Poetic License

For my part, my position on undocumented workers has always been clear: immigrants are the single biggest economic engine this country has ever had, bigger even than the westward expansion (which was caused and created mostly by immigrants anyway...it wasn't white Anglo-Saxons saying "there goes the neighborhood").

Ergo, any unnecessary restriction on immigration in my book is stupid, nevermind unenforceable. For the record, I am first-and-a-half generation American.

Comes Tuesday's debate, where Hillary was lambasted for giving a realistic, practical answer, if clumsily worded and even more clumsily defended later on, where it appeared she flip flopped on Eliot Spitzer's licensing plan for immigrants. Under his plan, which was defeated by the state Senate, undocumented immigrant workers would be allowed to obtain driver's licenses.

There's an awful lot of sense here, even if at first blush it seems unpalatable to people who don't share such a generous view about immigration as I do: encouraging them to get legal documentation to drive means they'll be more likely to purchase insurance for their driving, and that means a smaller insurance hit to the rest of us. As it is, they can't buy insurance.

If even a small percentage of "undocumentarians" get their licenses, we've made some headway against one of the more intractable problems of this issue: the costs to society.

Since Congress has abrogated its responsibility on the issue, as Hillary took pains to point out during the debate, Spitzer's plan makes an awful lot of sense. You're not giving anything away to anyone, but you are giving something back to the people who were here first: more security.

Obviously, if Congress later decides to take a stronger anti-immigration stance, Spitzer's plan can close up shop quickly. No harm, no foul.

So what this argument really is all about is the perception that, by having a driver's license, you are making an undocumented worker more American by making him more documented.

Rubbish. A driver's license is not a replacement for a tourist visa, much less a work permit or a green card. And now that the State Department has initiated a "passports for all international travelers" policy, it's not even like a driver's license will get you back into the country at the border.

When most people think of undocumented workers, they think of the day laborers at the corner 7-11 or gas station, waiting for pick up to a menial job (that pays so little, you couldn't get an American to do it anyway).

But many undocumented workers have been here for decades. They own & run businesses: bars, dry cleaners, subcontractors for the construction trades, vegetable stands, restaurants, newspaper delivery services, daycare, private school buses.

In other words, they already drive with the risk of knowing that even one accident can drive them out of business, and knowing that one accident will be unrecoverable to the person or property owner that is damaged.

And they contribute to society, especially to the economy. Believe it or not, they DO pay some taxes: sales tax, for example, or gasoline taxes.

Now, I'm not proposing throwing the borders wide open to anyone who has the gumption to clamber across, or throw out the visa program and let people stay as long as they like. We need some form of bouncer standing there, deciding who can and can't come in: who's going to add to our society while tossing those who means us harm.

But lets not blame immigrants for our own paranoia.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

This old straw man is being trotted out now. You might think a complex issue being tackled by a bi-partisan government a year and a half ahead of the next national election would be a good way to gauge the next months' administration of the country, but it's not:

CRAWFORD, Texas -- President Bush returns to work Monday on the volatile issue of immigration, where his hope for a legislative breakthrough is complicated by cold relations with Congress.

Bush will be back in Yuma, Ariz., to inspect the construction of border fencing and to push for the creation of a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The trip serves as a bookend to the visit Bush made to the same southwest desert city last May.

It also comes as tension rises over a new immigration proposal tied to the White House.

Bush's team is privately working hard to rally votes for what Bush calls comprehensive reform -- a mix of get-tough security with promises of fair treatment for undocumented residents.[...]

The plan would grant work visas to undocumented immigrants but require them to return home and pay hefty fines to become legal U.S. residents. They could apply for three-year work visas, dubbed "Z" visas, which would be renewable indefinitely but cost $3,500 each time.

The undocumented workers would have legal status with the visas, but to become legal permanent residents with a green card, they'd have to return to their home country, apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate to re-enter legally and pay a $10,000 fine.

Needless to say, as this is somewhat tougher than the bill passed last year, there's been a little opposition to it. Too, for me, it raises the issue of "buying your way" into America. If you take a look how how many Chinese undocumented immigrants make their way here (paying upwards of $40,000 or $50,000 just to be stuffed in a cargo hold, working off their debt at below-minimum wage unterarbeit), you can see that this proposal is fraught with unintended consequences.

We won't be getting the hard working immigrants anymore. We will be getting people who will feel they are owed something for the money they paid, and not just a certificate.

Oh, and that fence? It merely marks the Republican "solution" to a problem: pray it goes away. By putting up a fence, you aren't going to keep people out, only make them work harder to get in, and once in, make it more valuable that they earn a "living". If you're worried about cross-border criminals, well, when you make it so that only criminals would have the mind-set to cross the border...

The Democrats are obviously anxious to put a signature on this session of Congress as a shield in 2008 against the charge that they were only interested in hanging Bush and Karl Rove than in getting things done (even ONE bill of import would make them one up on the last two Congressheep). And naturally, Bush would like to take the focus off his miserable failure in prosecuting the "global war on terror". There's much at stake here, but unfortunately for Bush, there's more at stake for him. His days as an effective voice (such as he is) are dwindling, as he will get less and less air time as the 2008 campaign heats up. Given the way the primary season is being front-loaded, he has even less time than Clinton or any other President had before him.

