Wikipedia <\/a>tells me this happened in 1994. \u00a0In the wake of this economic crisis in Mexico, I distinctly remember reading newspaper articles (because this was pre-internet) about professionals in Mexico who humbled themselves to work unskilled jobs in the United States. <\/p>\nAround that time, too, there were articles about Poles and other Eastern Europeans who had left their home country and overstayed their visas here following the upheaval of the post-Cold War transition from communism to democratic\/capitalistic governments. \u00a0Highly educated, their education was going to waste because they weren\u2019t legally authorized to work in the United States, so ended up doing day-labor construction or working as maids\/housecleaners.<\/p>\n
In such a case, legalizing the illegal workers could be deemed to be a big \u201cwin\u201d because their skills could finally be put to use. \u00a0But this doesn\u2019t seem to be the case any longer. \u00a0It seems to me that lots of illegal Eastern Europeans have returned home, where their economies have rebounded and, even if not, they now have the opportunity to work elsewhere in Europe (e.g., Germany, the U.K.). \u00a0A couple years ago, a realtor-friend of mine told me, as explanation for why so many condos from a certain complex were on the market at such low prices, that this was an area that had been popular with Eastern Europeans who packed up and left. <\/p>\n
Now, we really seem to be talking exclusively about unskilled workers, Obama\u2019s infamous (just ask twitter) reference to the bed-makers and bedpan-emptiers.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just Obama \u2014 many Republicans have this notion of creating a guest-worker program, and they seem to have in mind the Middle Eastern oil states when thinking of this, where they certainly do import massive numbers of workers (up to 90% of the workforce), with the requirement that you stay only as long as you have a job, have no eligibility for any form of welfare for you or your dependents, and leave before you come anywhere close to retirement age.<\/p>\n
But we\u2019re not the UAE, rich enough to support our own citizens through government largesse, whether or not they\u2019re capable of holding down a comfortable middle-class job, or capable of dictating to employers that they hire local citizens for a minimal percent of their workforce, and that these workers can sit around all day, in the same way as the proverbial boss\u2019s son who doesn\u2019t do squat.<\/p>\n
Consider the poster child of \u201cjobs Americans won\u2019t do\u201d: \u00a0farm labor of the most manual sort, harvesting produce. \u00a0Do Americans not do this job because they don\u2019t a sufficient work ethic, or are by dint of upbringing unable to tolerate the working conditions? \u00a0That\u2019s only part of it. \u00a0Consider not just the working but the living conditions of these workers, and tell me that it\u2019s just fine for human beings to live in squalor for the sake of cheap lettuce. <\/p>\n
In the year 2014, we are incessantly told that a quality education is vital for our children to succeed. \u00a0Worry about our children\u2019s success keeps us up at night. \u00a0But we know that there are no guarantees in life, that our children could end up at a minimum wage job, either because of a poor job market or because, as happens sometimes, all our parenting effort just doesn\u2019t have the outcome we\u2019d like.<\/p>\n
And that \u201cwe\u201d is the upper-middle-class \u201cwe\u201d \u2014 and ignores the large number of Americans who, like it or not, are not and may never be qualified for anything other than an unskilled job, maybe even one that doesn\u2019t ask too much in terms of physical effort or conscientiousness or initiative.<\/p>\n
It may be that over time, we may reach a point where more unskilled jobs open up, and where labor shortages have ill effects in terms of too-high wage growth or inability to hire at all. \u00a0But that\u2019s not where we are in the year 2014.<\/p>\n
What we\u2019re looking at here is an objective of creating a new Servant Class, of enabling Americans once again to have a low-cost maid or nanny or landscaper, as was the norm in the pre-Civil Rights South, or in the 1900s in the North, when every household had their Irish servants. <\/p>\n
Is that moral? \u00a0Is that right? \u00a0Perhaps the prospective servants would be just fine with trading their Third World life for this, but is it right for Americans to dream of a subservient workforce? \u00a0 And does it make any sense to foreclose, for the struggling American working class and poor \u201cunderclass\u201d, potential avenues of employment and independence, just so that those who have \u201cmade it\u201d aleady get their cheap workforce?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sorry for the long post title \u2014 and the somewhat rambly post below, but I wanted to get a few thoughts down. Remember when the peso crashed? \u00a0Wikipedia tells me this happened in 1994. \u00a0In the wake of this economic crisis in Mexico, I distinctly remember reading newspaper articles (because this was pre-internet) about professionals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-immigration"],"yoast_head":"\n
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