From Heidi, of Euphoric Reality,
“This week’s Blogburst was written by Darnell McGavock at the Independent Conservative. He examines the advantages to businesses that exploit illegal labor and compares it to the economic system of slavery. It is a perspective we’ve never examined before at GTB. Thank you, Darnell, for a provocative post!”
by Darnell MaGavock at Indpendent Conservative
Let me start by saying I don’t endorse either slavery or illegal immigration. But looking at things from the economic standpoint of a company that hires illegals today versus the use of slave labor in the 18th and 19th centuries, illegal immigration offers companies a better deal than any slave owner ever had. The reason is the modern day welfare state that is known as America.
During American slavery, the slave owner was responsible for the total care of the slave. Although slave masters did this “on the cheap†they had to provide housing, food, clothing and medical care for the slave and their entire family. This resulted in the institution of slavery being more of a loss than gain over time. The only other option was to grant freedom to slaves who were a great expense, but that involved the strain of possibly breaking a family. Separating families often resulted in the other slaves trying harder to escape to be with loved ones. Non-profitable slaves were not sellable, because nobody else wanted the burden. This was the slave master’s dilemma, that people like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin figured out. They realized that slavery was not financially good over time – because the “free labor†was not really “freeâ€, given the need to provide full care to the slave labor force. This was in addition to the expense of buying a slave in the first place.
Today’s employer of illegal immigrants does not have any of the hassles experienced by slave owners. The employer of illegals offers them a very small salary and no benefits. Which means such an employer never runs the risk of going cash-flow-negative on labor costs. They can adjust wages at will, because they will always find an illegal that is willing to accept the rate. This is the reason Cesar Chavez once disliked illegal immigration. If one set of illegals tried to “strike†for better wages, the company would simply replace them with new illegals that were willing to accept the pay rate offered to them.
So the employer of illegals has no direct issues with having to fund housing, medical or the expense of educating the children of illegal immigrants. These are expenses that American taxpayers have been funding. Government (funded by taxpayers) helps illegals secure home loans and encourages banks to give them out. Government (funded by taxpayers) is picking up the medical expenses of illegals. Government (funded by taxpayers) is educating the children of illegal aliens.
You may have seen the CNN Special “Immigrant Nation: Divided Nationâ€. If you did, you saw profiles of illegals that live in my county of Gwinnett Georgia. The show often tried to make granting amnesty to illegals look like a good thing, but like the slave master’s dilemma, even the tax paying illegals do not come close to covering the expenses involved in caring for them.
Excerpts from, Transcript of CNN Special Report – Immigrant Nation: Divided Nation
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HINOJOSA: Ten years ago when I first came to Georgia, I asked people if there was a Latino neighborhood, or barrio. I got a lot of strange looks.Now I’m here in the heart of just one of the many Latino barrios in Georgia. I can get some of the best tacos outside of Mexico right here 24 hours a day. The home of Martin Luther King, the state that gave us the civil rights movement, is now home to half a million Latinos, a 300 percent increase in a decade.
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HINOJOSA: Estimates vary, but somewhere between 7 and 20 million people are living in this country illegally, one of the largest populations of undocumented immigrants in the world. Most of them come across this border. According to the U.S. government, over 1 million were caught last year alone.This latest wave of immigrants has spread far beyond the southwest and the West Coast. Latino immigrant communities are now fixtures across the nation, especially in the south, in places like Gwinnett County, Georgia.
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HINOJOSA: Rosa first came to Georgia two years ago, all alone.Last year, unable to bear the separation any longer, Rosa paid a smuggler $5,000 to wade her children across the river at night, but they were caught at a checkpoint and immediately deported. Rosa faced a difficult decision.
ROSA (through translator): I told my daughter, you have two options. I either stay in Mexico with you, or I will leave for the States for another year in preparation to bring the two of you. Then my daughter told me to return to the States so I could bring them eventually.
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HERCHEK: I’m afraid that America could become a third world country. We’re importing poverty by millions every year.
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HINOJOSA (on camera): The numbers say it all. Ten years ago, these schools served very few Spanish-speaking students. In 2003, one out of 10 students listed Spanish as their primary language, $26 million will be spent in Gwinnett County in English language services.
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HINOJOSA: Federal law says people are entitled to emergency medical care, whether or not they’re in this country legally. In one year Georgia paid $58 million in emergency Medicaid reimbursement for undocumented immigrants.
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The smugglers will be paid almost $6,000 by Rosa if they were successful, would show border agents false papers for the children. They didn’t make it.Despite their fake papers, Junior and Rosita were detained. The smugglers were arrested. The children were returned to Mexico and reunited with their grandmother. Despite the set back, Rosa vows to try again.
ROSA (through translator): I will keep trying to bring them. The sooner the better. If in 15 days I find someone to bring them here, then we will try again with them.
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Unlike slavery, with illegal immigration the burden of expenses is carried by the entire nation. So instead of individual plantation owners having to endure the expenses of supposedly cheap labor, it is a burden carried by taxpaying Americans.
It is my family that endures pain, while waiting behind illegals for medical care. It is my tax dollars that pay for education of illegals, that by school rules have 6 years to learn English and many drop out before ever finishing school. So they take up much space and expense, while not even learning much during the process. While school time is spent on illegals, it diverts resources and teaching time away from children in a legal family. And I’m not even going to get into the issues with gangs. (That would require its own post.)
The issues I see here in Gwinnett County, Georgia will only get worse with anything that encourages illegal immigration or makes them feel they will be rewarded. And the issues will get worse for America. The nation will not be able to sustain the expense of this dilemma for much longer. It is causing the nation to engage in a race to the bottom and then we all lose.
America’s borders need to be secured and the only means made for immigration should be via the current legalization process. What employers of illegals see as a “resource†is really a great expense. Immigration requires regulation to prevent this nation’s collapse.
This has been a production of the Guard the Borders Blogburst. It is syndicated by Euphoric Reality, and serves to keep immigration issues in the forefront of our minds as we’re going about our daily lives and continuing to fight the war on terror. If you are concerned with the trend of illegal immigration in our country, join the Blogburst! Send an email with your blog name and url to euphoricrealitynet at gmail dot com.