(no subject)
Mar. 26th, 2006 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saint_monkeyThis immigration thing really makes me think.
The news of course, just shows lots of protestors carrying the mexican flag around. Which is just going to fire up the bigots. (I know some people at these rallies MUST be carrying the american flag, but I don't see them on the news.)
Hispanic immigrants do like, 80% of the thankless jobs in this country. But they aren't the problem. I do not subscribe to the statement that americans would not do the jobs that immigrants do now. There are people in West Virginia, in Compton, in Little Rock, in Star Country Texas, who would probably do this type of work, because it is better than nothing. However, what they won't do, is do this work for as little as the immigrants will, mostly because they know and value their rights. Immigrants may know that they are to be paid (by law) a minimum wage, but if they demand it, the person with the work will go to someone who won't demand it, and their need, their desperation, is far greater than Joe Sixpack in Ohio.
But Joe Sixpack is precisely the person who should be paying attention to this issue, and they are being distracted by this focus on the workers. There is a gap, created by the drive for shareholder value and profit, between the amount of money paid to a majority of people in the country, and the amount of money that is used as returns for shareholders. This is a result of the law, which literally states that if a corporation can return a portion of its profits to its shareholders, or make changes to the business model that result in more profit, then they must, or they will be sued by those shareholders to recover those funds. Nowhere in this model is room for benefits, or a working wage, or re-investment in the community. (Which is why Michael Moore's quest to get GM to revitalize Flint MI is Quixotic, at best.) This has been this way since Henry Ford was sued by the Dodge brothers, (two of his shareholders,) when he tried to invest in the community that supported his auto plant. Ford, (no paragon of worker rights himself,) lost, and the american economy has been driven by shareholder value ever since.
The people that exploit the immigrants come from this issue. The cheap labor allows them to undercut the pay structure in the country, and return more money to shareholders as profit, which in turn makes their stock go up, or allows them to remain competetive against larger companies who are driving for more returns. I am not against immigration, there is room in the labor market for what they can do, but I am totally against paying immigrants far less than the law allows. It doesn't matter how little they make in Honduras, because we aren't in Honduras. It matters how much we pay them here. I am totally willing to take the hit in the pocketbook that this entails. I'll pay more for food, and for services, if I know that the end result is a fair wage, instead of a funnel into executive profits and golden parachutes. I am also for making more immigrants legal, because then they are more likely to assimilate, and they will become more invested in learning about their rights, and their wages will be easier to tax, so they will want to be paid more, and they will take their wages and maybe, just maybe, buy more things at Wal Mart, or JC Penneys, or wherever. I mean they certainly won't go back to El Salvador to buy food, or clothes, or gas.
The news of course, just shows lots of protestors carrying the mexican flag around. Which is just going to fire up the bigots. (I know some people at these rallies MUST be carrying the american flag, but I don't see them on the news.)
Hispanic immigrants do like, 80% of the thankless jobs in this country. But they aren't the problem. I do not subscribe to the statement that americans would not do the jobs that immigrants do now. There are people in West Virginia, in Compton, in Little Rock, in Star Country Texas, who would probably do this type of work, because it is better than nothing. However, what they won't do, is do this work for as little as the immigrants will, mostly because they know and value their rights. Immigrants may know that they are to be paid (by law) a minimum wage, but if they demand it, the person with the work will go to someone who won't demand it, and their need, their desperation, is far greater than Joe Sixpack in Ohio.
But Joe Sixpack is precisely the person who should be paying attention to this issue, and they are being distracted by this focus on the workers. There is a gap, created by the drive for shareholder value and profit, between the amount of money paid to a majority of people in the country, and the amount of money that is used as returns for shareholders. This is a result of the law, which literally states that if a corporation can return a portion of its profits to its shareholders, or make changes to the business model that result in more profit, then they must, or they will be sued by those shareholders to recover those funds. Nowhere in this model is room for benefits, or a working wage, or re-investment in the community. (Which is why Michael Moore's quest to get GM to revitalize Flint MI is Quixotic, at best.) This has been this way since Henry Ford was sued by the Dodge brothers, (two of his shareholders,) when he tried to invest in the community that supported his auto plant. Ford, (no paragon of worker rights himself,) lost, and the american economy has been driven by shareholder value ever since.
The people that exploit the immigrants come from this issue. The cheap labor allows them to undercut the pay structure in the country, and return more money to shareholders as profit, which in turn makes their stock go up, or allows them to remain competetive against larger companies who are driving for more returns. I am not against immigration, there is room in the labor market for what they can do, but I am totally against paying immigrants far less than the law allows. It doesn't matter how little they make in Honduras, because we aren't in Honduras. It matters how much we pay them here. I am totally willing to take the hit in the pocketbook that this entails. I'll pay more for food, and for services, if I know that the end result is a fair wage, instead of a funnel into executive profits and golden parachutes. I am also for making more immigrants legal, because then they are more likely to assimilate, and they will become more invested in learning about their rights, and their wages will be easier to tax, so they will want to be paid more, and they will take their wages and maybe, just maybe, buy more things at Wal Mart, or JC Penneys, or wherever. I mean they certainly won't go back to El Salvador to buy food, or clothes, or gas.
