Fifty years ago we didn’t have an illegal immigration problem, because we didn’t have an illegal employer problem.
As the Washington Post noted in a June 2006 article:
“Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.
In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies. In 2004, it issued fine notices to three.”
Conservatives like to blame immigrants. They call what’s happening an “illegal immigration” problem. It’s not. We don’t have an illegal immigration problem in America. We have an illegal employer problem.
So long as progressives argue this issue on the basis of “illegal immigration,” they’ll lose – even when they’re right. Conservatives, with their hysteric and racist talk of mass deportations and fences, will win.
Instead of illegal immigration, progressives need to be talking about illegal employers.
Thom Hartmann: Employers who hire undocumented workers in order to avoid paying them a living wage are the true problem, not the undocumented immigrants who are being exploited.
THE TAKEAWAY: At the very same time that Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to “illegal” immigrants, he also gutted the laws that punished employers for hiring undocumented workers. The focus, illegality and blame was deftly shifted, from businesses to workers.
In other words, granting amnesty wasn’t some altruistic act by Ronald Reagan. It was part of a successful union busting strategy: flood the American workforce with millions of immigrants who were desperate enough to accept slave wages. Why pay fair, living wages to union employees now that you could get away with paying an immigrant less than the minimum wage?
Immigrants aren’t “taking” your jobs. Greedy business owners are giving them away, getting two hard working employees for the price of one.
(via odinsblog)