'Desperation' in immigrant communities

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: Riverhead

One man kicked a police car in hopes of getting arrested and deported back to his home country. Another simply asked the cops for a ride to his homeland, then stood in traffic until cops nabbed him for disorderly conduct.
The two Guatemalan immigrants -- the first a 27-year-old laborer arrested in January, the second a 38-year-old homeless man arrested on Monday -- are symbolic of the devastating effect that the nation's troubled economy is having on immigrants, whether they are here legally or not, according to immigration experts.

"I've never seen things as difficult as they are now. There is a lot of desperation," said Sister Margaret Smyth with the North Fork Spanish Apostolate. "Last week, I had at least one person a day come here looking for a ticket back home. The amount of work is so sparse."

The American dream is falling apart for millions of immigrants who count on work in landscaping, construction, cleaning, food service and agriculture, said Steven Camarota with the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.



Read more: http://www2.timesreview.com/NR/stories/R050709_laborers_bh

---

poverty has nothing to celebrate

[BeFree]

1. What recession?

"Just ignore it" says the leader of the Rushican party.

"They're a bunch of whiners" said the Former Senator from Texas and member of the Rushican party, about people out of work.

[CountAllVotes]

2. poverty is a blessing

I wonder if some of the fundies out there that have been known to say this still agree.

POVERTY IS NO FUCKING BLESSING!!! It is hell!

:kick:

[Baby Snooks]

3. A harsh reality..

They displaced millions of American workers. And now they are joining the ranks of the unemployed as well. The hidden ranks. The ones that don't qualify for unemployment. All because Republicans, and some Democrats, believed that they had some sort of constitutional right to a labor force that was not covered by labor and tax law.

Cheap labor. Which is becoming less and less cheap as time goes by.

And somewhere in the cosmos Barbara Jordan is biting her tongue. Wanting desperately to say "I told you so." The amazing thing is Ronald Reagan is biting his tongue as well. They both told us so.

[county worker]

6. They are covered by tax law. They pay withholding tax and FICA and Medicare tax.

The employer withholds the tax and remits it to the City, State and Federal government. They also pay sales tax, gasoline tax and every other tax you pay.

[Baby Snooks]

8. Wrong...

The majority are hired as contractors. Sometimes by subcontractors to protect the employer who can say he didn't hire them, the subcontractor did. They don't pay taxes on their income. The employer merely sends in a 1099. Sometimes knowing the social security number is fake.

The taxes some of them do pay are taxes the people they displaced no longer pay. But hey, who cares about American citizens?

Enough already with the "compassionate conservatism" of the Republicans.

[county worker]

19. No I am not wrong. I was the controller for the largest labor contractor in the San Joaquin Valley.

The growers did not hire workers they were contracted for. We supplied them. We withheld taxes from everyone. We had over 3000 employees.

The State of California has rules as to who can be a contractor and who can't. It is very hard to qualify as a private contractor. If you pay someone as a contractor who doesn't qualify you are still liable for the taxes that you should have paid and withheld.
Employers don't want to run that risk.


Also, you are a fool if you think the 12 million illegal immigrant workers in this country are all working as private contractors.

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. Except the ones being held in virtual captivity by "employers".

Slave Labour That Shames America
By Leonard Doyle
The Independent UK

Wednesday 19 December 2007

Migrant workers chained, beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human cost of producing cheap food.
Tens of thousands of men, women and children -
excluded from the protection of America's employment laws
and banned from unionising - work their fingers to the bone for rates of pay which have hardly budged in 30 years.

edited to emphasize this sentence
"Farm labourers have no protection under US law and can be fired at will. Conditions have barely changed since 1960 when the journalist Edward R Murrow shocked Americans with Harvest Of Shame, a television broadcast about the bleak and underpaid lives of the workers who put food on their tables. "We used to own our slaves but now we just rent them," Murrow said, in a phrase that still resonates in Immokalee ( Fla.) today."


**as reported in Truthout:
http://www.truthout.org/article/slave-labor-that-shames-america

and

Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy

http://www.amazon.com/Nobodies-Modern-American-Global-Economy/dp/1400062098

[juno jones]

22. Many of the undocumented workers I have worked with had SS# 's- under assumed names.

Somebody is getting taxes paid and SS paid and unemployment paid, but it ain't necessarily the worker in question.

