(from pictures by Flickr users I am Jacques Strappe and someonewalksinla)
The Dia Sin Immigrante/May Day protests look like they were amazing. Too many pictures and accounts to post–go look it up on BoingBoing.
Well, maybe I can list a couple.
This photo is totally cute.
A pretty nice sign.
So will immigration reform finally have its day? Or will HR 4437, the original impetus for the boycott, pass unmitigated, fueling division without solving the problem? Guess we’ll see.
And Washington, take note: When Mexican folks don’t get their way, they are willing and able to protest naked. You have been warned.
My personal take on the immigration thing is that we should make it very easy to get into this country legally, but very difficult to get in illegally. I think that illegal aliens are a problem, and we should have tight control over our borders for national security purposes, but the way to deal with the problem is to make it easy for people to come to America so long as they work through the proper channels. I dunno, what do you think?
Having stronger border controls would be a benefit to security, but I’m not convinced that the trade-off would be worth it. We already spend so much on border control, but people just keep trying. Our borders are just so damn big…pragmatically there’s no way to effectively police it all. It’s just another War on Drugs.
Companies that hire illegals so that they can pay less have created a demand for illegal labor. Without draconian measures, economics demands that that demand will be filled. People will follow the jobs.
So there’s three ideas for what could be done. If companies were actually punished for using illegal labor–if that demand curve were lowered–there’d be fewer jobs marketed to illegal immigrants and fewer people would come illegally. A side benefit would be that those companies would then be forced to reckon with the citizen labor market and pay a living wage. Bush’s rhetoric about there being jobs that Americans “won’t” do is mostly elitist bullshit–the only reason some people are hesitant to take tough jobs like construction or agricultural work is because the crappy wages don’t match the demands of the work! Pay me enough, and I’ll pick all the lettuce you want.
Another possibility is lowering the barriers to legal entry. Say to Mexico, Latin America, and other nations, hey, if you want to come here, that’s great! Fill out this form, let us do a background check, and you’re done! Would this flood America with unwashed welfare queens? Considering the current net contribution of current immigrants to the US’s GDP (quite positive), I kinda doubt it. Still, many of the folks pushing the illegal immigration problem are pretty xenophobic overal, which may be why this option hasn’t had much traction thus far.
Third idea is getting rid of the barriers to US-Mexico trade (even with NAFTA, there’s a lot remaining) and moving more jobs to Mexico. If job opportunities and wages go up south of the border, there’ll be less incentive to cross it. This would lower *both* legal and illegal immigration, something the xenophobic faction would probably like. But that would be outsourcing ,which I imagine folks like Lou Dobbs wouldn’t stand for…