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Politicians Must Change Tone of Immigration Debate
As we sat on my cousin's screen porch at night and listened to frogs and night birds, our conversation wasn't so terribly different from wintry conversations over coffee with some of Wisconsin's larger dairy farmers. Inevitably, it turned to immigration and agriculture's conflicted history regarding migrant workers.
My grandparents homesteaded in Homestead, Fla., and my cousin Medora continues to raise avocados and mangoes. There's nothing I like better than a Florida avocado, which I buy all winter from my Asian grocery store in downtown Madison. But avocados that are not picked are not eaten. And like most fruits and vegetables grown commercially in the U.S., every avocado I enjoy was picked by migrant workers.
I'm proud of many aspects of my family's agricultural heritage in South Florida, but I'm particularly proud of my uncle's and now my cousin's engagement with a rural migrant group that provides safe and quality child care and early education for children of migrant workers. There are many migrant worker groups in Florida, all brought into existence, one way or another, by the deplorable living and working circumstances visited upon migrant workers by the nation's changing but always oppressive immigration laws.
Last month, federal prosecutors brought charges against six people accused of slavery -- forcing workers to work against their will -- in tomato fields in central Wisconsin. It shocked the nation, but it's actually the seventh such documented case in a decade. The stories of workers having to escape from such forced working conditions by breaking the sides of trucks in which they are kept should not have surprised those who have watched the tomato industry and fast food industry's opposition to any wage gains for the tomato workers.
In 1980, workers were paid 40 cents a bucket for a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. Today, 28 years later, workers are paid just 45 cents for the same-sized bucket. Workers toil 10 to 12 hours a day, are exposed to dangerous chemicals without knowing what they are, and are sometimes charged such exorbitant prices for their minimal meals that they fall deeply in debt to the "company store."
Last year, Taco Bell agreed to better prices and labor practices for all of its brands. The fight for fair wages now goes to Burger King, which is aggressively fighting similar efforts.
But the origin of most abuses lies in the immigration laws, which give the upper hand to employers. If workers complain about abusive pay, exposure to pesticides, unsafe housing, inhumane hours, or any of the other many forms that farm worker exploitation often takes, employers can simply threaten to have workers deported. Yet the employers depend on having workers; some simply take advantage of the seemingly endless supply of people whose desperate circumstances elsewhere force them to accept inhumane working conditions here.
This year's presidential campaign has featured little compassion for those who pick our fruits and vegetables, milk our cows, or butcher our meats. The dialogue got off to a nasty start by xenophobes like Congressman Tom Tancredo from Colorado, but it didn't stop there. Aggressive partisans forced candidate after candidate into positions designed to build a higher and longer border fence, require ridiculously long waiting periods before existing illegal immigrants might receive amnesty, and aggressively enforce existing laws. Moderate candidates were vilified for being unfair to the millions of patient would-be immigrants if they showed too much compassion for existing immigrants.
I hope the tone of the debate will change. Sen. Barack Obama's father was an immigrant, and Sen. John McCain represents a state where the current corrosive debate shows the hypocrisy and willingness to exploit others in as stark a form as in the tomato fields of Florida.
I'm proud of Wisconsin farmers who defend their workers' interests, just as I'm proud of my own family's work with migrant workers in Florida. But solutions to the injustices inflicted on migrant workers ultimately will depend on changes to immigration policy that recognize an essential truth. Our nation needs immigrants just as much as immigrants need employment. In a situation of such co-dependence, to allow one party to use the legal system to abuse the other party is insupportable.
Margaret Krome is a Madison resident who writes this column every other week.
© 2008 The Capital Times
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8 Comments so far
Show AllRepublican boogeyman politics require a never ending supply of new boogeymen to continue their never ending campaign of fear and greed. Immigrants are always an easy boogeyman target and have given the media a great diversion story so they no longer need to report on Bush's failure to neutralize serious threats...Osama Bin Laden for example.
I still say the correct answer to immigration is a high minumum wage (perhaps $15 to $20 per hour) required on any work by any non-citizens in America. You either pay it to the immigrant now, or you pay the difference later on every hour worked to government as a fine when you get caught---with no statute of limitations. All enforcement done with paperwork by DOL and IRS, based on mis-matched Social Security numbers.
Employers could legally buy immigrant labor when really needed. Most of it would be priced out of the market, but when used, the workers would not be getting poverty wages leaving them destitute while in this country.
