Jim Cohen
Staff Writer
The United States Senate successfully passed immigration legislation only hours before Congress left Washington D.C. for a six-week recess in the run-up to the mid-term elections held on Nov. 7.
The legislation funds a 700-mile fence on the border between the United States and Mexico to stymie the flow of illegal immigrants crossing the border into the United States every day. With a cost of $1.2 billion, the new border fence fails to address the broader issue of immigration and the more than 12 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States.
The inability of our nation’s leaders to address a comprehensive approach to boarder security and illegal immigration proves once again their unwillingness to accept responsibility for their failure and their incessant need to “pass the buck” to the next generation of Americans.
This band-aid approach to border security allows eager Congressmen and women to return home to their constituents waving a banner of “Mission Accomplished” without acknowledging our country’s necessary appeasement of stringent immigration laws in the name of lower consumer prices at Wal-Mart and McDonalds.
While lower grocery and dining bills are a pleasant sight for the American family, the other side of illegal immigration has allowed once well-paying American jobs to cross over into the hands of migrant workers. In a world of global trade and competition, blue-collar jobs of yesterday have fallen out of favor in the view of the American people and into the willful and wanton acceptance of Hispanic migrants. Jobs involving manual labor and low wages in the service sector may not be a popular choice for most Americans but are vital to our economy. It is these realities and views of today’s economy that has Americans realizing there are no absolutes when addressing the issue of illegal immigration.
Supporting the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants back to their home country denies the fact that many have American-born children who have a right to live in our country. Deportation would be almost certainly impossible to effectively execute. Conversely, supporting policies of free health-care services for illegal immigrants while allowing millions of American tax-paying citizens to live without health care coverage acknowledges a continuing dichotomy in our nation’s ever-growing dilemma that is immigration.
Many Americans have realized the value of cheap labor over the past five years while building new homes on sturdy foundations of concrete using illegal immigrants. From 2000 to 2005, the average weekly salary for a concrete worker dropped 16.5 percent, from $604 to $508 adjusted for inflation according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. If it were not for this steep reduction in one area of construction costs, millions of Americans would have had to borrow more money to pay for the construction of their new homes.
At the end of a tough day pouring concrete, these workers go home to their families. With an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States, the Senate has adopted a plan to actually deal with their immigration status but with too few votes to pass the legislation in the House of Representatives.
The importance of earning legal status is the key to solving this difficult issue. The Senate bill allows law abiding immigrants to begin earning legal status by learning to speak English, passing a history exam and paying a fine for entering the country illegally.
It is easy for Americans to be angry toward illegal immigrants when it is these immigrants who help us save money at the grocery store and when we go out to dinner with our family. It is easy to blame immigrants for “taking away our jobs” when Americans have decided some jobs don’t fit our new standard of living. It is much easier to blame our leaders for failing to do their jobs over the past twenty-five years by refusing to have a comprehensive plan to deal with America’s thirst for cheap labor.
America can build the largest fence in the world, but it will never resolve the issue of immigration in the 21st Century because the only absolute regarding immigration is the conflicting views of cheaper products at the expense of the continuing decline of the American Middle Class.
10-05-2006