Illegal Immigration
Ok, I’d like to take a moment to talk about something that I hear a great deal about in the media. Whether it’s radio, TV, websites, it seems like everyone is talking about Illegal Immigration/Immigrants. Let me start by saying that there is nothing wrong at all with immigrants, meaning folk from other countries, wanting to come to America and become productive members of society. However, it’s those who break the law to do so that get my goat. Think about it for a second, these people want to come to America, and they want all of the rights and freedoms that citizens have, but the first thing they do is break the law. Don’t the two kind of contradict themselves? On one hand, you have someone saying they are good and dutiful people, and therefore we want them here, and on the other hand, the first think they did was disobey and break a very basic law. Maybe that’s just me, but it doesn’t make sense.
One thing I want to do, is shed some light on two things I hear quite often regarding the subject of illegal immigration. The first one being that the illegals are taking jobs away from U.S. citizens, and the second that U.S. citizens won’t do those jobs that the illegals are supposedly taking away.
I am going to answer both of these allegations in one fell swoop, because they kind of go hand in hand. I don’t think in America today, there is such a shortage of jobs and surplus of workers, that all of the illegals are “stealing” jobs from the citizenry. I just don’t see citizens lining up to work the kinds of jobs that a lot of the illegals are working. There are still, even with (last I heard) 12 million illegals in this country, jobs to be had by simply showing up and wanting to work.
That being said, part of this equation involves the employer. Part of the reason people who don’t have jobs already, and are in fact citizens, are not lining up for some of these jobs is because the employers aren’t paying anywhere near a decent wage. (Don’t mention raising the minimum wage, that’s a discussion for another day.) The big companies out there don’t want to pay much, because they know they can get the illegals to do it cheaper than if they hired citizens. As a bonus, they pay the illegals under the table, therefore saving even more money by not having to pay the added cost of having employees like Social Security, Unemployment, benefits, extra paperwork and overhead, etc.
In my opinion, this issue is much more complex than simply tagging it with “illegals are stealing our jobs”, or “Americans are too good to do that work” stuff that seems to fly around all over the place. In it’s simplest form, you have big companies that are eyeballing the bottom line, figuring they can pay “John Doe” illegal immigrant a fraction of what it’s worth to do a job, and you have citizens who just aren’t going to do some ruttin bad job for near nothing (and I don’t blame them).
In the end, big companies need to quit hiring illegals. Hit them where it hurts, impose insanely large fines for those who get caught hiring them. Better yet, let’s make up some type of guest worker program and let them work all they want and get taxed like crazy like the rest of us. I am all for letting anyone who wants to come here and work, let’s just do it in some kind of legal fashion, and in the process level the playing field by making them pay into the system (taxes, etc), pay them a decent wage, treat them like you ought to, etc.
One last thing, while I am on the illegal immigrant subject, all you folk in the media … stop calling them undocumented workers, or simply immigrants, or whatever flavor you try to use to make it sound nicer. They are what they are, stop trying to spin the issue, it doesn’t help anyone.
