Saturday, March 25, 2006

Illegal Immigration

Illegal means illegal. Both Mexico an America's leaders have utterly failed to address this problem. Mexico is not as most people believe, a poor, third world county, completely dependent on its big brother to the north. They are actually a very wealthy country, the richest country in Latin America by a long ways. Unfettered capitalism has consolidated wealth and power into the hands of the ruling elite, leaving a very small middle class and about half the country living in poverty. Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics said:

"Basically, it's up to Mexico to solve its problem, and basically the wealthy classes do not want to tax themselves, period. It's basically an attitude of look out for yourself."

He points to the fact of taxes in Mexico being only 14% of GDP as opposed to Americans at 25 to 28%. Seems like the wealthy want to live off the fat of the land without having to pay rent. Bush is not likely to tell President Vicente Fox to raise taxes on the rich. Hufbauer continues:

"Basic social services and infrastructure are awfully lean for a country that wants to move ahead. While I'm not usually an advocate for larger government, Mexico is a country where public investment, done wisely, could pay huge dividends."

Both Presidents, however, are on the same leash to wealthy and powerful interests. American companies want cheap and abundant labor, not to do the jobs Americans won't do, but to do the jobs they can't export. Like construction of our homes and buildings, roads and bridges, and the jobs available in natural resources like oil and gas.

There can be no doubt that the wages would be substantially higher and unemployment would be substantially lower if 12 million (est) illegal immigrants were deported. Nearly half of the illegal immigrants wire money to Latin America regularly, which amounted to $32 Billion in 2002. That's nearly a 40% increase since 2000 and doesn't sound like lettuce pickin' money either.

Bear in mind that money cycles in a community, unless of course it's wired out of the country. The feeble minded legislation meant to put a surcharge on these wire transfers is simply electioneering. If someone is resourceful enough to break into a country, swim rivers, cross deserts, get a job and a check, I imagine they can find a legal buddy to wire the money home, for a smaller fee than the govt. wants.

Bush is simply out Foxed at his own game of delivering the goods to the arrogant and rich. By refusing to raise taxes and invest in infrastructure and utilizing his country's abundant resources that would create jobs, his desperate citizens flee to America and wire dollars back. No need for expensive social programs for him since America already has all that.

Unfortunately our leaders have ignored this problem for entirely too long. To export 12 million illegals would be difficult on a biblical scale. I truly empathize with their plight, but we have problems too and we were here first. All these protest marches they are conducting throughout America are taking place in the wrong country. They need to tell it to Fox, and I don't mean the news (?) program.

The first thing that needs to be done is to close our borders. Bush scolds Iran and Syria and Pakistan for not sealing their borders. That's like being called ugly by a frog. Seal the damn borders, then we'll talk about step two.

1 comment:

Beth said...

Evening Oilfield,

Nice article on immigration. Now we have to watch what bushco talks about with Fox. Rumors are flying that he will not spend much time on immigration.

So the questions remains, just what does he want to talk with Fox about??

Hmmm....Iran possibly or not.