re: #290 The Vicious Babushka

See and that’s the two faced thing when it comes to illegal immigration.

The GOP line on illegal immigration is that illegal immigration is bad because those immigrants are coming to America and taking jobs from good hard working Americans.

In fact, immigrants are doing jobs that “good hard working Americans” either don’t want to do or don’t want to do for a low wage.

Sure, you could get Americans to pick berries in a field and pay them $10/hour but then the price of berries goes up and people start bitching about the cost increase and - guess what- they’ll start buying their berries from some other guy who is still using illegal labor and still selling cheap. Free market, indeed.

The American consumer economy is built on low prices. A lot of the time you can’t have low prices without someone on the supply chain getting screwed.

This country would screech to a halt if all the illegal immigrants just disappeared.

Consider a well paid company executive in town for a business meeting. Who do you think:

- is changing the sheets on the bed in her hotel room?

- is driving the Uber vehicle that’s taking her to dinner?

- picked the vegetables that are now steamed alongside the steak on her plate?

- Cleaned the floors and windows in the conference room where the meeting took place?

- Picks the trash up on the street in front of the hotel?

Illegal immigrants do all these jobs and so much more each day in America, but a lot of us don’t even notice.

Companies love illegal labor. They have absolute power over these workers. You eat where they tell you, live where they tell you, pay what they tell you and oh? Any passport or ID you have? They’ll take it from you as a deterrent to keep you from running away or seeking work elsewhere. Step out of line and here comes INS!

In addition, with illegal labor, all compensation is under the table. There’s no taxes, no insurance, no labor protections, no incentive for the companies to do anything for these people besides exploit them for maximum gain.

And as long as we maintain our addiction to low, low prices, this cycle will continue.

America, fuck yeah…