Where every day is labor day

My dad was indeed a union man, a master machinist who worked forty-plus years for a pension even my fifth-grader wouldn't need a calculator to figure. I'll work far less hard for a far better retirement if I complete even half that many years, but I hesitate to credit the NEA, if they're even identifying as a union these days. They certainly pocket the dues. At any rate, the workers I most admire are not card-carrying members of any such association, though wallet-sized cards to carry are what they covet most.

Like any teenagers working their first jobs in America, the kids I'm thinking of spend some on gas and clothes and movie tickets, but they also hand most of it over to their parents or uncles or older brothers for food and rent. Everybody takes care of each other, and thus, everybody works. All. the. time. Life, here in the promised land, is hard.


I don't know that the details that this op-ed writer proposes are the right solution, but I know we need some solution, and sending them all back home--or to their former nations; their homes are here-- ain't it. Our economy is built on the backs of illegal labor, and if you bristle at that thought, I suggest you stop eating anything you haven't harvested or killed or cooked yourself, to start, because otherwise I guarantee you that undocumented hands have touched your dinner. But I digress.

The bigger economic picture is important, and, in the end, what the policy makers should be considering, though they could do worse to think of the younger generation, these kids who grow up in this adopted country, living a typical life, nearly as American as their neighbors, though, in my experience, more respectful and with a better work ethic. "Land of opportunity" has always been a more complicated idea than that three word phrase implies. And, certainly, these families are existing on a much higher standard of living than they were in Chihuahua or Michoacán. After all, their homes are not made of "stuff [her] dad found," and the children's makeshift playground is not on the grounds of a lead smelter. To escape that is, undeniably, an opportunity. But for these kids to be refused opportunities found in their new communities seems un-American, especially when it creates a drain on the nation as a whole.

But, frankly, the nation as a whole is outside my purview. I just wish I had more to offer the kids who are looking for a reason to stay in school when they know there really isn't one. Indentured servitude requires no diploma, not even a GED.

Immigrants' Labors Lost

By MARK LANGE
Published: September 3, 2007
NY Times.com

IMAGINE we wanted to create a huge Latino underclass in this country. We would induce more than 500,000 illegal immigrants to enter annually. We would see Latinos account for half of America’s population growth. We would turn a hardened eye toward all 44 million Latinos, because 12 million jumped our borders to meet our labor demand.

We would financially motivate but morally deplore illegal immigrants’ determination to break our laws and risk their lives to work for us. We would let nativist, xenophobic amnesiacs pillory the roughly 25 percent of Latinos who were here illegally, at the expense of the 75 percent who were legal. CNN and Fox News would reduce Latinos to fodder for fear-mongering, and the documentariat would make them objects of pity, when they wanted and warranted neither.

We would know that if we paid them, they would come, but we would offer no legitimate employment. We would adopt a let’s-pretend labor policy in our fields, yards, factories and restaurants, and for child care, construction and cleaning, with a wage fakery worthy of the Soviet Union. There, the joke was “we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” Here they would work, hard — and we would pay them, sort of, but pretend not to, denying ourselves the future tax revenue needed to pay for services we faulted them for needing.

We would ensure that the education system failed them, lamenting a dropout rate more than twice that of blacks and four times that of whites. Keeping incomes impossibly low, we would sanction Mexican-American welfare receipts twice those of natives. We would let the states launch loads of legislative half-fixes. We would have the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Homeland Security Department start an “even tougher” and more futile paper chase. We would see desperate workers fake new Social Security numbers or go underground for the next boss seeking this shabby labor discount.

We do all of this — and let it cost us more as a country — because it is a little cheaper for us as individuals and employers. And whether we knew it or not, we are deliberately fencing in our own economy.

It is in our self-interest to support labor mobility, development and advancement. Growth in productivity, fundamentally, is how we raise everyone’s standard of living. It starts with the first rung.

This month, Congress can avert a replay of the 1986 amnesty debacle by reserving permanent residency and citizenship for those who get in line and play by existing rules. Let nobody’s status be “adjusted” or “granted.” Instead, have employers sponsor anyone on their shadow payrolls to apply for a tamper-proof holographic guest worker card. Deport, adequately south of the border, anyone not sponsored. That won’t mean all 12 million. In 1954, when illegal Latino immigration was twice what it is now, a manageable number of deportations motivated the majority to repatriate.

To enforce sanctions against employers, grant the states (who bear the social costs) federal transfer payments for every undocumented worker they find, which will keep Congress and future administrations honest about paying for enforcement. If agriculture needs a lower minimum wage, negotiate and legislate it. To address the supply side, in the next trade agreement insist that Mexico adequately ensure its workers’ right to organize — to support wages and worker retention there, and a fairer fight for American exports.

The strength of an abstraction like “the economy” comes from the hands and minds of motivated and prepared people. Whether or not the left is committed to social equity — or the right, to equality of opportunity — we have at least 12 million pragmatic reasons to turn a potentially permanent underclass into a productive asset. Rather than fencing aspiring contributors out, comprehensive reform means Congress getting serious about entry-level job training and midcareer education programs for all workers. They deliver better economic returns than border patrols do.

The guy with the leaf-blower not only can learn English, he — like the unemployed steelworker — should have a chance to learn auto repair or programming. He’ll start with the jobs “ordinary Americans” won’t do. But we impair our economic future if we leave him there, imagining that’s all he or his children will ever do.

Mark Lange was a presidential speechwriter from 1989 to 1991.