Thread: THE NEW TRAIL OF TEARS

Hope this is not a duplicate

The new trail of tears
Posted by Nick Montalto September 04, 2007 9:22AM
Categories: Race & Immigration
Growing fear and spreading hardship are the bitter harvest of the country's failure to deal with its illegal immigration problem.

Nativist forces are urging more aggressive round-ups and deportations, and for those immigrants not caught in this widening net, a war of "attrition," by making life miserable for unauthorized workers, so that they voluntarily leave.

We had two very good examples of the two approaches this past week. Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended on the Koch Foods chicken processing plant in Fairfield, Ohio, arresting 160 workers suspected of being in the country illegally.

Once again, mothers and fathers separated from their children and from one another; once again, extended family members, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, along with friends and neighbors, experiencing the pain of separation and the disruption of normal family life.


Also last week, the AFL-CIO, ACLU and other concerned parties filed suit against the federal government's recent new rule requiring employers to fire within 90 days workers whose names don't match the social security numbers under which they're working. In his first State of the Union address on Sunday, Mexican President Felipe Calderon used the word "persecution" to describe this attempt to evict Mexican immigrants from the US workplace.

As far as the deportation weapon is concerned, it's clear that, even with the huge increases in budget for immigration enforcement, only a small percentage of the current undocumented population will ever be apprehended in this manner. According to ICE statistics for FY2006, 185,431 aliens were removed from the United States, a number that probably doesn't even offset the annual gain of new unauthorized workers, although the Border Patrol is trumpeting the success of new measures to control illegal entry on the southern border.

As far as the "iron fist" strategy of attrition is concerned, one major consequence will be a huge surge in people working off the books, thereby depriving the treasury of the estimated 50 billion in tax revenue paid by unauthorized workers from 1996 to 2003. Of course, being "on the books" with an invalid social security number, and in effect, making a contribution to the people of the United States to sustain the social security system, is now, by some twisted logic, considered further evidence of wrong-doing.

Moreover, driving undocumented workers further underground creates a lucrative business opportunity for human traffickers, recruitment opportunities for organized criminal gangs, further weakening of labor law enforcement and standards, and a ready-made formula for the creation of a new underclass in the United States.

The stereotype of the unauthorized worker is the footloose single male. The reality is that most unauthorized workers live in families, and many of those families are of mixed status, meaning some members are citizens -- either born in the US or naturalized -- others are legal residents, others have temporary status or have pending applications for legal status, and others are illegal.

If you look at the real impact of the iron fist strategy, you're talking about millions of additional family members beyond the estimated 12 million unauthorized immigrants. If you count friends, sweethearts, neighbors, co-workers, and landsmen from the old country, the degrees of separation, especially in a state like New Jersey, are probably fewer than six.

Surely as a nation, we can do better than this. Is it too much to admit that legal channels for unskilled labor to enter the United States for the last two decades were inadequate to meet the economy's need? Is it too much to admit that powerful commercial interests in the United States, in collusion with federal authorities, encouraged desperate Mexicans for generations to cross the border illegally in search of seasonal and other employment?

And now the xenophobes want to drive them out of the country, much as they drove Native American tribes west of the Mississippi after passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and tried to persuade emancipated slaves in the North to go back to Africa prior to the Civil War? Shouldn't sweat equity, whether earned in the cotton fields of the South or the vegetable fields of California, whether earned as house slaves in New York 200 years ago or as nursing home workers in New Jersey today, be recognized in deciding who belongs to this great nation?


http://blog.nj.com/njv_nick_montalto/20 ... .html#more

More name calling and trying to bring out the guilt trip

Also last week, the AFL-CIO, ACLU and other concerned partiesfiled suit against the federal government's recent new rule requiring employers to fire within 90 days workers whose names don't match the social security numbers under which they're working.

Should read: the AFL-CIO, ACLU and other TRAITORS

In his first State of the Union address on Sunday, Mexican President Felipe Calderon used the word "persecution" to describe this attempt to evict Mexican immigrants from the US workplace.

Who cares what you think Calderon. Worry about your cesspool of a country and leave ours alone.

LET ATTRITION DO IT'S JOB. Then what's left can be found and deported. LEGAL IMIGRANTS should have no fear.......

This propaganda is really getting old and worn out.

They need to stop trying to compare American citizens plight to their criminal activity and their illegal presence in the country. They seem to forget that they are not legallly here and can leave anytime they want to if there is something about this country they do not like and go back to the country that gave them citizenship.
I got past the Trail of Tears and the Civil Rights Movement and soon I will get past their being removed from this country. Either by deportation or by taking jobs they are not legally entitled to away.

"Someone" posted a comment.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

"Someone" posted a comment.

Excellent!

Sob story alert.

Once again, mothers and fathers separated from their children and from one another; once again, extended family members, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, along with friends and neighbors, experiencing the pain of separation and the disruption of normal family life.

"ONCE AGAIN" ANOTHER SOB STORY. All countries in the world have limits to the inclusion and exclusion of extended families joining LEGAL immigrants only. Some family members can join them and some can't. Why should this same favor be granted ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS?
Illegal immigrants KNOW whether or not they are taking a chance coming here. They KNOW that they are breaking the law. They KNOW that eventually they will be found and deported. They KNOW that there will be separation from other family members, although some of them don't give a damn, as long as they can stay. AND they KNOW they will never have a "normal family life" as long as they are here.

Instead of another SOB STORY, 'Nick Montalto' should try doing stories on the affects that illegal aliens have on our country. Maybe he should start off with the crimes illegal aliens commit against women and children.

I agree butterbean.