[AlphaCentauri]

7. "displaced" somebody else used that word in another discussion

about how hispanics where "displacing" african americans from black neighborhoods, implying that african americans should born and die in the same neighborhoods their grand parents lived, yep he was hinting that african americans should not pursuit a better living in other areas.

[Baby Snooks]

9. And I suppose Barbara Jordan was just another racist....

They have disproportionately displaced African-Americans. African-American citizens. Apparently some don't like reality.

[AlphaCentauri]

20. Did Barbara use the words "displaced African Americans by hispanics"?

I can't not agree that hispanics immigrants have displaced african americans.

"Displaced" is just another phrase to diminish the potential of the african american community, to make their community to think that the only hope for them is to occupy the jobs that illegal immigrants do, like McDonald's jobs, cleaning services, gardening, demolition, child care etc., I guess there are people and politicians who want to keep the african american community on those jobs but not me, I would like to see them competing for the jobs the H1B visa holders have and own more business.

[WriteDown]

4. Cry me a freaking river....

Hopefully, their requests will be obliged.

[UndertheOcean]

5. Those "people" don't deserve sympathy , don't you know that !

~sarcasm~

[Baby Snooks]

10. They deserved not to become the new slave trade...

And that is what they became. The new slaves. And the new slavery.

[UndertheOcean]

12. What is preventing the government from giving them rights ?

oh , they were not born within imaginary borders drawn on map, oh my.

[anonymous171]

18. But that's the American dream!

Stop being so Xenophobic!

[primavera]

11. Take it with a grain of salt

If Steve Camarota from CIS contributed in any way to this piece, you know for certain it's because he wants immigrants to look bad, that's what he gets paid for.

[harmonicon]

13. Stroszek

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075276/

[McCamy Taylor]

14. U.S. policies encourage them to come (to be second class, cheap labor for Big Business)

so U.S. policy needs to address their plight when the employers suddenly turn them away because born in the USA folks are so desperate that they will start working for peanuts.

Keeping out all immigrants to keep wages high will not work, because Business runs the government and as soon as wages start to go up again, our border will become porous.

The only way to keep Business from exploiting immigrants to keep native workers' wages low is to offer immigrants the same protections including right to unionize that we get.

As for this supposed war between Latinos and AA, Business's number one tactic is Divide and Conquer. German against Irish. Italian against Chinese. White against Black. They set workers off against each other, because our strength is solidarity.

[Hello_Kitty]

16. Yet even mentioning the phrase 'cheap labor' will get attacked

The pro-immigration movement has been thoroughly coopted by the Chamber of Commerce to the extent that when you so much as dare to question why immigrants are paid so much less despite the much vaunted "labor shortage" you get called a xenophobe and anti-immigrant.

[pampango]

17. As will mentioning "racists" and "xenophobe", as it should be. DU'ers should be able to discuss

these issues without the labels. I doubt that many who post often on DU are racists, Chamber of Commerce shills, xenophobes, cheap labor advocates, anti-immigrant or pro-slave labor, yet, as you say, those get thrown around a lot.

On most immigration threads the discourse starts out being quite reasonable with an exchange of opinions and priorities - a discussion of ideas. Quite often things deteriorate to the point that one side strays from discussing ideas to questioning the motives and character of posters with whom they disagree. That's when the names and labels (some examples above) start to fly. With these threads it is interesting to see which side strays first from discussing ideas, laws, policies, etc. to peering deep into the soul of other posters and ascertaining that they are really xenophobes, slave-labor enablers, etc., etc, etc. And it's not always the same side that starts with the names and labels. (I've never been in a formal debate, but I assume you don't get extra points for getting away from using facts and opinions to bolster your case to calling the other side a bunch of names, but at DU it's an accepted practice.)

I suppose it's inevitable when so many are passionate about their beliefs. At least, we generally have a discussion of ideas before we start calling each other names. I suppose in freeperville, they probably just start calling each other names right from the start. A discussion of ideas and the pros and cons of a policy or law is probably a foreign concept to them. :)

[AlphaCentauri]

21. It all depends what you call cheap labor

if you used "cheap labor" as an adjective to describe a person then don't expect complements

[Hello_Kitty]

23. Because calling exploited people 'guest workers' is so much more polite.

:eyes:

[KillCapitalism]

24. They would probably be better off going back home.

This country is so screwed up nowadays that places like Guatemala might be a better place to live.

[lovuian]

25. yes America with its HUGE unemployment is going to get worse

they know they are better off where family is close

People
Hang on to your hats
the depression is here and its going to be very ugly