Thread: This isn't the immigration solution

http://www.dailybreeze.com/opinion/arti ... 20227.html

Friday, June 24, 2005
This isn't the immigration solution
The mayor of Fresno asking for a moratorium on immigrants is like Col. Sanders asking for a moratorium on chickens.
By Ruben Navarrette Jr.

This is how wacky the immigration debate has become: The mayor of Fresno suggests the United States impose a moratorium on immigrants.

I know Fresno. I grew up in a small town nearby. We're talking about one of the farming capitals of the world and home to legions of immigrants -- many of them illegal. In fact, the leader of an Asian-American growers association in Central California estimates that nearly 100 percent of today's agricultural work force is illegal. Without immigrants, the local economy would shrivel up like a raisin in the sun.

So the mayor of Fresno asking for a moratorium on immigrants is like Col. Sanders asking for a moratorium on chickens.

A moratorium wouldn't do any good. For starters, it would impact only the people who come legally. The border guards and barbed wire along the U.S.-Mexico border suggest that Americans already have a moratorium on illegal immigration. So why limit legal immigration? Legal immigrants are perhaps this country's most precious imports. Besides, I thought the big objection to all these illegal immigrants coming in from Mexico and elsewhere is that they are entering illegally. If Americans opt to keep out legal immigrants as well, it will become clear that what this nation of immigrants really resents is immigrants in general.

Still, Fresno Mayor Alan Autry -- a former television actor -- did get enough mileage out of his half-baked scheme to land on national talk shows.

It's no wonder. Immigration is a hot topic. What the networks seem to have a tougher time covering are Latinos who have been in this country for generations.

So concludes the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which at its convention in Fort Worth last week released -- for the 10th year in a row -- its annual Network Brownout Report. The association found that in 2004, out of 16,000 stories aired on the network evening newscasts (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN), only 115 stories were exclusively about Latinos. That is just 0.72 percent. And it is down from what it was in 2003, when -- in a sample of 16,000 stories -- there were 131 stories about Latinos, or 0.82 percent.

Now that Latinos make up 14 percent of the U.S. population, that level of coverage is pathetic. So is the fact that on those rare occasions when the networks do cover Latinos, the ones in which they seem most interested are those who have just arrived, or have committed crimes. Of the 115 stories last year that were about Latinos, 40 of them dealt with immigration, or 34.7 percent.

The words "Latino" and "immigrant" are not synonymous. The media always forget that. Network executives wonder why they're missing out on the Latino market. Here's why: After Latinos have been in the United States for a generation or two, many of them tend to adopt the customs and culture of the mainstream and no longer identify with immigrants.

Personally, as a U.S.-born Latino, what I resent are simple solutions to complicated problems such as how to combat illegal immigration.

What we need is a whole new batch of complex solutions.

Case in point: The Illegal Immigration Enforcement and Social Security Protection Act of 2005, co-sponsored by Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., and Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas. The bill creates a new counterfeit-proof Social Security card and a national employment eligibility database, against which employers would have to verify a job applicant's legal status. It also punishes employers who fail to do that or knowingly hire illegal immigrants with fines of up to $50,000 and up to five years in prison. Lastly, it adds 10,000 new Homeland Security agents whose job it would be to make sure employers follow the law.

This is great stuff, and yet the really telling part is that a lot of folks in Washington don't give the Dreier-Reyes bill much of a chance at survival -- not as long as Republicans control Congress. And to think the GOP markets itself as the party of law and order.

Say, as we continue to discuss immigration reform, how about a moratorium on hypocrisy?

This writer is lost....he doesn't understand economics, he is a writer afterall with an agenda which makes it worse.

It would actually be good for the United States and Fresno to stop illegal immigration as well as a Moratorium In Immigration and here is why:

1) Fresno is in Tulare County, California, which is the number one county in the nation for growing agricultural products.

2) California's largest cash crop is "hay".

3) California's largest commodity crop is "dairy".

So, tell me again.....what we need all those illegal workers for? Hay is cut with machines. Cows are milked with machines. Americans will gladly do BOTH for the right price, which is our legal labor fair market way, in the United States.

See.....there is just alot of stuff I know that these "writers" don't. They are hoping there is no one out there that knows the truth about alot of things.....but there is!

Yes, there is alot of other stuff grown and picked in California, but there isn't anything at all about the work that Americans won't do because Americans have always done it in California, Texas, Montana, North Dakota, Kansas, Missouri, Tennesse, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, Maine...etc., etc., etc.

Now again, my Dad picked fruit in California and my Dad was from Missouri. He and his Buddy, Pat, rode on the back of a pick up all the to California to pick that fruit. My cousin picked lettuce in California and my cousin was from Missouri and used that money to pay for 4 year college education that gained him an electrical engineering degree and a career with AT&T.

All the boys in my high school bucked hay bales (before there were those expensive machines) for 5 cents a bale starting around 14 and had enough money by the time they turned 16 to buy a brand new hot car for cash. Then they bucked for college and by the time college came around, most of them had at least their first two years of tuition and living expenses "in the bank".

SO....Mr. Navarette.....you don't know what you're talkin' about. It's obvious that YOU haven't done any farming but some of us KNOW ALL ABOUT IT!! It fine work, it is profitable work, it is work that builds character, muscles, knowledge, and futures for all Americans!!

Giving that work away to foreign nationals, illegally, is a CRIME!!

AND, fortunately, your fine Mayor of Fresno understands these simple facts of life and laws of the Universe!!