Our current immigrant laws give priority to
highly skilled people. The argument goes that these people will benefit our
society more than ordinary folk so they should be given priority.
On the base of the Statue of Liberty is
says: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden
door. “
Do you see a disconnect there? The big
complain against illegal aliens is that they take jobs away from our citizens.
But in reality they take the jobs our citizens don’t want; jobs that take a lot
of hard work at low pay.
If you have ever taken a cruise take you
have likely noticed that the crew comes from countries other than our own. In
fact, it is hard to find any Americans at all working on these cruise ships.
Why? The work is too hard and they don’t want it.
I think we have our immigration policy
backwards. Perhaps priority should given
to those who are the most needy to described on the Statue of Liberty and that
is the reality of what we need and our economy would collapse without these
people. My guess is that these people also are among the most upwardly mobile
folk in the country working harder for the American dream than most Americans.
There is wisdom in the motto of the Statue of Liberty.
If we placed more emphasis on enabling our
citizens to obtain higher education we would not need to give priority to the
well trained as we do now.
Food for thought.
Hear hear.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I view the issue of immigrants in the US as being very closely related to the issue we discussed earlier on "economic nationalism" (re: Reich). I think the situations are rather similar, and am sure you don't.
ReplyDeleteThose who bash immigrants and the work they do, are, to me, merely practicing Reich's "economic nationalism" close to home. And yes, I oppose it both here and abroad.