I think the idea of linking trade policies to immigration make a lot of sense. How about taking it a few steps further and link the drug wars, the proxy wars, the sheltering of corporate criminals that hire goon squads and enforce something akin to indentured servitude, and agricultural subsidies at home that feed a foreign aid program that drives farmers and associated small businesses to the south into failure? The "American way of life" is tightly woven with policies and practices that make life hellish enough for others in the Western Hemisphere to risk coming here illegally only to suffer poor pay and very few rights or protections. Let's connect those dots.

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I thought it was quite a comprehensive presentation on immigration; but everything in life is connected to everything else, I guess. I was also looking for another factor in the issue: Corporate and political philosphies of the U.S. on these other countries. Another reason for immigration in the past 30 or so years has been people from Latin countries trying to escape persecution by tyrannical leaders that we have set up as "democracies". Churches were set up for asylum for refugees from El Salvador, Guatamala, Honduras,etc. (I worked with the Detroit-Windsor Refugee Coalition!) People came both for better lives and to escape persecution and death. U.S. and our companies forced them to work for almost nothing, Union leaders were assasinated and tortured - all to get cheap products for us American consumers. Liberation Theology sprang up as a result, leaders like Bishop Romero (who had actually been quite conservative!) were killed...we mainly heard of Americans killed. Movements like "Witness for Peace" started, with delegations going down to stand beside the victims (mainly true of Nicaragua and the Contra war!). Part of the answer has to be a willingness to pay some higher prices in the States so that people in poorer countries can survive too. Mexico and the effects of NAFTA is just the latest in this whole situation. And then again, problems of the environment and global warming - that seem to be leading us to buy and grow locally and quit depending on Mideast oil so much - may force us closer to a solution. All this is too much for my fuzzy little brain!

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NO
AMERICAN
FACTORYS
TAKING
APPLICATIONS

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Its illegal immigration that is our problem and has always been a problem that we have been very strict about enforceing until the 80's when we shipped our industries overseas along with most of our agriculture and then turned to corporate agribusinesses nationally and that is when illegal immigration became the solution to massive profits for corporate owners of farms and ranches who live in New York have slave handlers working the slaves who come here illegally.

That is a no brainer picture of the situation. So, I agree with you that legal immigration should be handled as you suggest, rather than allowing illegals in record numbers to the point where they now constitute about 30 million of our population. That is way too many illegals who have brought flesh eating diseases, reemergence of disease we had irradicated and crime. Coming legally would have solved those problems.

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This assessment is very good, but the term immigration is used generically in this article, and that is not the problem we have. As is pointed out, normally and legally this country absorbs immigrants every year - more in fact than all other industrial nations combined. These immigrants use a process that was designed to allow for the influx of people into this nation with proper vetting and insured economic security for them as well as us. This process is used by every nation in the world for LEGAL immigration.

The problem is ILLEGAL immigration and the use of H1B visas by corporations. Illegal immigration fosters and encourages the breaking of more laws of this nation than I care to count - everything from human trafficking and gun running to drug dealing and identity theft. Illegal immigrants who came here on visas or crossed illegally have been responsible for one of the most devastating, definitive acts of violence in this nation's history - 9/11. If these men had not acted, we would not be saddled with a war we cannot win, the loss of civil liberties under the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, and with a President who thinks he is God's messenger in his Holy Crusade for oil. Stronger policies and tighter security might have prevented all these things.

As for H1B visas, these have cost Americans jobs, with most of them going to entry level technicians while Americans with the same skills are unemployed because they demand a living wage. With the top five slots for H1B visas going to Indian employment agencies in places like New Delhi, which then sends workers to places like Microsoft, is it any wonder that Americans are angry and bitter, and our young people are dropping out of school because they feel they have no future?

Joshua, you are right, it is a supply and demand issue, and until American corporations demand for cheap labor (legal or otherwise) is stopped, the supply will continue to flow, just like drugs, into this country. Until we as a nation make it very clear to our government that such a flow is totally unacceptable and that we will no longer tolerate ILLEGAL immigrants from flooding our country to help out Mexico's financial crisis while decimating our economy for low income residents or H1B visas denying our college graduates entry level jobs, this lopsided supply curve will continue. Supply economics does not work in capitalism, as our economy can attest since it is now reaping the rewards of such a curve, and demand economies only work if the entire economy benefits. There must be a balance, and as long as unchecked ILLEGAL immigration continues to benefit corporations and the elite of this nation, there will be no balance or stability for anyone.

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I explained the surge in immigration to my sadly uninformed relatives in terms they could understand. I asked them what would make them consider migrating from the US to, for instance, Canada. They were stumped so I put it to them this way - if you lost your job here in the states and couldn't find replacement work would you consider crossing the border into Canada to find work to feed your family? They all said, "Of course. My family comes first." Then I asked them to put themselves in the shoes of the Mexican farmer. How bad must it be for this person to uproot himself (and sometimes his family), to swim/wade across a river, scale a fence and find his way across a desert in order to take a back-breaking, low wage job in a foreign country where he didn't speak the language?

That is what faces many of today's "illegal immigrants" who have been forced from their lands because their livelihoods have been taken from them by US agribusiness. Specifically, the Mexican "Committee to Evaluate Corn Imports" made the decision to import twice as much corn as was agreed to under NAFTA. It turns out that this committee is dominated by representatives of Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland who are responsible for two thirds of those imports.

By humanizing the Mexican immigrant and pointing the finger at the real culprits for this surge of immigration we might just be able to open the eyes and hearts of our fellow Americans who see these people as a threat instead of victims of corporate greed.

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