Cheap Food and Low Cost Housing

I was thinking about illegal immigration today. Most of the jobs that illegal immigrants take are the ones Americans refuse because they don't pay enough and/or they are too grueling. Now many people make the argument that the fact that illegal's will work for lower pay is undercutting Americans who would take the job if it paid better. But think about this, would you pay for a $20.00 watermelon, or a $10.00 pound of grapes? Or how about $7.00 per pound for hamburger meat? What about a house that sells for $150,000 right now with cheap labor versus the same house for $300,000?

Now some people will say that they pay more for produce because they buy from a local farmer, and I applaud them for that. But, does the farmer you buy from pick all the fruit him or herself?????

Just raising an hourly salary from $7.00 to $10.00 would raise the employer's base cost by $6000 per year more per worker. This would be compounded for home builders because they hire subcontractors who would tack on their profit along with the rise in pay. And have no doubts, this cost will be passed on to the consumer. We are all complicit in illegal immigration whether we like it or not.

If You're Born in the US Does that Make You a Citizen?

As anxiety in the US rises the issue of birthright citizenship has come up for debate. When the 14th amendment was passed after the Civil War, it officially and explicitly gave citizenship to anyone born within the boundaries of the US. The amendment was meant to address the freed slaves, but over time many immigrants have taken advantage of this clause for their own children. Some mothers cross the US border from Mexico just to go to the hospital to have their children. Also, any illegal immigrant who's children are born stateside will be citizens.

So why do we have this stipulation in the Constitution, the highest law in the land? We are a nation of immigrants, all of us, except for Native Americans originally came from somewhere else. Our ancestors all came here to get their slice of the American Dream. It is a principle so fundamental to our country that we put into the Constitution, one of the most difficult legal instruments to modify, It has only been amended 27 times in our 234 year history. By contrast the Texas constitution has been amended over 450 times.

The challengers of Citizenship-By-Birth hope to challenge the principle in the Supreme Court, however, this has been tried many times before and has never passed muster. The only way this right could be changed would be by Constitutional amendment, a process so cumbersome, there is little chance of it happening.

The New Jew?

I have been saying for a long time that Immigrants, particularly from poor countries are the new Jew. For centuries when a scape goat was needed Jews always fit the bill, but over the last twenty years or so the immigrant has become the one to blame.

Now, in the US immigrants have come under fire from time to time, starting around the early 1900s when thousands of Irish and Eastern Europeans were pouring into the country. They were looked upon as stupid and lazy, even though they worked long hours in the worst of conditions in order to achieve the American Dream.

The difference today is, now the US has some safety nets set up for it's poorest citizens and many people jealously guarding their earnings from taxes claim that poor immigrants only come here to receive social services.

While I agree that we are educating illegal aliens in our public schools and that many of these children receive free breakfast and lunch I don't believe that they are receiving most of the social services that many critics claim. Most immigrants work hard and keep their heads down, they don't want to attract the government's attention by applying for food stamps, CHip and medicaid.

For many years I drove through construction sites all over the city of San Antonio each quarter to conduct a housing census. The majority of the workers were hispanic and spoke little English. They were working their butts off, many times working on Saturdays and Sundays.

I live in a right to work state so the construction workers are not unionized. I have heard that in northern states where the workers belong to unions, they stop work for all their scheduled breaks regardless of whether or not they are holding up traffic or causing problems at the work site. I'm sure if they worked on Saturdays and Sundays they would get time and a half. I know that's not the case for illegal aliens, in fact many times their employers don't pay them minimum wage and in some cases don't pay them at all, because they know the illegals won't report them.

Now I realize that the unions are worried about being under cut by illegal labor. But is this really the fault of the illegals? Who does the hiring?

I agree that illegal immigration is a problem that needs workable solutions, but I don't think building higher fences is the solution. Right now the US only allows about 3,000 unskilled laborers per year to enter the country legally. According to the Pew Hispanic Center estimates, there are 12 million illegal aliens in the US as of March 7, 2010. Three thousand is such a paltry amount in comparison to the number of illegal aliens it's not even funny.

There are several things that could be tried:

1. Raising the limit of unskilled laborers to a reasonable level and setting up a hiring center for them to find jobs, thus requiring the employers to pay decent wages that don't undercut wages for citizens.

2. Help Mexico to build their own economy so that there are more decent paying jobs for their citizens.

3. Lowering our country's demand for illegal drugs by instituting drug rehab and prevention programs.

I'm sure there are many more solutions that I haven't thought of that would help fix the problem, probably several things put together would work.

So far the beginning of this century has been a time filled with anxiety: terrorist attacks, wars, economic meltdowns, religious fanaticism, social problems, natural disasters, Global warming. Blaming the immigrants for all of our problems won't change things.

Hispanic Republicans--A thing of the past?

In the 1990s and early 2000s the Republicans made some good gains among Hispanics. Many Hispanic businessmen in the South West had similar values, fiscally conservative, interested in a good business climate and socially conservative due to their largely catholic backgrounds. But so called Immigration Reform, which really means keeping poor Hispanics immigrants out of the US, may reverse that trend.

Lionel Sosa, an Hispanic advertising mogul, is one of these disaffected republicans.

I'm not Hispanic, but but I worked for many years by driving around construction sites to survey housing. The majority of the workers were Hispanic and they were all working hard. I have personally known several illegal aliens and they all work hard. They aren't here for hand outs. They want the American Dream, work hard so that your children can have a better life and become successful.

Over the two centuries that the US has been in existence there have been several immigrant groups that have come under fire for trying to steal our way of life. Usually the ones Americans objected to the most spoke a different language.