Today’s protest should have been named “A day without illegal immigrants.”
I haven’t said much about it, because I don’t think there’s all that much to say. My great-grandparents and grandparents immigrated to America legally. They all went through Ellis Island and everything that entails. I’m a firm believer in immigration as the source of the American identity — but — I believe it must be legal.
There are some who say that our illegal immigrants do the jobs that Americans don’t want to do. This is not true. Here in Richmond, many of the illegals are in the construction industry. Viriginia is a non-union state. So the illegals are providing cheap labor, driving down the wages so that legal Americans seek other jobs in order to make their bills.
There’s a huge downside to being an illegal in Richmond. The local criminals know what day the illegals get paid. Because they’re illegals, they don’t have bank accounts. So they get paid in cash, or cash their checks at a check-cashing firm (losing ten percent off the top that way, I believe). Then we have the payday crime wave, where illegals are robbed of their week’s pay at gunpoint, because everyone knows illegals carry cash.
I know that those in favor of granting legal status to the illegals will point to this as one of the reasons. However, I would point to this as one of the consequences of being here illegally. There’s a large illegal immigrant population in my apartment complex. We were discussing translating our flyers into Spanish to try to get them into the Neighborhood Watch, when it was pointed out that they won’t join, because they keep a low profile due to not wanting to get caught by INS. The police department interacts with us as part of the Neighborhood Watch. We can’t get it down without them. They have nothing to do with INS, but the illegals won’t believe that. So, not only are the illegals forcing down wages in the housing industry, they’re leaving a giant hole in the area of local self-protection.
And then there’s my doubt that a group of laborers who cannot speak the native language (and who come from a culture that is rife with corruption in things like housing) being able to build up to code. Are we getting a generation of inferior housing because local contractors use illegals?
They want to be a part of the American Dream? Great. Do it legally, like my grandparents and great-grandparents had to.
I know we can’t deport 11 million people. But we don’t have to say it’s okay, and legalize them all. We could, say, penalize them two years for every year they’ve been illegal residents. If they’ve been here five years, then let them wait ten years to become citizens. Oh, and pay those back taxes they owe. And close the border. Allow zero legal immigration from Mexico and Latin America until the current situation is resolved.
And, as I like to say from time to time: You’re in America now. Speak English!
Love your site. My sentiments exactly.
You said what many of us could not put into words so eloquently. Keep up the good work.
Thank you, Meryl. You’ve neatly summed up my feelings on illegal immigrants.
I heard and read several mainstream reports on yesterday’s strike (which they kept calling a “boycott” for some reason. Perhaps because a strike with no specific demands or attempt to negotiate is unlawful). One thing struck me about the coverage: nobody even tried to distinguish between legal and illegal strikers or marchers. You would think it might make a difference, whether those huge crowds we saw on TV were mostly made up of lawbreakers trying to duck deportation, or foreign-born Americans declaring their sympathy.
I disagree about one thing, though: I don’t really care whether they speak English. My grandmother never really learned it despite 70 years in America. We have a long history of non-English-speaking immigrant enclaves (German, Chinese, Italian, Yiddish, etc.), and it did us no harm.
And I’ll add this: it’s not enough to punish lawbreakers, you also have to take a good hard look at the law. Given that current labor laws have institutionalized criminal practices throughout a few industries (people employ illegals so they can underpay & underprotect them) do we need to lighten the regulatory burden on those industries? Can construction, agriculture, and maintenance actually function without some kind of safety valve? I’m from a union family and I hate the idea of giving up hard-earned labor rights, but maybe they need to be relaxed in some industries.