One of the biggest problems in US economy of our times seems to grow from the basic law's of supply and demand, the unstoppable immigration! We have entered in a race of global businesses were there is an obvious gap between the high level Corporate businessmen and our common working class who have seen the fields of good paying jobs shrink, while hospitality and agricultural opportunities are filled by undocumented workers some times accepting less than minimum wages.
Today, the rich is more rich than ever and the poor have little advances on salary while dealing with a much depreciated dollar and higher cost of living.But the blame is always given to the weakest link, the human being without a voice, the exploited who will put his life on the line just to have a slim chance to live the American life even at the expense of never seeing those he love the most ever again!
Nobody dares to challenge the CEO for exporting thousands of jobs every year and investing their US profits in foreign lands. You don't hear the "Made in America" or Buy American" slogans anymore because labor movement have been silenced and media have made everybody believed that globalization is the best thing that ever happened to us.
The people in US is desperate to a point where even spiritually speaking the majority believe that we are at the end of times, there is not just a lack of trust in political leadership but in the economic wisdom of the scholars and the models they propose too! There are no more pure Capitalism or Communism in the world! China loves the changes that foreign capital investment have created for them while Castro is resigned to accept that Cuba's model is obsolete! No pure models could survive the new world order of global dependency.
And that may be precisely what US needs to understand about immigrant workers. We need them to survive the demands of times. I truly believe we have the solution of the problem at our fingertips but the politicization of the matter prevent good leaders from doing the right thing and keep polarizing the people in exchange for a seat of power. We are in debt, and immigrants are willing to pay for a workers visa without naturalization, Our agriculture and hospitality industries need hardworking hands and our children don't want to get their hands dirty! It's not rocket science, we can legislate good immigration reform as long as we stop cynicism and ethnic discrimination as a political tool to mobilize the white vote. We should have the brain power to write such legislation in a bipartisan way, but only is we have our people at heart and not another excuse to enlarge the pockets of the wealthy while impoverishing our low working class and pretending to export democracy to a world that already know we are not necessarily, the center of it!
Hello Jose, I am an international student studying in the US. Almost two years ago, I had to go through the H-1B visa process and its incredible to see the number of restrictions and bars that the government has on skilled immigrant workers, who can actually work to help this country rise. As you said, it really the time for a fair immigation overhaul that can actually bring justice to the people and this country.
ReplyDeleteJose hello. Good post. I recently read that in the 1940's and 1950's a CEO made $25 for every $1 of his/her workers. Today, its $275 for every $1!! Are the CEO's better than they were years ago? I think not. But yet, CEO's make a vastly disproportionate amount than "line workers" do. It's crazy. I'm not a person who objects to folks making as much money as they possibly can, so long as they do it ethically, but the discrepancy in salaries today from the top to the bottom is a disgrace.
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