A recent link by a contributor to the blog was made to the far left site, American Progress, about the cost that enforcing immigration laws, i.e. detaining and deporting illegals, is detrimental (“a disaster”) to local, state and national economies.
To wit: American Progress makes ten arguments, each of which either references another left wing blog or a dead link. Go figure. In the newspapers that are referenced (and aren’t dead links), terms like “He had no firsthand knowledge, but….”, followed by outright and unsourced assumptions and opinion, such as “I’d already received emails and messages on Facebook that the state’s immigration law had caused BBVA Compass, which is owned by the Spanish megabank BBVA Group, to cancel plans for an $80 million tower in Birmingham for the bank’s U.S. headquarters”, then in the next paragraph states that “the bank is going to stay in the Daniel Building headquarters and renovate the Harry B. Brock Administrative Center near Highland Golf Course. That was reported in Saturday’s paper. But the reason for the tower cancellation wasn’t made clear.”
So American Progress just makes up a reason, specious as it is? Seriously, why would this bank not only stay in Alabama, and continue to expand, if the immigration law was seen as an affront or impediment? This is what American Progress calls a reputable source. The rest of us call it rumor mongering and yellow journalism. What they don’t mention is that any path to citizenship will be a one way path to the Democrats, hence the liberal support for “motor voter” registration as well as the clearly crooked “same day registration”, topped off by their rabid and nonsensical opposition to positive ID for all voters.
This is not to say that alleged right-of-center newspapers don’t participate in this. The WSJ recently had an article, titled “A CEO’s demand: Fix immigration” on the Chipotle Mexican restaurant chain that was raided by the government and lost a significant number of their workers to scrutiny of their hiring records by ICE. The company claims that they “unintentionally hired some illegal immigrants” due to rapid upscaling in the number of their outlets. Apparently, this “overenthusiastic hiring” caused them to lose half of their 900 employees to ICE raids in Minnesota alone!
Chipotle’s claims that only “about half its workers are hispanics, including many in management roles.” A check of current national unemployment rates for hispanic CITIZENS at the government’s (optimistic) Bureau of Labor Statistics gives you a rate of about 11%. Are these people unwilling to work in such an upstanding, upwardly mobile job? Could it be that they don’t “look hispanic” enough? Or maybe the jobs are not as great as they say? Honestly, with just over 13 million people desperate for work in this country, how logical or reasonable is their claim that they can’t come up with enough legal job candidates, even with their claimed highly selective hiring standards, to fill their job openings without resorting to hiring illegals?
Let’s face it: businesses like the cheap labor, and the Democrats like the cheap votes. In both cases, the welfare of the American citizen is being compromised. Both sides claim that the U.S./state economies can’t survive without this pool of cheap, illegal labor.
I believe the same arguments were once made by former slave states.
Illegals coming here may fill a low end employment niche, particularly ones created with racist/elitist, “I’m too good for that job” attitudes (see Juan Williams to Gingrich a few debates ago). New illegals may be thankful for both being here and having work, but will the naturalized-through-birth children of this generation of illegals settle for working in the fields? I suspect not, particularly if they are conscripted into unions. You can’t keep them down on the farm once they’ve been to Paris! If this is the case, then a new wave of illegals will be required to fill the gap left by the children of the current workers. Ad infinitum.
A continuing boon or another bust? I think you know the answer to that.
