Please, Read This Before You Debate Immigration Reform

Read This Before You Debate Immigration Reform
by Jill Richardsons
Sat May 01, 2010 at 08:30:28 AM PDT

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At the end of the day, the workers have spent 14 hours working for little money and only to go home (lousy and crowded though their housing may be) and prepare to do it all again. On holidays, he told me, everyone leaves Immokalee to visit family but the farmworkers stay. He said it's as if everyone understands that the farmworkers don't have a right to go be with their families for holidays. And yet the abundance on everyone's family table at Thanksgiving is due to the work of the farmworkers. How ironic is it that the very people who produce our food can't afford food themselves?

On Thanksgiving, the farmworkers go to a nearby park and line up to receive turkeys donated by people from a nearby wealthy Florida city. The farmworkers are all joyous and grateful to receive their turkeys. This is a beautiful act of generosity, he said, but why don't the people who give the turkeys each year work so that we no longer need to line up for free turkeys? Why don't they change the system?

And so, on Thanksgiving, American families sit down to tables filled with foods grown and harvested by farmworkers, while the farmworkers themselves are grateful to have donated turkey as they dine alone, far from their families. He said that Americans have no idea that the food on their table is provided by exploited farmworkers, and yet, if they knew, it wasn't pity they would feel for the farmworkers but scorn. Instead of gratitude for providing cheap food for the nation, the farmworkers are told "Go back to Mexico" and they are called "cockroaches." Their very humanity is denied by those who benefit from their work. And he feels that the hatred of illegal immigrants is merely an excuse to justify hatred of them all, for very many of the farmworkers are here legally.

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After listening to all he had to say, I am sad, angry, and ashamed to live in a country and participate in a system where this happens. Even my food comes from Mexican farmworkers who had to leave their families. I've met them and I have worked in the fields alongside them. I choose to buy my food from a farmer who treats his workers fairly. And a few years ago, I asked to volunteer on the farm so I could see what farm work was like. The farmer respects his workers. I'm glad that he does, and I would not buy food from him if he did not. However, even his workers have families (and children) in Mexico and they were forced to leave their countries to make a living. I can't fix that just by changing where I buy my food. We need to change our trade policies so that Mexicans are not forced to leave their country just to survive. And we need to change our labor laws so that agricultural workers have the same protections that other workers have. We also need to enforce antitrust laws to inject fair competition into the market. Without those, we won't have true immigration reform.

more:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/5/1/862564/-Read-This-Before-You-Debate-Immigration-Reform

France. Mexicans work for little pay, get exploited and called names in return. Not exactly the German plan for their invasion of France in WWI, WWII or any of the other wars they have fought. "Let's roll over France with our tanks so we can work on their farms and in their factories for little pay. That will teach them a lesson they'll never forget."

And yet today we tenaciously fight the Mexican "invasion" everyday, while the French and Germans have an open border between them over which their nationals come and go as they please - no tanks or rifles required.

He should really READ the US immigration laws covering H2B visas.

He would then understand ALL of the "Wrongs" he cited in his article are because both the FARMER and the Farm Worker have chosen to break the law and skirt WORKER PROTECTIONS.

the recession is causing a lot of the problem now. however these workers have to be documented, no way around that. the economies of Mexico and US have to be changed so that Mexicans can stay home and work. A lot of these workers were brought in while the authorities looked the other way. Now that there is a recession and a saturation point and crime we get a weird law. The timing is bad for reform because that last thing needed during a recession are more people. Globalization unchecked strikes again