A Question About Immigrants

Trump is busily rounding up immigrants and hastening them to the border. On the surface this fulfills a campaign promise but when I stopped to think about it, I began to question the logic of it.

Sure, they're here illegally. They didn't go through the complicated and expensive process we have in place to become a citizen. And that makes them guilty of a crime -- and therefore subject to deportation.

But really, why is that a deportable offense? Are they taking jobs away from Americans? (Well in certain professions surely, but only because Americans can't afford to work for pickers' wages / housekeeper's wages.)

Are they taking housing that Americans want? No.

Are they eating food that Americans need? No.

Are they setting a bad example for legal immigration? Well maybe, but who is that protecting?

The whole idea of evicting people who have CHOSEN to come here, usually against overwhelming odds, in order to find a better life... well it's just nuts when you think of it. The only explanation is the xenophobic fear of other races displacing White Superiority, which is not the explanation usually put out front.

I think there is an element of xenophobia at work but I don't think that's the whole story. I think part of it is just to uphold the laws on the books, that looking the other way would be to essentially open the borders and result in a potentially catastrophic influx of poor desperate people, straining our humanitarian relief capacity, opening the way for criminal human trafficking, and probably leaving more corpses on the border, their flesh picked clean by scavengers, their bones bleaching in the desert sun.

We have plenty of people — the greatest birth rates are in immigrant communities — so it's not as if the USA needs to increase its population. As far as the shitty jobs that no one wants to do we could get rid of the cheap food paradigm and improve the conditions and pay of farm workers, while developing harvesting technology to reduce the need for future workers. I'd like to see the country develop an industrial policy where the need for specific types of workers could be rationally assessed and training programs correlated with industry and government chipping in.

I'd also like to see a guest worker program where people could enter the country with a contract for a specific job for a specific time. The hope would be that these people, having earned money and gained experience, would return to their native countries and function as an advanced sector which could improve the country and do something to stem the desperation which forces people to leave.

$15 minimum wage would do a lot to reverse the race to the bottom.