In It Together

Today's NYT includes a story about a growing rift between hard-line Republican anti-immigrant lawmakers (such as those in AZ's legislature) and Republican employers whose businesses are threatened by employer sanctions and worksite raids.

Raids can and do remove experienced senior low-wage employees and cripple business' ability to meet contracted production requirements. Sanctions aimed at established employers who are trying to comply should be aimed at scofflaw employers, instead, say industry lobbyists.

Well, here's a thought. Now is the time for Democrats, whose votes are essential to moderate Pearce-style employer sanctions, to demand safe workplaces, employer-provided safety equipment, healthcare, and a living wage for all employees in exchange for backing off employer sanctions and instituting a national guestworker program.

We should be doing these things anyway. And don't tell me "we" can't afford them. Let's just reallocate some of the profits now raked off by the top 1% of employees to fairly reimburse the lower 99%.

Stepping up to demand a just, safe, and fair workplace would bring Democrats in line with the legitimate needs of millions of blue-collar workers nationally. At the same time, it would force scofflaw employers to compete fairly with those who do try to observe the law. And not least, it would remove the incentive to hire immigrants illegally. If all workers are paid a living wage and all employers are required to provide safe workspaces, there's no profit in hiring undocumented workers and no way to undercut the jobs of native-born Americans.

I support a guestworker program, but only if it comes with certain conditions. One, it must mandate a living wage, healthcare, safe working conditions, paid leave, and some kind of retirement pay-in. Those aren't luxuries, as the word "benefit" so propagandistically implies. Those are necessities and furthermore, they have been earned by all workers, including the lowest paid. Two, it must tie into renegotiated NAFTAs and CAFTAs and the like, to level the global working field for everyone.

We can get smart and make these demands. Or, we can continue to be buffaloed by the whines of big business and the cons of Bush Republicans and watch our jobs float away to Bombay and what's left of the great American middle class become the majority working poor.

Criticism/Self-Criticism

There's been much criticism of late aimed at Gov. Janet for signing the Employer Sanctions bill and its recent revision.

Much much-deserved criticism, I might add. We have a right to expect elected leaders of the Democratic Party to, well, lead.

Unfortunately, politics, by definition, is about following, not leading. Politicians generally must reflect the prevailing sentiment or else they'll speedily be unemployed.

It's only in the extra-ordinary times--the "outside the ordinary" moments--that politicians have any possibility of leading, and it happens only if those moments are matched by the extra-ordinary person. Hence Roosevelt's three terms (for which the gods are ever to be blessed) and Bush's impertinent reversal of Constitution democracy following 9-ll (for which the gods are ever to be cursed). How much of global destiny is due to peronal charisma I don't even want to know.

That aside, immigration seems to punch the buttons of the Right but leave the Left somnolent, snoring. We wonder why. It seems to me that there is more strength in hating, in the mere notion that somebody's getting something for free, than there is in the fact that loving ennobles both the lover and the loved one. Why is that?

But I wander. The thing is, if we on the Left had stood up for our own principles and denounced the racist, xenophobic, fascist, lying rhetoric and the resulting laws, round-ups, detentions, and deportations, Napolitano would have had the political cover to veto those measures. Remember Vietnam? Well, maybe not. Unfortunately, we haven't really acted on our principles on the needed scale in 40 years. And that's the point. Fifty percent of why we've gotten to this benighted place is because we let ourselves be distracted, intimidated, or just plain excused from showing up.

With the exception of a tiny handful of Anglo clergy, activists, and bloggers in Tucson and Phoenix, a couple of Democrat legislators, and 95% of the Hispanic community, we Democrats, independents, and ethically grounded Republicans just didn't provide Napolitano the political cover to withstand the haters, did we? I couldn't even get a MeetUp group to agree to meet with me on the subject. There was just no there there among Lefties, and there still isn't. Which reminds me, again, of why liberals are so often called "rotten rock." We talk a great line, but don't expect us to put our bodies in the line of fire. Nhuh-uh!

So before you denounce her, look in the mirror. We on the Left took a powder. We are only just now beginning to wake up to the fact that something very similar to Nazi Germany in means, methods, and morals (if not in scale, thank God) is happening right here in the Fatherl, er Homela, er USA. That's pretty disgusting if you ask me.

Erecting Our Own Tombstone: AZ's Employer Sanctions Law

From the National Immigration Law Center, "Erecting Its Own Tombstone: Arizona's Mandatory Basic Pilot/E-Verify Law" (April 2008). Read this PDF. Be sure to scroll all the way through it to catch the nitty gritty. The findings won't shock anyone with two braincells to rub together, but may surprise state Republicons and other Haters.

In other words, our Employer Sanctions law is causing new business to avoid moving to AZ, existing business to avoid expansion and to lose revenue, homes to foreclose, consumer goods, produce, and other marketable objects to languish on shelves, rental units to go unoccupied, the state budget to collapse in on itself, and construction, agriculture, entertainment and service, landscaping to cut back and/or fold. It's causing job losses, profit losses, budget cuts, layoffs, and, mostl likely, increases in all citizens' dependence on our public safety nets.

The good news is that there's never been a faster demonstration of the principles of Karma. What goes around comes around.