$20 an hour to pick crops and clean hotel rooms? Of course. It's very hard work. But isn't that too much? Maybe. If so, hire some Americans for less. That's the point. But NO MORE immigrant slavery. We've done that in the past, and it's time to stop continuing it in the future.
I have been helping an immigrant woman and her young daughter who were victims of domestic violence for several years now. She finally received her 'green card' last fall and is working hard to learn English well enough so that she can get a better job.
Right now, all she can get -- even with documentation -- are jobs like cleaning hotel rooms. She is paid per room, not per hour. Her rate? $3.00 per room plus tips. You read this right. She gets three lousy dollars whether the room has been gently used by a single traveling sales person or trashed by a gang of drunken frat boys. She tells me that the people who leave the best tips are generally the ones who leave the rooms in pretty good shape. These people obviously respect the work and dignity of other people whether they meet them or not.
On the other hand, the worst piggies often won't leave a dime. And there are a lot of them out there.
It's not just the politicians who need to change.
Daniel David,
Great post. Because once the wages are fair, then more americans will take those jobs, and immigrants won't be able to find work in the US. The other side of the coin is that free trade agreements need to be abolished, since like the article mentioned, people from poor countries are so desperate that they accept the most abhorrent abuses.
If workers are a dime a dozen they will be paid dime wages. The powerful in the US and Mexico like the porous border. These articles tell the story.
New Orleans laborers take low-pay work in post-Katrina city, John Moreno Gonzales, AP, 1/8/08
Half an hour after the Louisiana Superdome showcased this city's penchant for hosting a national party, the clean up crews moved in….
Temporary workers, many with limited job opportunities and substandard housing, accepted the $8.00-an-hour wage to mop up ….
"I think we're still going through a disaster," said Kalvin McCrimmon, a roofer by trade who said many rebuilding jobs have been taken by out-of-town firms, or Latino immigrants willing to accept working conditions and pay he will not.
… lack of better jobs had driven him to the clean up crew for the first time. "But instead of taking the jobs we can do, we're taking what we can get."
and
Mexican Authorities Move to Crush Copper Strike, David Bacon, Truthout,1/13/08
Mexican labor authorities seized on technicalities to order an end to the strike at the country's largest copper mine in Cananea, Sonora, on Friday.
Smashing the strike in Cananea would have economic and political repercussions, not just in Mexico, but in the United States as well. In two previous strikes, at Cananea and its sister mine in Nacozari, in 1998 and 2005, respectively, over 2,000 miners lost their jobs. Most of them, unable to find other work in the tiny mining communities of northern Sonora, crossed the border into the US as undocumented workers in order to survive.
When the miners union lost its strike in Cananea in 1998, in which it tried to stop the elimination of hundreds of jobs, blacklisted strikers poured into Arizona in the months that followed. If the current strike is put down, the union broken and its leaders and activists terminated, they too will likely find themselves in Phoenix, Tucson or Los Angeles, hungry and desperate for work.
Daniel David,
great post!
"It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat."
The Grapes of Wrath
Chapter 12
"And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed."
The Grapes of Wrath
Chapter 19
"How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other."
The Grapes of Wrath
Chapter 19
"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
The Grapes of Wrath
Chapter 25
Great article.
This question is not that complicated.
Immigration we need,but not uncontrolled, self chosen immigration. You are not welcome here simply because you want to come here. Many want to come....that is not a recommendation for becoming an American citizen.
Till people realize that by condoning and protecting illegal aliens, they are helping people die in the deserts, abused by Coyotes, encouraging drug traffic and bringing people that require public support (yes, every single illegal alien here costs on average $2200 in tax dollars over and above any and all taxes they pay)there will be no solution.
Reality is different than "just hard working people", "just want to take jobs Americans don't want." Pro illegal immigration rhetoric is no better and in my opinion worse than the immigration restrictionists rhetoric because we should know better.
The empirical evidence is there for any one that cares to look at the truth. But if each side just wants to continue their lies, then the only people that get hurt are these poor illegal aliens.
And pleae no BS about dehumanizing or no human can be illegal or undocumented worker...they are by honest definition illegal aliens.
Here's a great point!
"She tells me that the people who leave the best tips are generally the ones who leave the rooms in pretty good shape. These people obviously respect the work and dignity of other people whether they meet them or not.
On the other hand, the worst piggies often won't leave a dime. And there are a lot of them out there."
Thanks so much for this. Till we change, till we admit our responsibility for this situation, till we value all work again....this girl will get not a dime from the dishonest parts of America.