<p>binx - you’re right - my analogy was not meant to give an answer. I don’t know what that answer is. I just wanted to point out a scenario that is a little closer to what happened. I am more sympathetic to those who were brought here as babies and feel as strongly about this being their home as my kid does. I feel that, as a country, we made this mess and, when it was in our interest to look the other way, we did. I’d like to know what brought her parents here. It could be that the father came to work in the tobacco fields in the Burlington area when tobacco was the mainstay of the economy. He may have been part of the government sponsored migrant worker program that was in place when the tobacco farmers couldn’t find workers for the fields. Maybe he decided to stay and really didn’t feel like he was hurting anyone by doing it - there would be plenty of work for him to do that no one else wanted. He could bring his wife here - there is work for her too. They have perhaps never been in trouble and are still working and raised a family here. I"m making a lot of this up but I know families just like this, and individually, they don’t ask for much. The trouble is in the numbers, but we let it happen and now I feel it is our moral duty to show some compassion. She was a victim of her parents’ best intentions. Now her child is a victim of hers.</p>
<p>“I feel that, as a country, we made this mess and, when it was in our interest to look the other way, we did.”</p>
<p>But to continue to look the other way is to reinforce the original “mess” or “messes.” Guilt which leads to non-enforcement is not an action plan; it’s a passive ‘remedy’ which signals further & different messes. And it is NOT ‘immigration reform,’ nor is it ‘social justice.’ For the mere <em>illegal</em> segment, it may be perceived as ‘rough justice,’ but in the larger scheme of legal + illegal immigration, it is immensely unjust to (1) those current immigrants who have gone through the legal process, often waiting for many years. (2) those who are still waiting for legal entry, with reasons just as compelling as those below our border.</p>
<p>There’s a huge amount of rationalization on this thread which its proponents may find ‘moral,’ but which in context is quite immoral.</p>
<p>I think the only thing “immoral” in this whole business is U.S. trained, backed, and funded death squads in Central America, and trade deals that have kicked millions of people off land they had worked for centuries. The rest is just tawdry: people trying to get by, other people exploiting them, and other folks being upset and threatened by their presence.</p>
<p>No one’s “threatened”, mini. No need to play Drama King, at least here. I’m not threatened at all. In fact, if anything I am in a service role to new immigrants from time to time. The fact that any U.S. citizen (which includes a large number of legal immigrants, & specifically legal Latino immigrants) wants to have an actual affirmative immigration policy with actual parameters, does not make those citizens exploiters themselves, or less ‘moral’ than citizens who prefer to continue to rationalize & look the other way. </p>
<p>Not to decide, not to plan, is to decide and to plan by omission. It always has been. It’s a fundamental philosophical/moral principle.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a moral principle involved at all. Just folks who want to get on with their lives, and political systems that help them or hinder them as the political moment warrants. </p>
<p>There are moral principles involved in death squads, the toppling of sovereign governments, the murder of priests and nuns, the kicking of millions of people off their land for purposes of profit, but here? Nah. One day in the 1980s millions of people were 'illegal"; the next day they were “legal”. Wasn’t any “morality” involved one way or the other.</p>
<p>This happens to be one thing John McCain got right. Political expediency one day was that he was for comprehensive immigration reform and supporting his President, next day he understood he couldn’t get there. He knew he could go on to that fight another day. Wasn’t a morality thing.</p>
<p>Interesting “moral” world you live in, mentally. Whether one survives is a practical question first, but a moral question when it involves a gov’t on either side of a border hindering or helping that. Doesn’t have to be violent & dramatic, although the picture of “death squads” and “being kicked off land” is obviously more interesting to you than the everyday need of others to make a living, is. </p>
<p>An immigration policy indeed has moral implications, just as the lack of one does. And the consequences to non-immigrants also have moral implications. Ideals (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness – & the ingredients of those, such as education, employment, just laws) are based on morals. They are not separate galaxies.</p>
<p>“the everyday need of others to make a living, is.”</p>
<p>As I said, I’m sorry that you feel threatened by the librarian having a job, or feel squeamish when you find fruit you can afford, and I’m sure you feel moral anguish every time you eat a cut-up chicken. I’m certain you know many people who have been deprived of a livelihood by the folks washing dishes in Chinese restaurants, and feel their pain acutely. My mother must feel awful every time she cashes that Social Security check, being that it is dripping in immorality.</p>
<p>Knock it off, mini. You know very well that I have not argued on this thread, or elsewhere, about a library employee having a job or not having a job. No, I don’t feel threatened. But you apparently feel threatened by the prospect of an affirmative code of policies regarding all immigration & consequences of both legal & immigration arrival. I’m one of the few posters on this thread who has not weighed in on the particular case presented by the OP. My concern is the lack of a policy & the indecisions, lack of leadership that result in this unfortunate situation to begin with. You’d rather obfuscate & distract the readers with irrelevancies.</p>
