George Bush’s Contempt For American Workers
I really, really hate the President’s plans for “immigration reform” and it looks like I’m not the only one :
“Society is made up of groups, and as long as the smaller groups do not have the same rights and the same protection as others – I don’t care whether you call it capitalism or communism -it is not going to work. Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counterpower, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.”
- Cesar Chavez
Since I’m too lazy to rewrite my thoughts on the President’s horrible, elitist, and divisive plans, here’s a rerun of a post I wrote back in November.
For all of you conservatives who love to praise the “free market”, let me call bullshit on this enduring lie that the President frequently cites to sell his immigration plan. From yesterday’s speech :
As we enforce our immigration laws, comprehensive immigration reform also requires us to improve those laws by creating a new temporary worker program. This program would create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do. Workers would be able to register for legal status for a fixed period of time, and then be required to go home. This program would help meet the demands of a growing economy, and it would allow honest workers to provide for their families while respecting the law.
The “jobs Americans won’t do” lie was also recently advanced in the Washington Post by a spokesman for the Labor Department and a “panicking” farmer (via Kevin Drum) :
“There are just some jobs people don’t want to do,” Nassif said. “It’s the most developed nation in the world using a foreign workforce, and people need to recognize that. We need to make them legal.”Jack Vessey said he listed openings for 300 laborers at the state office of employment last week to prepare the lettuce fields for harvest. “We got one person,” he said. “He showed up and said, ‘I’m not going to do that.’”
The key to unraveling this bullshit is that the anonymous laborer quoted above likely ended his gripe with “unless you pay me more”. The President wants you to think this is because American workers are shiftless elitists, but it’s the employers and their shills who are the assholes here.
What people like the George W. Bush don’t understand is that capitalism is not a one-way street. When the demand for workers is high and the supply of laborers is low, the rational solution would be for employers to raise wages, increase benefits, or both to ensure that supply catches up to demand. But that would mean actually spending more money, and we can’t have that.
Instead, employers have found a way to get around their obligations by employing “undocumented” workers (and thus creating a demand for illegal labor). Why are these men and women willing to do the same job that Americans are unwilling to do for less money? Well, they’re here illegally, for one. They probably don’t speak English well and have little familiarity with existing labor laws. They’re doing a job that’s unskilled while under the constant threat of deportation. Sounds like the new face of indentured servitude to me, but the President and his allies are trying to figure out ways to make it acceptable.
But here’s the key to all of these proposals : These illegal workers aren’t being offered citizenship, but membership in a “guest worker program”. Bush and co. don’t give a damn about the working class in this country, they just want to make sure that the crooks aren’t penalized for breaking our labor laws. The solutions bandied about would create a pseudo-citizenship which will protect employers but do little to lift immigrant workers from the bottom rung on the economic ladder. When residence is closely tied to employment, the threat of deportation doesn’t go away, it just gets hidden a little better.
Which makes this whole debate even more galling. Immigrants are being exploited, American workers are getting screwed, and the whole debate is happenening as if these two groups of victims are on opposite sides. If you want to stop illegal immigration, you don’t need to build a fence. The supply of illegal labor will go away once the demand for it ceases. We don’t need new plans, we need to rigorously enforce the laws already on the books. If that means that employers are going to have to pay more to the people doing the jobs that “Americans won’t do” and pass those costs on to the consumer, then it’s hardly our place to question the wisdom of the invisible hand, right?
Also, it should be stressed again that George Bush and his allies should be ashamed of themselves for slandering us with their anti-worker rhetoric. Aren’t you paying attention, America? The President of the United States just called you an indolent snob. He thinks you’re too lazy to do an honest day’s work and too effete to do work that will get your hands dirty. Doesn’t that piss you off? It should.
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it’s interesting to see that photo of downtown L.A.
when i woke up to Fox’s Good Day L.A. this morning (the worst morning show in the world) they were only covering a small school walk-out in Huntington Park. Their coverage made it look like there are only a few hundred high school kids taking advantage of an excuse to get out of their classes.
Comment by tomN! — March 27, 2006 @ 9:33 am
Greg, Excellent post. I have written the same thoughts as comments on a few sites, although not as well written as yours, but I was basically saying the same thing. Like you I honed in on this absurd phrase “jobs Amercans won’t do” by the president. This is all a scam to keep wages low in certain sectors of the economy and keep those GOP businessman and corporate interests very happy.
Americans won’t build houses, paint them or do landscaping to name just a few jobs?
The answer is quite obvious.
Comment by Scott — March 27, 2006 @ 10:21 am
I think the American work force is pampered a little too much with jobs that pay at least enough to get by with and offer some perks. I really couldn’t find someone that would say they would work out in a hot field all day planting seeds and so on for $1 or $2 an hour.
Farmers, like the strawberry ones around here, can’t afford to pay minimum wage and perks to the workers who only have to be on the job for a small part of the year. I can understand why they go for the illegals.
However, I am aware of businesses that do not want to cut into profit by paying standard wages.
This sort of subject can get a bit sticky. Not all the folks out there hiring undocumented immigrants are greedy or shifty folks, just trying to get by with cheap help.
I certainly do not agree with the employment of illegal immigrants but I do not see how we would be able to force everyone to comply with the law AND offer the same jobs with better pay and benefits.
