Herndon's day without a Mexican.
Immigration has come barreling back into the national agenda. At the
end of last month President Bush gave a policy speech at Davis-Monthan
AFB that laid out his current thinking on this
President Renews His Campaign to Overhaul Policies on Immigration.
I think the White house has been willing to avoid this issue since his
last proffered initiative on immigration. Now an Immigration bill is
winding it way out of congress
Immigration Pushes Apart GOP, Chamber. Everyone who has something to say now must say it
Bloomberg.com: Bloomberg Columnists.
A brief check through the news coverage I made earlier (Google_news:
using the string Immigration + policy or speech or bill) show this to
be a regional issue
'Return every illegal entrant we catch' | www.azstarnet.com ® and patchwork at that in its treatment
HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE - Conservative News, Views & Books.
What set me off was a news piece that ran on the 13th and 14th
on the radio. Local news segment during NPR's morning
edition Herndon, Virginia's Minutemen
December 14, 2005, Bill Redlin, WAMU
. A Minuteman group is photographing the license plates of trucks
picking workers up from the Herndon Virginia labor pick-up site to give
to police and IRS. This is the official worker pick-up site
Herndon built which made the national media briefly last summer
Day-Labor Centers Spark Immigration Debate when
the the city of Herndon was first forming the idea for the center
(which made its vote and did open). So these gentlemen will sit out
there all day long and take pictures, but it doesn't occur to them to take
those jobs. That, by some calculation they possess, is not the best use
of their time. Latter in the broadcast the spokesman of the Herndon
Urban Minutemen came on to give their view, , (I'm hoping this
one link has the whole story). He admits he is explicitly attacking the
contractors, and tangentially intimidating the workers. For this he
referred to their being exploited "working below minimum wage", hastily
corrected within the same-breath to "working below the prevailing wage"
as his half thought out free-market ideology caught up with him. This
is just it, they are working for the prevailing wage. They work for the
wage American contractors would desire to pay American workers, If all
latin american workers were chased away. What is the motivation
of the Urban minutemen for desiring essentially regulation (how true
free-marketeers like to refer to law as) to affect this.
In the closer corner of my daily world I recall a movie
A Day Without a Mexican (2004)
that came through the University earlier this fall. Set in California
it is a tongue in cheek look at what would happen if all our favorite
day labors suddenly were no longer there. In my neighborhood about
three block up the street there is a well used informal pick-up site by
a 7-11 Google Local - New Hampshire Ave, Silver Spring, MD 20903
(white roofed bulding next to a red roofed bulding which is a pizza hut
. I wonder how long it will be before we get our own complement of Jr.
G-men to lurk about and report in on it.
Steering this back to the whole, there was a good article in
last Sundays Washington Post outlook section Who's trying to cross our southern border? Everyone. There is a message in
there for all those that protest that Mexico is writing our immigration
policy - in efforts to deal with national and transnational migrations
Mexico may have a voice
Mexican official calls House immigration bill 'wrong,' calls for ...
and there be diplomatic quid pro quo's to that effect - that fall short
of conspiracy. In the academic sort of books I see - in my job as
a cataloging clerk - the phrase migration crops up on covers often. If
you use the phrase immigration it almost makes it a matter of
individuals - something you could stop. With borders, checkpoints,
policy, and cards of color. Migration is another level of abstraction,
a movement of peoples. Beyond the reach even of princes. Something that
happens in the course of human events, inevitable. Something that not
with your guns, your fences or your cameras you are going to change. As
well there will come a day when Americans will not want the southern
wall to be so high and so well guarded. The day they want to pass
through it, to get to jobs on the other side. That day will come.
11:56:18 PM  ;;
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