<p>You’re pretty irresponsible to insinuate that I’m ‘threatened,’ when my professional position brings me proximate to these situations all the time. I’ve never refused service to an illegally arrived individual needing an education. But I find the grievous abridgement of educational opportunities for others, in the same schools as the families of undocumenteds, a moral question. I don’t care what your moral prism is, because obviously it’s small, if it exists.</p>
<p>They could be washing dishes in China for $1 day instead. They take their chances and we enforce our rules when possible. It’s all fair. I’m really bored with your mother. If you feel so badly/immoral take care of her yourself and get her off the taxpayer’s back.</p>
<p>I think that the 12% of my salary over the years, and of the other parents on this board, have contributed mightily to your mother’s social security. </p>
<p>In addition, we have to pay an incredible amount on top of Social Security to support the illegals’ medicaid, food stamps, WIC, education, including special ESOL programs, increased police forces, arrests for petty and serious crimes, incarcerations, deportations, border patrols, and a miriad of other costs that we pay pretty much directly to and for them, through expensive government agencies. Oh, and the falling property values take their toll when they cram 30-50 people into a house and ruin neighborhoods. </p>
<p>My taxes would be a lot less without these involuntary costs to support them. </p>
<p>Would I pay more per month for groceries to avoid supporting them? Of course, and your mother would still have her Social Security. I would happily raise the contribution to 15% if I could opt out of supporting illegals, and I come out way ahead in my taxes, if I could subtract all of the costs for illegals.</p>
<p>swatparent beat me to it when it came to the area of SS. I wonder if mini believes that illegal immigrants (1) are the entire SS fund source; (2) universally pay into SS. There is a significant underground economy among undocumented workers. Those engaged in legitimate work (clearly the vast majority) shield their income mostly for fear of deportation & secondarily for the non-taxed benefit (or that is the secondary result). Those engaged in illegitimate enterprise (such as gangs & others) obviously are non-contributors to SS as well.</p>
<p>As to the benefits not paid into, but received, entire hospitals have declared bankruptcy & been shut down because of the mostly undocumented clientele using E.R.'s routinely as ‘free clinics.’ The closures of those hospitals have impacted the quality & availability of care for many people in the age bracket of mini’s mother.</p>
<p>Not a moral question? I think that’s exactly what it has become for many. here. Clearly, the OP’s post tells us the library worker is illegal. We were asked to give opinions based on the statements given to us. To say that the law says an illegal must get out once discovered is, well, the law. But to say the law says she must go, but since she may not have known, or to say but NOW she is willing to come clean so she can stay, that is a moral decision. It is the belief that what’s right is different from the law. Those of that opinion are saying to let her stay because she is now a good productive worker, and is fraudulently helping support mini’s mother- that is their moral decision. They are saying it’s the right thing to do despite the law. I’m not saying I agree or disagree with the point of view. I just feel that doing what one feels is right despite the law is probably the very definition of a moral decision.</p>
<p>I also don’t feel making an illegal intruder get out is throwing the book at them. In fact, I think that is a minimal punishment. If I tell the burglar “you’ll have to get out”- that’s a severe punishment?</p>
<p>Someone who is here illegally deserves nothing from us. No benefits whatsoever. It is not inhumane to deport someone who doesn’t belong here. They shouldn’t be jailed (too expensive and they aren’t worth it), they should be sent packing back to the respective country (whereever is cheepest to drop them off) with a note pinned to their shirt saying “Control your borders”. There should be no need to educate illegals. They shouldn’t be here. Is this a pragmatic view, no but it is how more people than will admit feel. I’ll make a call for all of you bleeding-hearts to open your bank accounts and homes so you can become safe houses for wayward illegals. How do you think you would be treated if you illegally entered another country? Not nearly as well as we treat ours…</p>
<p>I understand what you’re saying, younghoss, in your first paragraph. It’s my position, too. Yes, what is legal is not necessarily moral, and vice-versa. But it goes further than that. What is moral for the librarian is immoral for lots of others – including the legally arrived & those waiting to immigrate. Morality is never in a vacuum. Secondly, she is not a single case. That’s entirely the point. How does it affect me personally if this one person keeps her job & remain in the US? Little or not at all, obviously. One can have a compassionate inclination toward a moral good, but understand that the magnitude of similar situations is significant. Their sum total has moral implications that in context transform a single moral act for one into immoral implications for others.</p>
<p>The point I’ve been trying to make is that our legal framework, and lack thereof, about illegal & legal immigration (both) is immoral. The library employee is caught up in that. The ‘greater moral good’ (which is always the underpinning of opposing ‘unjust’ laws, an ‘unjust’ gov’t, an ‘unjust’ Latin American economy, etc.) has to be related to whether that particular good for one person or one group of persons will have or has had unjust, immoral consequences to others. Responsibility is part of morality. When it comes to the entire topic of immigration, it’s enforcement & lack thereof, responsible the US gov’t is not.</p>
