On Immigration

The Star Tribune has a lengthy feature on the fallout from the raid on the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, IA and it lays bare some troubling trends when it comes to the mess that is immigration law in this country. The obvious thing one takes away from this article is a simple one: when workers operate outside U.S. law they are subject to abuses by employers- and it sounds like AP has had its share of abuses. Workers promised furnished apartments and payouts and getting nothing? Employers looking the other way and hiring people they knew to be illegals? Again, what's up with that?

400 people were rounded up in the raid and families were torn apart and the last I checked (and this article seems to confirm that) authorities aren't investigating the employers, just raiding and deporting the employees. That should stop right now.

Immigration is a tricky issue with me: I think the system is beyond broken and I'm not in favor of illegal immigrants getting amnesty. That's not because I think 'them there Mexicans should go home and stop takin' our jobs' it's because that my family had to jump through all seven circles of INS bureaucratic hell- we did it by the book and no one offered us amnesty. Illegals enter the country illegally and politicians trip over themselves trying to come up with Amnesty bills every decade or so- usually to try and curry favor with Hispanic voters in some very important election.

That said: who's going to do the jobs? Seriously now. I hate it when people bitch about 'immigrants taking our jobs' because I don't see them running down to the meat packing plant to get those jobs. I don't see them volunteering to be janitors and do other very thankless jobs at little or no money. Picking crops, working in meat packing plants, take your pick: the jobs don't pay well and they need to get done and there's a market of workers willing to do them. So why not let them? It's also worth noting that if a guest worker program is established, then these workers can get some protection of the law. They can get better wages and better conditions. Right now they can demand neither in the face of deportation.

A guest worker program is not without precedent. From 1942-1964, we had the bracero program, which was initiated during the war to provide manual labor for the agricultural and railroad sectors of the economy- it was a forerunner of the United Farm Workers organization and typically, troubles continue to this day: lawsuits were filed to recover deductions taken from paychecks by the Mexican and American governments- and, typically, they've gone nowhere.

Point is: guest worker programs have worked in this country before, they can do so again. And should! And more importantly, if structured correctly, they can provide a path to permanent residency and citizenship that many of these people desire. Jobs get done, crops get picked and the workers get the protection of the law that they deserve so they can get better pay and better conditions.

I think in the long term, sensible action on this side of the border, combined with sensible action on the other side of the border can produce something that everyone can live with. Mexico, historically speaking is still coming out of seven decades of one party rule that was horrible inefficient and corporatist in nature. It will take them awhile to get it out of their system.

And, having read this article- I think we need to start cracking down on worker abuse and employers who break the law in the name of getting cheap labor.