Reply #142: QC is not blaming the immigrants [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

QC is merely stating what illegal immigration looks like to a blue collar worker.

In Oregon, where the number of Latino workers increased noticeably in the 19 years I lived there, the big boys talked out of both sides of their mouths, especially in the agricultural sector. On the one hand, the local authorities in rural areas were openly racist toward Latinos ("driving while black" was replaced by "driving while Hispanic") and made a lot of noise about the problems of illegal immigration.

On the other hand, the growers who were the other part of the local power structure were delighted to hire illegal workers and give them storage sheds to sleep in.

At some point, the job of picking berries and fruit stopped being a summer job for American-born teens and started being a summer job for illegal workers from Latin America.

Even in Portland, the day laborers congregated openly at a certain intersection every morning, and no one seemed interested in catching the employers who came with trucks to hire a crew.

I do not blame the immigrants themselves. When you have a poor country right up against a very rich country, people from the poor country are going to try to get a piece of the action, especially if there are greedy employers willing to hire them. (Japan gets illegal immigrants from China, the Philippines, and other poor countries in the Pacific region.)

But you have to wonder how Mexico would be different if it hadn't had the "safety valve" of exporting its surplus workers. Maybe there would have been another populist revolution. Maybe the would-be immigrants' ambitions could have been channeled into entrepreneurship. Who knows?