The Immigration Complication

One of the biggest issues facing our country right now is that of immigration reform. Whether or not you think that every outsider should be welcome here or that no outsider should be welcome here, we can all agree that the immigration system in our country is broken. One solution that has a lot of support is to simply deport the 11 million illegal immigrants living in our country. While this solution would require a feat of social engineering and lots of money, the major impracticality of it is the effect that the policy would have on the US economy.  

            Since about 71% or 8 million of those 11 million illegal immigrants work in the US, their removal from the workforce of our country would be damaging; to say the least. And seeing how many of the jobs that migrant workers fill (primarily farm and factory work) the foundation of our economy would disappear. Now, the most common rebuttal to that claim would naturally be, �Well we can replace those jobs with our unemployed instead.�

            Not so fast my friend. Think of the jobs that these migrant workers handle every day. These people work long hours and do extremely difficult work for money that is not sustainable to make a living. And when I say difficult, I mean excruciatingly difficult. Take for example the average farm worker who wakes up early every morning and spends his or her entire day leaning over to tend to crops in the extreme heat of California or Arizona for below minimum wage. These workers cannot fight back since they are illegal and demanding a better wage would risk their livelihood, as fragile as it already is. So they do the same thing every day only to wake up and repeat. Over the years they weaken and are replaced by another migrant, desperate to survive. It�s a vicious cycle that exposes the worst elements of capitalism.

            Trying to replace these workers with middle class Americans is a joke. Our society is simply too dignified to stoop to a job of that level. One cannot make a living from these jobs unless the prices of these crops and products were to skyrocket. Like a domino effect, the rest of the American workforce would suffer unless their wages were to increase and so on and so forth. And if the prices of products and crops were to go up, so would everything else and those farm workers would find themselves with better wages, but still in the same position. This would lead to inflation and eventually a recession unless our society could adjust to the rise in prices and the drop in the value of the dollar. Now that could be avoided if the unemployed in America would set aside their status and face the difficulties of the work available and earn futile wages for the good of America. But that sounds awfully socialist and comically ridiculous so that is not an option.

The fact remains that illegal immigrants make up an important part of our workforce and do the jobs that we citizens refuse to do for the money involved. They hold our economy up just as previous generations of cheap labor have. From the slaves, the Irish, the Chinese, the Filipinos, the Eastern Europeans, to the Central Americans, all have witnessed the worst of America and capitalism, but have persevered in search of the American dream. And at the same time they have received hatred from those already living here in waves of xenophobia and resentment.

Putting aside the economic components of this problem, there is also a human side to it; and that is what we often forget. These are people that we are dealing with. Many of these people came here in desperation in order to escape the drug cartels in Mexico, to find work in order to survive, or both. Instead of barring them from entry and creating both an economic and humanitarian dilemma, we should aid in their path to citizenship and help them speak out. We owe these people. They pick the produce that we buy from the supermarket and help manufacture the goods in our homes and in return we degrade and threaten to remove them for our own sense of security. But based on what I know from the past, nothing will change as long as we live in a capitalist society because someone has to suffer in order for someone to be rich. That�s the reality of the situation and I do not know how to fix it. But I know that mass deportation is not the way to fix it and that�s a start.