<p>As to those claiming that people feel ‘threatened’ about an employee with a false SS# keeping her job, this is a narrow view that hardly supports the notion of citizen responsibility. My children went to private schools, for example. One is still in a private U. I was not personally negatively impacted by the wholesale populating of the public schools in my region by the children of undocumented workers. (I paid taxes for those workers’ children, but my own children’s education did not suffer on account of it.) But that is a very self-centered view of citizen responsibility. Others <em>have</em> been affected – & most especially segments of the population with no voice & no money. I do not vote, or make my moral decisions, from the horizon of my narrow self-interests. I know that a morally just society, and a set of enforced laws contributing to such a society, is the right thing to support & to work for.</p>
<p>“swatparent beat me to it when it came to the area of SS. I wonder if mini believes that illegal immigrants (1) are the entire SS fund source; (2) universally pay into SS. There is a significant underground economy among undocumented workers.”</p>
<p>Good data on this subject has already been posted on this, so no need to repeat it. Take away the contribution of undocumented workers to Social Security, and just see what happens to the retirement age. </p>
<p>I don’t think of Ronald Reagan as immoral because he declared an amnesty, either before he declared it or afterwards. (There are plenty of other reasons to think of him as immoral, though, beginning with Iran-Contra and ending with death squads.)</p>
<p>If, however, this is a moral issue for you, then I really do think you owe it to yourself to stop eating fruits and vegetables grown and picked in the U.S., stop eating chicken processed in the U.S., and certainly never go out to a Chinese restaurant. You might also want to check out clothing made in the U.S.A. You certainly don’t want to be personally tainted by immorality. Of course, you could decide that your morality stops when it comes to what you eat and wear.</p>
<p>How many of you who think this young library worker should be jailed and then deported have had meaningful communication with undocumented aliens? Really talked to them, grasped their situations, understood their desperation? </p>
<p>Epiphany, although I disagree with your position, I respect you as a committed professional education colleague. And I believe you are in CA and certainly recognize that public services in your state are strained, to say the least.</p>
<p>Mini, (I hope you won’t be offended) - I think sometimes you like to be a smart-aleck! But I sense your compassion and share your concept of social justice. </p>
<p>Like a few other posters in our at-least monthly immigration debate, I have made a serious study of Latin American history. Not only that, I have deep roots in the agricultural economy of central Washington, although I am far from there now. As the grandaughter of Mexican immigrants, you might say I have a horse in the race. Certainly my heart is in the discussion.</p>
<p>How much are we really willing to pay to solve this problem? I’m talking about more than paying higher food prices for US-grown food if (and it’s a BIG IF) a sufficient number of laborers who are US citizens or even green card holders could be found to work in the labor-intensive agricultural sectors. I grew up on a farm and have done that kind of work. If you have ever walked down a quarter-mile long row of asparagus plants bent over with a knife in one hand and lug basket in the other, you know that no one who has better options will do that row after row, day after day. I assure you, these people are not taking jobs away from anyone. No doubt, many of them use public services and increase the tax burden for all. But really, if we believe a well-done job should provide the worker with a living wage such that he/she can meet basic needs out of pocket or through employer-provided benefits (and I do believe that!) the tax payers are subsidizing the farm-owner’s labor costs in much the same way that they also subsidize part of his irrigation cost through the Bureau of Reclamation’s Columbia Basin project. My dad was one of those farmers, and he was not getting rich by exploiting workers. He paid the market rate for labor and hoped the market rate for his crop would be enough to cover his fuel and fertilizer expense, equipment payments, and farm mortgage. For him, ultimately, it wasn’t. </p>
<p>I’m also talking about more than fair trade coffee. How much would all of our food and consumer products cost if all workers contributing to their production earned a living wage? Last January in Washington, DC, I bought a pint of fresh raspberries for $1.89. I asked the produce man, and he said they were from the Guatemalan highlands. How was it possible for a delicate, highly perishable berry to be transported from Guatemala and profitably sold at that price? </p>
<p>Like Mini, I’ve posted before about how Mexican peasants have been adversely affected by NAFTA, and immigration, much of it illegal, has increased markedly from the most affected regions. This is not merely an issue of bad government in Mexico. </p>
<p>What if, historically, we had been willing to pay the price? If we had said, yes, we will pay 3 dollars for a pound of bananas if that meant that the United Fruit Company would pay workers a living wage rather than cut a mutually beneficial deal with repressive dictators. Or what if we had recognized that leftist movements in Latin America arose out of local political-economic conditions rather than a world-wide Soviet Russian-inspired plot? And what if we had pressured right-wing dictators to implement human rights reforms rather than training death squads to bolster their power in an attempt to keep the communists from eventually rushing our own southern border? </p>