My guess is that Congress will give him until the summer recess to come up with substantive proposalss for legislation and if he fails to do so, will come back after Labor Day with a full slate of quick-to-pass bills (possibly including the vaunted timetable for withdrawal). By this fall, the GOP Congressheep will have realized their backs are to the wall, and if no progress has been made in Iraq, the issue will fester in their home districts.

We already see this in the positions that moderate Republican senators who are up for re-election in 2008, like Olympia Snowe, are taking: while remaining cautiously behind Bush, you hear a subtext of "move it or lose it, pal".

“I opposed this particular measure because it sets an arbitrary “date certain” for withdrawal of our troops, which presents the terrorists and the insurgents the opportunity to target and jeopardize the security of those troops that remain. If the 120 days referred to a time period that the Iraqi government would have to complete significant work on national reconciliation benchmarks, that is a different matter. In that instance, I would have been more inclined to support this resolution as it would have actually required the Iraqi government to produce measurable results on such key political issues as oil revenue sharing, the fair consideration of constitutional amendments, and the de-Baathification process – all of which go to the root cause of violence in Iraq,” said Senator.

That's from Snowe's Senate website (interesting they don't attribute it to her in that quote...sounds almost like boilerplate). Nothing there that overtly undermines Bush's position, but you'll also notice she makes no mention of "stated American policy", the usual signal phraseology for full-throated support for the administration. Particularly in obvious boilerplate statements.

So for Bush, this really is more of a final exam than a midterm to determine if he can work with Congress. Already, hard feelings on both sides have been uncovered, and if the Democrats cannot override his veto on the Iraq timetable (not impossible, just bloody unlikely), they may be forced to submit a funding bill on his terms (mostly) or be accused of palying chicken with the lives of soldiers.

You might remember the last time a Congress palyed chicken with a president. Newt Gingrich shut down the government for nearly a week, and ended up with egg on his face as Clinton grabbed the bully pulpit and laid the blame squarely on Gingrich's shoulders.

For my part, I would accept Bush's veto and "play chicken," but I'd have already laid the groundwork of placing blame with him for any vetoes.

But that's just me, and I'm only running for (not)President

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America's Past. America's Future?

This nation was founded by elements of European society that were outcast, which is why our grand tradition of egalitarianism arose.

But our history is filled with instances of classism and caste systems. Take indentured servitude, where a destitute working class or impoverished person (usually male) would agree to work for a set period of time for a sponsor, who would then "loan" passage on a ship, along with room and board as this person worked off his debt.

In other words, it was a form of economic slavery, as opposed to actual slavery, which is the granddaddy of all caste systems, and gave aid and comfort to the so-called "genteel South" with its own classist societies.

Too, capitalism being what it is, there was always a submarket for slave-like workers. As slavery itself was being slowly eroded away in America, the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the 24 hour a day mills and factories cried out for a new source of cheap labour: children. Once that abhorrent stain on American corporatism was done away with, immigrants became (and still are) the source of cheap labour. First, legally, what without a minimum wage it was easy to find workers who made a pittance "over there" who felt that pennies a day was a goldmine.

And now, of course, illegally.

American corporatism has squeezed the lemon now, and it is running dry: if guest worker programs and unwanted refugees are eliminated by the current anti-immigrant sentiment, American corporations are going to have to find a new source of ubercheap labour.

I've written in the past about the dangers of the American economy of late, in particular as it pertains to returning Iraq veterans, mortgage defaults, lagging consumer spending, debt-laden American middle class members, stubborn underemployment figures, the Federal deficit, and just making ends meet for the average Joe.

The rumbles are there. Trouble looms on the horizon, and I suspect when all is said and done, given the new bankruptcy laws on the books, we'll be slaves to our debts.

Don't believe it could happen in a great democracy? Oh, it could. It is already. In the greatest democracy on the planet:

Ashok Kumar is one. He is a small, slim boy of 13, busy making delicate patterns in real gold thread along the borders of the sari.

Ashok says he has been weaving since he was nine. He sits working for 12 hours every day, seven days a week. He gets just one day off each month.

He is a bonded labourer, what is also known as a debt slave.

When Ashok's mother died, his father left home. The boy was abandoned with his grandmother. Desperate for money she took £12 ($25) from a loom owner and, in return, sold the boy's freedom.

Ashok is now bonded, forced to do this one job. He is not free to leave unless the debt is repaid. And he is paid just 15p (30 US cents) a day, so there is little hope he will ever do that.

Ashok's boss, Muthu Pereumal, can sell the boy to another employer, trade him like a commodity.

"He will stay here until he is 20 or 22," the boss tells me, standing by Ashok's loom, "or until someone else comes to buy him from me. He will never do anything else but this."

Now, far be it for me to suggest that this precise mechanism is at work here in America, but you can see the signs of some form of this type of "debt relief" coming into play here.

