Fencing Off Facts

It's making a furor throughout our country, but here in border states the immigration issue has become the substitute for sound jobs policies. We hear the callers on CSpan constantly, making the claim that our jobs are disappearing, our salaries are being decimated, because of the illegals.

It's true that employers with dishonest attitudes have been lowering the salaries of illegal workers because they can get by with it. Those same salaries at the same time have large tax deductions taken out of them, that illegal workers can never collect.

It seems that in like our infamous Farmers Branch, Texas, where local legislation is presently being contested in court, that would make it illegal for property owners to rent to illegal immigrants, California GOP lawmakers are trying to put the blame for hard times on those illegals.

The irony is that, in many of these states, it is illegal immigrants who helped fuel growth, construction, development and economic prosperity. Show me a state where people feel overrun by illegal immigrants, and I'll show you one where individuals, businesses and municipalities have, in recent years, lined their pockets thanks to illegal labor.

Talk about ungrateful.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in California have gone from ungrateful to untruthful. Not only do they deny that illegal immigrant labor has been a net positive for the state – and specifically to many of the farmers, ranchers, hoteliers and restaurateurs who tend to contribute to Republican campaigns. Now the legislators are claiming that illegal immigration has a "negative impact" on the state budget, which is $8 billion in the red.

Recently, Republicans in Sacramento unveiled nearly two dozen enforcement bills intended to improve the state's bottom line by cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Predictably absent from their proposals is any mention of getting tough on employers, lest those employers return the favor by getting tough on Republican lawmakers running for re-election.

This country has created a business atmosphere that can't sustain workers in our neighboring countries, by misuse of the free trade measures it has enacted, and administers. Now your party of greed is blaming their need to sustain themselves, for illegals seeking jobs that are held out for them here, for political advantage.

As Diane recently delineated (see The Fence, April 3, sorry, I couldn't manage to get it to link), the border fence is being used cynically to make a show of preventing illegal immigration, while skipping over properties owned by friends of the occupied White House. The worst administration in history has brought this country to such low standards that its officials don't even pretend that they are honest anymore.

The cynicism that relies on labor on the cheap while condemning its effect on a mismanaged economy is another growing GOPerv tradition.