Here in AZ, as elsewhere, these measures are taking all the guesswork out of wondering what effects harsh anti-immigrant hate laws will have on state and municipal economies (meaning schools, new highway construction, infrastructure maintenance, emergency/security services, etc.). Now we know. Anti-immigrant laws kill towns, cities, and states.
AZ's Employer Sanctions law's consequences for the state's operating budget and for GOP election prospects are predictably causing a major divide between business and the GOP, which can't be all bad, and making even more of us loathe Russell Pearce and Republicons.

Don't you love it when a plan comes together? I'm talking to you, Gould, Pearce, Harper, Grimes, etc.

A Day Without a Mexican

That giant sucking sound was the brains of 42 Democrats vanishing into lala land. That's how many (so far) who have sponsored H.R. 4088, the "Save America with Verification and Enforcement Act" (SAVE), introduced by Heath Shuler (D-NC) and Brian Bilbray (R-CA).

"SAVE" would sanction employers who hire undocumented migrant workers, require them to verify hires using the controversial E-Verify program, add 8,000 new border patrol agents, and expand the investigation capabilities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, among other things. (New rule: No more BS legislation titles.)

If Kos is correct, almost as bad is word that "centrist" Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL) is quietly pushing House Democrats to sign on to this darling of uber-nativists Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Duncan Hunter (R-CA).

One, as Kos has been commenting all week, Republicans found out in Virginia's election outcomes on Tuesday that hard-line anti-immigrant posturing isn't turning out to be the magic bullet they thought it would be. Why, then, would Democrats now decide to drape themselves with the white sheet? I guess because we have an unmatched genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Two, this big brother of Arizona's Employer Sanctions law, due to take effect in January 2008, suffers from many of the same "circle the wagons and fire" notions of our home-grown measure. The main one is that nobody knows exactly what percent of the GDP is contributed by undocumented workers, but study after study tells us that they give more to local economies than they take from them. If that's the case, removing them from employer payrolls is going to bring bad things to life, starting with crippling the employers who presently engage them. How is that helpful? If the assumption is that all those middle managers, programmers, and technical support personnel whose jobs have gone to India are going to become busboys, construction workers, dishwashers, and fruit pickers, well, HELL-BLOODY-O????

Three, let's pause a moment in reverent gratitude for all who understand the velocity of money theory. It notes that each dollar dropped into a local economy circulates through it many times. See, that's why cities love it when conventions come to town. It's not just the hotel fees and restaurant patronage. It's not just rental cars and the parking lots and the gasoline and the taxi services and the night club and entertainment tabs and, oh, the liquor, or the souvenirs and T-shirts and the airport traffic. It's all that AND this: Every one of THOSE dollars cycles back through consumer world, generating ever more sales taxes and ever more capacity for local folk to buy or rent houses, remodel, get new clothes for the kiddies, get groceries, have clothes cleaned, grab a Tecate, have the carpets cleaned. . . .

So why would any Democrat, especially in this market, intentionally grow the ranks of the unemployed? Why would anybody voluntarily subtract X dollars from the national economy? Why would anybody shut down viable businesses, add X million people to the detention/deportation rolls, fracture their families, do physical violence to them, ensure lasting psychological damage among them, give legs to racist impulses, and, oh yeah, alienate their votes? Have we had a collective breakdown here?

Four, and by the way, the E-Verify program is full of errors, and word here is that our Employer Sanctions law, at least, will probably be found unconstitutional. Could that be a clue?

Five, supporters believe that Latinos will self-deport in anticipation of the law's taking effect. That's begun to happen here in Maricopa County, and one result is that public schools are seeing their operating budgets tank in tandem with enrollment declines. Oh Yah-hoodley-hoo! Great public policy! (Unless, of course, you subscribe to the shock doctrine school of shakedown government, in which case you think it really is great public policy.)

Six, employers aren't thrilled. We know that because the US Chamber tells us so, and because here in Phoenix, it's a small big cowtown where people talk with each other.

See, if I were running the DCCC, I would look upon that fact as offering an opportunity to make alliance with employers in order to push for safeguards against exploitation and abuse, in order to begin the long-term effort to instill a commitment to a healthy workplace ecology--meaning equitable treatment of workers and owners. But I'm not.

Seven, measures like these are racist, mean, ugly, and a form of terrorism. If you think not, put yourself in the place of an immigrant who's been here for 9 years, with family and a hopeful life, working hard and paying federal and state taxes and FICA. It disgusts me that my country is capable of this kind of law-making, and appalls me that my party is complicit. Complicit in this just as in condoning the use of torture. I'm one hair away from becoming an Independent. It doesn't seem to do any good to write, call, fax, and otherwise express my outrage to the numbskulls and chair warmers that presume to "represent" me in Congress. I am beyond furious.

I just called the DCCC at 202-863-1500. You're asked for the extension of the person you're calling. I punched in 100 just for the heck of it, and got Charlie Rangel's voice mail. I wish I could say that the message I left him was eloquent and coherent, and so will he, I'm sure, but I think he got the gist that I'm really unhappy at the racist, stupid, moribund turns my party persists in taking.

Give 'em a buzz and let them know your feelings, too.