Contributors

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

It's a Question of Fairness

A common refrain among conservatives is that Democrats want illegal immigrants flooding into the country because they want more people to vote Democratic.

This, of course, is bogus. Illegal immigrants can't vote, and it takes at least five years to become a citizen after you get a green card, if you stay in the US consecutively. So bringing in new people won't help the Democrats in the near future. (Plus, most immigrants are socially conservative, and if Republicans weren't always scapegoating them, they'd probably vote Republican.)

The real reason Democrats oppose Trump's tyrannical policy on immigration is that it's all just grandstanding to whip up anger among the white supremacists that make up the majority of Trump's dwindling base.

Trump's administration just increased the number of H2B visas, allowing thousands more foreign workers into the country. His own companies are hiring hundreds of workers on those visas because he doesn't want to hire Americans, because Americans expect permanent jobs that pay well. And Trump just wants employees he can treat like slaves that he can threaten with deportation to keep them in line.

We're building a house, and most of the work crews (siding installers, roofers, masons) are Hispanic. They were nailing siding on our garage in the dead of winter when it was snowing and 10 below zero.

These people are not lazy bums looking for a handout. They're working jobs that Americans don't want. These workers aren't stealing jobs from Americans -- Americans are doing the skilled craftsman jobs that pay a lot more -- architects, designers, managers, electricians, plumbers, HVAC installers, tile installers, and framers.

The arguments Trump is levying against immigrants from Latin America, Africa and the Middle East are exactly the same arguments that were levied against Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, and against Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants in the early 20th and late 19th centuries, and against Germans and French immigrants in the early 19th century.

Donald Trump's German grandfather and Scottish mother would never have made it into this country if the people like Trump had had their way -- they were dirty, diseased Huns and Gaels and weren't pure English blood.

A lot of our Irish, German, French and Italian ancestors were escaping famine and war in Europe, just like Latin American immigrants are trying to escape social chaos in their home countries. Democrats don't think it's right to use innocent people looking for a better way of life as scapegoats for race-baiting demagogues.

This country is not full. My dad, who is a big Trump supporter, recently went into the hospital for a heart procedure. He was so weak that he couldn't take a piss by himself. He needed help to hobble to the bathroom, and who got him there? An African immigrant orderly.

We can't find enough people to do the jobs that American-born citizens won't do. We need immigrants to do that work, especially considering the low birth rate and huge wave of retirements that's coming down the pike as baby boomers age out of the workforce.

It's really a question of fairness: our ancestors had the chance to come to America. As long as we need people to do the jobs Americans don't want to, we should give them the same shot my dad's Norwegian father got.

Because modern Norwegians sure aren't lining up in droves to help my dad take a piss.

No comments: