing and looting, I would be hell-bent on restitution. But if they break in for the purpose of cleaning it--scrubbing the bathroom, mowing the lawn--then, in my way of thinking anyway, the debt goes in the other direction.
We owe them nothing. We owe ourselves their expulsion from our home.
In the first paragraph she proves Rush's point. The dems & elite republicans say it's not amnesty because there is a fine and she is admitting there should be no fine. For all practical purposes the pro-amnesty people should just argue for the merging of the US & Mexico.
Bus fare.
This deserves a “WTF?” by Aunt Linda from Weekend Update (Saturday Night Live).
CALL! CALL! CALL! CALL! AND KEEP CALLING TILL THE LINES FRY!
WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! TILL YOU RUN OUT OF INK IN YOUR PEN!
Bombard the Democrats as well, especially the ones that ran on an anti illegal immigration plank and the ones in marginal districts who could be vulnerable. keep pounding on them. This is a bipartisan issue not a Conservative or Liberal issue BUT AN AMERICAN issue.
Better yet; a one-way trip in a cattle car to southern Mexico. Anyone caught re-entering the United States will do one year in detention (work gang) and then returned to Mexico, again.
Emergency rooms in this country are packed will illegals getting free medical service that I have to subsidize by extremely high premiums on my health care. They can buy a home (for some unknown reason) where I'm told I make too much money for any assistance, but have too high of debt to qualify for a loan. They receive public assistance (welfare) and food stamps while driving around in vehicles that are new or nearly new (while I'm driving a vehicle that's eight years old). They are sending billions of the dollars they earn illegally in this country back to Mexico or Central American or Asia, or wherever they are from (which means that money is taken out of our economy). No, we do not owe them - they owe us and big time at that.
Keep movin’, movin’, movin’,
Though they’re disapprovin’,
Keep them wetbacks movin’ Rawhide!
(whip crack sound, Howard Dean yell)
Don’t try to understand ‘em,
Just deport and disband ‘em,
Soon we’ll be living high and wide.
Boy my heart’s calculatin’
My true country’s ’waitin’, waiting at the end of our ride.
(whip crack and Howard Dean yell)
Move ‘em on, head ‘em up,
Head ‘em up, move ‘em out,
Move ‘em on, head ‘em out Rawhide!
Set ‘em out, ride ‘em in
Ride ‘em in, let ‘em out,
Cut ‘em out, ride ‘em in Rawhide.
(multiple whip cracks and Howard Dean yells)
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
Though the Rio Grande is swollen
Keep them wetbacks rollin’
Rawhide!
(two whip cracks and a Howard Dean yell)
Rain and wind and weather
Hell-bent for leather
Wishin’ George Bush was by my side.
All the things that he’s forgettin’,
His legacy he’ll be regrettin’
Are waiting at the end of his ride
CHORUS
Move ‘em on, head ‘em up
Head ‘em up, move ‘em on
Move ‘em on, head ‘em up
Rawhide
Count ‘em out, ride ‘em in,
Ride ‘em in, count ‘em out,
Count ‘em out, ride ‘em in
Rawhide!
(multiple whip cracks and Howard Dean yells)
In a different time, Barbara Ehrenreich would have sung the praises of slavery. All those happy blacks working in the fields, singing, and sooooooo happy.
HA....I wonder how many illegals she has hired for work around her domicile.....
America owes the Illegal Aliens NADA.
“Mexicano, Go Home!!”
We owe them nada!
If Barbie feels so guilty about the illegals maybe she should make it good out of her considerable nest egg — if she’s not too busy with the elliptical trainer and private nursery school.
I’m betting quite a few....and I’ll also bet she thought she was doing them a ‘kindness’ by hiring them.
This issue crosses Party lines. Anyone that supports this destruction of our country is toast, IMO. They can start looking for their private sector jobs today as if anyone would have them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.