After all, the rise of the wealth of the wealthy is tailor-made for some form of indentured servitude: all that money lying around, all that work to be done. There is without a doubt the risk of economic slavery as people, desperate to be free of debt, sign a significant portion of their lives away in order to clear their consciences.

And indeed, if my inbox is any indication, rumblings of some form of this being implemented are already gathering. I see an awful lot of "get out of debt" spam and even some "Christian jubilee" spam, whereby, for a small commitment, a God-fearing organization will help you get rid of all your debts through Christ (and the goodness of predatory lenders, no doubt).

How widespread might this be? Hard to say. You'd like to think that people would shun this sort of arrangement like the plague, as stupid as it sounds right off the bat.

But people fall for the Nigerian e-mail scam often enough that it's still profitable to try and fleece more suckers.

People are greedy. Moreover, people are lazy and look for the quick fix to problems. And there's why I think we might actually see the day when workers will work for nothing, and it won't be called slavery.

In fact, we sort of see some of this process happening already (h/t MissC):

Circuit City Stores' (CC) decision to lay off 3,400 employees in order to hire lower-paid replacements is raising questions about the impact of severe cost-cutting on employee morale.
The consumer electronics retailer announced Wednesday that it was immediately firing store associates "who were paid well above the market-based salary range for their role." New workers will be paid less, although Circuit City did not reveal the pay of the workers.[...]

Those hourly workers who are laid off will get severance packages and can apply for open positions after 10 weeks.

Start the clock. You have ten weeks to replace your current salary, or take your old job with a smaller one.

Sound real fair, right?

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...

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Poor

I washed my car today.

I went to the brushless car wash near the Whitestone Bridge. You know the kind: they slap soapy carpeting across your finish then rinse it off with well water from some mysterious aquifer that, altho they are within 100 feet of the most polluted body of water within the confines of New York City, somehow manages to clean the soap and crud off your car.

It was 7 this morning. The daughter unit was at swimming practice (which despite her opinion does not hold its practices in said body of water: you'd bounce off if you tried to dive in) and I had some time to kill and the snow was finally gone from the streets and the temperatures promised to be above freezing.

I pulled up and noticed that there was a full crew on: the cashier, the guy who asks you "you want waxing?", along with 12 to fifteen guys who brush and wipe and hose your car for you.

I got the "V.I.P. Wash", $20, because the inside of the car was, well, a little cruddy. They wash the plastic mats and do a really nice job cleaning the carpeting and upholstery, and I have a long drive next weekend.

I paid the cashier and waited for my car. And waited. And waited.

No, the car was fine. They were doing a thorough job of brushing soap into the wheels, and taking the mats out and hosing them down. The car enters the wash, and takes it's usual three minutes to go through the cycle: wash, rinse and spit, I mean, wax, rinse and blow dry.

I've had show cats that got worse treatment.

Twenty five minutes later, I'm driving off. Why so long? Because they were detailing the interior with Armor All and wiping the windows down and cleaning the door trim.

And as I'm watching this, it occurs to me: I'm tipping about ten bucks, because I'm generous. I'm a union guy, see, and I believe hard work is its own reward but anything on top of that is deserved as well. And I'm watching other people drop a buck or two into the box, a few coins.

And I'm calculating: fifteen guys. I've been here about a half hour. They've earned about fifteen dollars in tips (apart from mine). And I realize: there is no way an American would stoop to taking a job like this. It's cold. It's wet. There's ice all over the ground, not to mention wax and other slick chemicals. There's oil from the cars themselves, and exhaust fumes.

And these poor souls, who probably make $3, $4 an hour, are grateful to do this work.

And there are people in this country who want to send them home.

No Anglish Need Apply

Interesting story coming out of Ireland, in the wake of all the brouhaha over "English-only" legislation in this country:

SPIDDAL, IRELAND - Can you imagine having to take an exam - or "The Exam," as it's ominously known around here - before you could buy a house? In this vibrant, friendly town on Galway Bay, potential home buyers must submit to a rigorous oral test to see if they're worthy of receiving the keys to a new home. They aren't tested on housekeeping skills, or health-and-safety know-how, or willingness to lend cups of sugar to neighbors in need. Rather, they're tested to see if they can speak Irish Gaelic - because fluent and committed Irish-speakers are welcomed here over others.

In order to protect the use of the Irish language - to "preserve the region's cultural identity" - the Galway County Council enforces strict regulations about who can - and can't - move in.

"We're discriminating against the rest of the world," explains Tina Curran, an office worker. "We're closing ourselves off to outside influences by only letting certain people in."

What is it with white people that they feel the need to exclude?

Some supporters of the bill had asked Crafton to soften his original 2006 "English Only" bill, which have required all government communications to be in English.

Councilman Adam Dread, who opposed the bill, says some of its support came from political maneuvering from council members who had convinced Crafton to tone down the first bill.

"It was backroom dealing, trading out votes for other things," Dread says. "This makes our city look ignorant."

The irony should not be lost on any of us.