Comment by Kryten Syxx — March 27, 2006 @ 11:30 am
Kryten, I think that may be one of Greg’s points (don’t want to put words in your mouth Greg, so correct me if I’m wrong). If anti-immigration policies were enforced universally against employers, this would level the playing field so that no one would need to use such cheap labor. The problem now is that farmers practically HAVE to hire illegals because they are competing with other farms that are using illegals (or competing with produce from overseas which is cheaper because those countries pay a pittance to their workers).
Comment by dAnimal — March 27, 2006 @ 3:26 pm
You are absolutely, 100% correct about the facetious arguments they make. People are willing to do any job if it is worth the money to them, the only thing Bush is saying is that business shouldn’t have to pay the market rate for labor.
Just look at municipal waste workers — garbagemen. They get paid fantastic salaries, better than police and firefighters or any other civil service job, yet the minimum employment requirements are far lower (criminal background, no diploma, etc).
That’s because municipalities can’t get away with hiring massive numbers of illegals to provide waste disposal, so they have to compensate American citizens (or those with work permits) with higher hourly pay for what is a very unappealing job.
I personally paid my way through college with a dangerous job that paid $200+/day and had no requirements, but very, very few people were willing to do it.
That’s how free markets work.
Comment by Nathaniel — March 27, 2006 @ 4:32 pm
(I do think I know what Kryten meant, so this isn’t neccesarily directed at you K – more in the direction of right wingers who use the terms ‘pampered’ less generously and more viciously)
I wish I could agree that we’re ‘pampered’. I suppose I’d love it if I could pay rent, buy food, afford health care, save money, buy clothes, travel around by some method other than walking, and enjoy my free time as I see fit on the types of wages our corporate overlords would prefer to pay us. Hell, I wish I could get by on minimum wage.
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans who ‘won’t’ work for low wages aren’t pampered, unless you don’t believe we’re entitled to actually enjoy the fruits of our labors, as the rich and the parasitically wealthy do, instead of merely getting by. Instead, we are forced by the very market conditions created by the economy in which we live, to make the sort of money that gets us considered lazy or pampered by the free marketers who believe wealth should go only to a priviledged few who, supposedly, ‘earned’, despite all evidence showing that the wealthy in this country are parasites who got their obscene wealth by their willingness to cheat.
Looking over my personal finances – when you factor in student loans, bills, living expenses, neccecities of living and so forth, and remove any and all personal pastimes and hobbies that, by right wing perspective, I am not actually entitled to enjoy, I could probably get by on, at bare minimum, 10 dollars a day, IF and only if I could get my student loans deferred.
Fortunately, I’m doing really well for myself these days, and I’m making what you could call a personal profit. And frankly, I am happy about it. I simply don’t wish to end up making so little money I’m a broken leg away from homelessness, and I’m offended that more people in this country seem to think otherwise.
I’ll never pretend times are super easy for everyone, nor will I pretend they’ll always be good for me. The fact is that I’m lucky. Even if I weren’t, American workers don’t live in some kind of cheap country where every bit of our money goes to leisure pursuits, most of us are living fairly close to hand to mouth. We need every dime we make and we rightfully should demand as much as we can get. After all, the oligarchs feel no guilt flaunting their own ill gotten and obscene money.
Therefore, it infuriates me to see people pretend that the problem is some kind of unfair insistance on ease instead of a desperate need to actually survive without having to live without your parents until you’re 40.
Greg’s right – these jobs would be snatched up by Americans in a heartbeat if Americans could actually live on the wages. but since most of us don’t like living in dirty, squalid shacks with 15 other people, the only living possible when you’re making 2 bucks an hour, I guess that makes us lazy.
To end this rant, it is criminal, not to mention immoral that we rationalize the exploitation of illegal immigrants for this kind of work. All of us should be entitled to essential dignity.
Comment by Ross lincoln — March 27, 2006 @ 5:55 pm
In defense of President Bush, if he thinks we’re “too lazy to do an honest day’s work” it’s only because he’s an American and he’s too lazy to do an honest day’s work.
Comment by Kamachanda — March 27, 2006 @ 6:14 pm
All of your “what Greg meant” comments have danced around the ultimate point that I didn’t try very hard to make (that’s what I get for reposting something old). Lemme preface this by once-again quoting myself :
This may seem like a conservative argument, but the best answer to me would be a “tough love” approach. Specifically, the mage-corporations who have made a habit of ignoring our laws have passed the savings on to us to the point where the American public has an incredibly skewed idea of what things should really cost. For all the lip service Republicans give to the free market, they seem to avoid the uncomfortable truth that we’ve got an artificially created underclass. Becoming a melting pot sometimes requires a little melting, and that can get a little uncomfortable for those who aren’t fully aware of how much they personally benefit from illegal labor.
Or to put things more bluntly, if paying farmworkers a decent wage means apples are suddenly going to be $10 per pound, so be it. Unlike the indentured servitude “conservatives” in Washington, I really do believe that the effects on prices are something we let the laws of supply and demand work out. As long as everyone’s forced to play by the same rules, I think things will work themselves out.
Comment by greg — March 27, 2006 @ 9:44 pm
If I may paraphrase what I think you’re all saying here:
It’s a race to the bottom.
God/Allah/Jehovah/Ahura Mazda save us all.
Comment by Ben — March 28, 2006 @ 7:28 am
Thank you! Perfectly stated.
Comment by prefect — March 30, 2006 @ 11:02 am
I live at 13480 Commonwealth in Seattle. Been up here before?
Comment by Mike Flacklestein — June 16, 2006 @ 3:58 pm