<p>Here’s another “illegal alien” story [Tucson</a> Weekly : Currents : Saints at the Border](<a href=“Saints at the Border | Currents Feature | Tucson Weekly”>Saints at the Border | Currents Feature | Tucson Weekly)
When I met Luisa, she was an education paraprofessional working with ESL students in Spokane (she is now a certified teacher). Before that, she and her family lived in the basement of St. Anne’s Church in Spokane for SEVEN YEARS. In El Salvador, she and her siblings witnessed the murder of their father and the brutal rape of their mother. I know they just missed the cut-off for the Reagan amnesty, and I’m sorry I don’t remember the details of her family’s status eventually being resolved. But I wonder - if she had for some reason left the sanctuary and been apprehended, what would the CC verdict be - send her back, or let her stay?</p>
<p>“How many of you who think this young library worker should be jailed and then deported have had meaningful communication with undocumented aliens?”</p>
<p>For 10 years, I worked on issue related to pesticides and farmworker housing in central Washington for our state board of health. I met hundreds of undocumented workers, 47 crowded into a trailer or living by riverbanks, ALL of whom paid into Social Security, had federal income tax withheld, paid for unemployment insurance, and workers comp, none of which they would ever collect upon. And I watched the population of workers change, beginning around 1997. Prior to that, there was a shortage of farmworker labor (Mexicans from central and northern Mexico were no longer coming, or were settling out, building homes, starting small businesses, etc, all around the area), and growers were desperate for more labor (some would even send their own buses down to New Mexico and Arizona in hopes of rounding some up). Then the flood of desperate immigrants from southern Mexico and Guatemala began. Unlike the earlier immigrants, there were very few families. It was almost all single males, most of whom being young, and most of them having lost what little hold they have had “back home”. There no longer WAS a “back home”. Whereas among my older Mexican friends, many of them or members of their families returned to Mexico to build homes and businesses, the NAFTA wave is totally rootless. They neither resemble the previous generation of Mexican immigrants, nor the 200,000 undocumented Irish immigrants working in eastern cities. </p>
<p>There are big moral issues here, most of which have to do with corporate capitalism and their morally bankrupt government agents creating millions of homeless people. The current crop of immigrants are not people being pulled to the U.S. by the lure of opportunity, but pushed off their land and banished from their communities to make way for the lure of opportunity for big business.</p>
<p>Will the country be better off if we send 12,000,000 home to start a revolution in their home countries? I sincerely doubt it, but it is irrelevant in any case because it isn’t going to happen. Not under the Republicans, not under the Democrats, and not under anyone else. So, really, the only open question - and the only moral question - is how do we choose to live with them here?</p>
<p>Mexico in trouble because despite significant oil riches it has not been able to move the economy forward, much like many Third World countries. The number that lost jobs in agriculture is only a small fraction of the overall number that has come to the US.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why the issue of farm workers is being raised here, as the OP was not a farm worker, nor are all farm workers illegal immigrants, nor do the majority of the 20 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. work on farms.</p>
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<p>Your assertions are difficult to believe, mini, as I can’t imagine how you would know that ALL of these farm workers paid for unemployment insurance, etc., nor that they would never collect it, let alone whether those 100s were in fact, undocumented. Here is some relevant data on that off-topic topic: [url=<a href=“ETA | U.S. Department of Labor”>ETA | U.S. Department of Labor]The</a> National Agricultural Workers Survey, Employment & Training Administration (ETA) - U.S. Department of Labor<a href=“In%202002,%20only%20about%2053%%20self-reported%20as%20undocumented”>/url</a>.</p>
<p>While it is unfortunate for this young woman that she will be forced to face the consequences for her predicament, it is not as though she is being sent to the gallows. Mexico is a popular vacation destination for millions of people, and her brother and parents will likely be traveling with her.</p>
<p>Yes, during the 90s I taught high school government in the Columbia Basin. I always had ESL students, and I wrote my own materials and pulled them aside and taught them in Spanish. And my experience was like yours, Mini --starting in 1996-97, I had students who had never been in school before, straight from Oaxaca, and my written Spanish materials were useless. One student’s guardian did come for a parent conference. He was 22 (the guardian, his brother - the student was 17). </p>
<p>I saw the student two years ago. He was working in a restaurant but was about to quit temporarily for a better job in the potato harvest, and he told me he had learned to read in English and Spanish and was going to start at the community college in town later that fall.</p>
<p>Bay, I think farm workers are relevent - I think it is very likely the library worker’s parents worked in agriculture.</p>