I love the Casablanca style “what, we have illegal immigrants here” put-on.
The situation is a joke. The meat industry broke the unions and shipped out jobs to nowhere decades ago, empowered by federal and state policy. You really need to have your eyes closed to not know that if you’re a state representative!
Just moved from Iowa to the Bay a couple months ago. You're right, they know. From the federal level on down to the local, everyone knows that immigrant labor keeps rural communities going in Iowa.
It's the worst kept political secret in the state, and I'd guess other states too.
When an immigration raid occured in Postville, Iowa in May of 2008, it devastated the local economy. The chief executive of the plant was actually charged and convicted on other crimes (commuted by President Trump last year). The city council called it an economic and humanitarian crisis.
Residents of the two counties Postville resides in voted almost 2 to 1 for President Trump.
>everyone knows that immigrant labor keeps rural communities going in Iowa
What? I know people who made $30 an hour with full benefits in the 70s doing those jobs. It amazes me people can claim to support the poor/middle class and illegal immigration at the same time
Illegal immigration killed those communities by driving down wages and forcing people to go to college and move to a city to find a job that provides a living wage. The result is the death spiral of many rural communities as young kids are forced to leave
I won't blame illegals completely, big business and corporate farms are the ones that pushed for it in the name of better profit margins for investors
Yes and no. They made $30/hr in Des Moines or Chicago or other cities. There were profitable union slaughterhosues in New York into the 80s. Slaughterhouses were moved out to the country to break the unions, period. “Saving money” by being closer to farms is a contrived argument. A good place to start is the book “Fast Food Nation”.
Illegals are a symptom. The problems are industrial facilities with heavy manpower requirements, high turnover, designed to operate in a way that guarantees chronic medical problems with workers, placed in places with no people.
The big waves of Mexicans chose to move to places like rural Iowa in the 90s not out of a desire to break their bodies hacking at meat at high speed, but because trade policy flooded cheap corn into the market and exploded the Mexican agricultural economy.
Rural communities have been conned hook line and sinker. Their death began when the alliance between western resource barons and southern democrats (ie segregationists) began with Nixon. Trade policy, financial sector consolidation, offshoring of industrial economy dug the grave.
I grew up in a beautiful northeast rural community. It’s a shell of what it was when I was a child. All of the dairy operations are gone, and most of the full time farms will cease operations when the owners retire. The economy runs on social security, public assistance, government workers commuting up to 90 miles away, and a couple of small industrial operations. Nobody with any ability will stick around, and that has nothing to do with people trying to escape life in Central America.
A theoretical perfect wall sure. But it's the nature of long walls that they 1000s (if not more) times cheaper to defeat than build. Witness the various tunnels, drones, ladders, and even catapults used to cross the existing border fences.
I've heard the "we depend on illegal migrant workers to keep food affordable because they are the only people who will work for $3/h" line a few times and it usually comes from the 'anti-wall' folks.
Farmers and other ag/food processors can mass import immigrants on special visas for farm labor. It's usually seasonal but I would imagine with a wall it would have to change, especially if workers have US dependents.
Most illegal immigrants also simply over stay their legal visas.
I've always thought that was a terrible argument. The same logic could be used to justify slavery since our food price would drop even lower. Work conditions aren't much different for illegal laborers compared to slaves anyway. If they complain they get deported
Seriously? Perhaps a 3rd party one other than a stranger on the internet? Not sure what to say if you can't stand having your views challenged in life...
> “When you walk out here in the central park, if it’s a warm day, they’re sitting around on benches out here. I mean, it’s like Europe. They don’t stay in their apartments. They come out in the street, and they sit around and talk, and it’s all in Spanish. I don’t hear any English.” This bugs him...why don’t they embrace Mount Pleasant?
Sounds like they are embracing it — in fact they are using the parks rather than hiding in their apartments. What’s his real issue?
> But why don’t they embrace Mount Pleasant? “Don’t get me wrong,” says Heaton, who’ll retire from the legislature in 2019. “The only thing that upsets me is if they’re coming, they need to blend. I don’t need ‘barrios.’ I don’t need these certain sectors where everything is still the way it was where they came from. If you’re going to meld, then meld.”
While it's a good thing that he wants the population to assimulate, it's disturbing that he considers the lack of English to be a problem.
Many countries require you show proficiency in the country’s native language to acquire citizenship.
The desire to assimilate as well as having the ability to communicate with your fellow citizens should be mandatory for those who a pursing naturalization.
Of course, but they're talking in the language that they prefer to use. Why should they speak in English with other Spanish speakers when they're more comfortable in Spanish? Now it'd be a problem if they tried to speak to a random cashier in a grocery store in Spanish.
Over the holiday, I went through some old family stuff. There is a certificate attesting to great-grandparents' marriage from a church in Indiana ca. 1881. The document is entirely in German. Both parties had been in the US for several years by then. Now, their children grew up speaking English (and Platt-Deutsch), and any of their grandkids who knew German learned it in school.
Interesting from a historical perspective, but an anecdote doesn’t make for good input when setting public policy, especially with it being almost over 140 years ago.
>> Many countries require you show proficiency in the country’s native language to acquire citizenship. The desire to assimilate as well as having the ability to communicate with your fellow citizens should be mandatory for those who a pursing naturalization.
My point was that the use of Spanish/German/Chinese/whatever in conversation with other native speakers of that language does not per se indicate unwillingness to acquire English or communicate in it, or reluctance to assimilate. I did not intend to say anything about public policy.
>> Many countries require you show proficiency in the country’s native language to acquire citizenship. The desire to assimilate as well as having the ability to communicate with your fellow citizens should be mandatory for those who a pursing naturalization.
My point was that the use of Spanish/German/Chinese/whatever in conversation with other native speakers of that language does not per se indicate unwillingness to acquire English or communicate in it, or reluctance to assimilate. I did not intend to say anything about public policy, and really I don't see that I did.
This makes the long trip by the Guatemalans understandable, the lack of interest in politics by the main immigrant father is surprising though understandable - he can't do anything about it. On the other hand, if in the past we just placed juveniles with anyone as described, there's an incentive to risk it all and just send the kids for those stuck in poverty without hope. It's complicated and I can sympathize with a lot of ideas about immigration in this particular circumstance - though the companies moving jobs close to the farms in very rural areas and changing the work and not wanting to pay enough for citizens to take the job bears the brunt of the responsibility and in our political system they almost never do.
> Research shows that E-Verify harms the labor market outcomes of undocumented immigrants and improves the labor market outcomes of Mexican legal immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics, but has no impact on labor market outcomes for non-Hispanic white Americans.[4] A 2016 study suggests that E-Verify reduces the number of undocumented immigrants in states that have mandated use of E-Verify for all employers, and further notes that the program may deter illegal immigration to the US in general.
That would actually solve the problem. The goal is ineffective grandstanding so the problem can keep being used as a divisive get out the vote issue (by both parties) in future elections. Better verification would also cost far less than a wall, making it a less effective way to distribute pork.
The situation is a joke. The meat industry broke the unions and shipped out jobs to nowhere decades ago, empowered by federal and state policy. You really need to have your eyes closed to not know that if you’re a state representative!