The Voice of the People
... or at least my own
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... or at least my own | |
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September 1, 2003
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Recent opinions by Pat Buchanan and letters to the editor have decried a certain rise in immigrants that are supposedly taking jobs from Americans, receiving Government services at tax-payer expense, and winding up in prisons at alarming rates. This sentiment is an alarming trend in itself, because it overlooks the underlying causes of these events and seeks to over-simplify the problem by pointing the finger at the immigrant. Close to 85% of all hispanic immigrants that enter the country illegally are transported here to work as migrant farm laborers or in the conglomerate meat packing industry because the corporations that own the fruit picking farms and meat plants want cheap labor. These immigrant laborers get special government permits that were allowed by Congress to do these Corporate farms a favor. They are not replacing American workers. If there were no provisions for this source of cheap labor, corporate farms and large landowners would have to either absorb the cost or offer high wages to attract labor in the fields and meat factories. When Manufacturing Industry wants cheap labor they pick up and move to Mexico, China, Thailand, Vietnam, or some other foreign land where they can exploit cheap labor. The millions of jobs that are being lost in the United States, are because of out-sourcing, down-sizing, and relocation : not because of Immigration. It is true that the federal and state prison populations are increasingly filled with 20 to 30% of immigrant populations. But these populations are increasing because of the private prison system that has evolved in the last 15 years. Private prison populations have needed to show a profit and are creating a captured set of prison laborers to cheaply out-source to manufacturers in order to make profit. In order to enable a larger prison population Congress widely expanded the list of crimes for which immigrants would get sent to prison rather than be deported by the INS as a result of The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA.) These new imprisonable crimes for immigrants include shoplifting, check writing over-drafts, and traffic violations. The relevant statistic to keep in mind is that 50% of all prison inmates are in jail for non-violent offenses. As Rutgers University Professor Michael Welch writes in "The Role of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Prison-Industrial Complex", “The INS responds to the market imperatives of the prison-industrial complex, an enterprise whereby lawmakers and undocumented immigrants are commodified as raw materials for private profit." So what is happening here is the result of the de-regulation of the prison system. Don’t blame the immigrants for wanting to escape the intense poverty of their homelands. Many hispanic laborers send half of what they earn back to their impoverished families . Letter to the editor contributor Kathleen Field (SF Chronicla 09-01-2003) says that we give “them welfare, food stamps or free medical coverage to the tune of billions of dollars a year” which is extensively exaggerated. There are many studies that indicate aggregate costs run into the billions, but these studies ignore or understate the tax collections (gas and sales tax included) of these same immigrants. According to studies by the well respected Urban Institute, most of the best studies indicate that cost minus tax collections of the immigrant population are either balanced or negligible, certainly not running into the “billions” of dollars. In fact, many immigrants, including most recent arrivals, are prevented from receiving most forms of welfare or public assistance. Undocumented immigrants are eligible for very little public assistance except for emergency medical care under Medicaid and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program benefits. Immigrants legalizing under IRCA are barred from most federally funded public assistance programs for five years after legalization. Those granted temporary protected status (TPS) under the Immigration Act of 1990 are barred from most federal benefit programs. Legal permanent residents are effectively barred from receiving most cash assistance during their first three years in the country, because their sponsor's income is "deemed" to be theirs during this period when determining eligibility for public benefits. They can also be deported as a public charge if they use public benefits during their first five years in the country. More important, use of public welfare makes it more difficult for immigrants to bring their relatives into the country, another relatively effective deterrent. The health care issues that face our nation affect all poor people, whether they are immigrants or not. It is true that medical services are provided that hospitals, clinics, and insurance companies pass on to the customers who can pay. However, this is the problem with the health-care industry in general, and is not specifically the result of an immigrant problem. This problem will not disappear even if all immigrants were deported or banned from health-service, because the health-care system of the United States is driven by the profit-motivated decisions of the health care insurance companies and the privatization of hospital services. We spend twice as much in health care costs than Canada, and we get less service. 25% of all health-care costs are the result of unrelated medical administrative overhead (executive salaries) and profit; whereas it is only 3% for the Government run medicare system. So much for private economies being more "efficient" than government. Granted that some of the above assistance laws are in flux, but what we have here is a nativist scream that lacks awareness of the facts. In some instances, there is a certain finger-pointing that distorts the real fundamental transformations of American Society and the economy. Don’t blame the immigrants when the CEO’s of corporate America ship their factories overseas to cheap labor markets while the CEO’s still earn pay raises and bonuses that total 50 million dollars. Don’t blame immigrants when 80% of tax revenue is lost because corporations create tax havens, get legislative tax breaks, and use Bermuda as an address to avoid paying taxes at all. Don’t blame immigrants when temporary work VISA’s are used to import cheaper labor to make more money for corporate executives, instead of taking a ten million dollar pay cut to help pay American labor. Ten million divided by 1,000 workers is $10,000 dollars. We have a private sector economy in which the difference in pay scale between the top corporate executives and the lowest paid worker is a ratio of 1,000 to 1 (and 100,000 to 1 in some cases.) This is the worst economic stratification in the Western World. In the military and the government the ratio by law cannot be more than 15 to 1. The problems of our economy has nothing to do with immigration. The problem is that the self-serving, short-term decisions of the executives in the corporate suites are affecting the Americans they protest to love. ___ Sources: --- The Urban Institute, “Immigration and Immigrants.” — Michael Welch, "The Role of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Prison-Industrial Complex." — Eric Schlosser “Reefer Madness” chapter on Strawberry Fields migrant workers — Eric Schlosser “Fast Food Nation” — Robert Kuttner “Everything For Sale”
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