As for as being related to the Hatfields and McCoys – I would not brag too much about that. Those are a few of the people the Native-Americans should not have let in.

Maybe at 50+ you are too old to actually fight for this country, but perhaps you have some sons, daughters, cousins you can have sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

B99 – As a matter a fact I do have a documents that are legal. The document may not have your opinion of what it should be titled as “Native-American”. Here is some information for you and I will be short with my proof. I am part Cherokee and believe it or not I am part Chickasaw which the Cherokee and Chickasaw actually went to war at one time over hunting fields. They did not get along. Sometime in the late 1700′s my tribe ended up in what today is known as West Virgina.
Also, I don’t know if you are familiar with the Hatfield’s and McCoy well I am kin to both sides, they did not get along either. Just thought I would throw the Hatfield’s and McCoy in for some history on me. I was born in West Hamlin, West Virgina over 50 years ago. I will stand up for my country, I will also fight for my county. It is what it is today and I don’t worry and about the pass and what my family had to go though. We are living in the greatest county in the world that is why everyone wants to be here. But we still need to protect it. Hope you found this fascinating. God bless America!

For corporations, the most malleable large cost of all their inputs is the cost of labor. Not taxes, not machinery, not rent – but labor. To maximize profit (or minimize loss) capitalists try to pay as little as possible. In this effort, they have had the cooperation of the nation’s chambers of commerce in leaning on Federal and state governments to keep wages low. So minimum wages, adjusting for inflation, are decades behind where they should be. This holds downs wages for the entire working class. This is in large measure why our economy collapsed – people with too little money being saddled with debts too large to pay back in their lifetimes. We were promised an ownership society- we got a sharecropper society (I owe, I owe, off to work I go). But the drudgery and danger of minimum wage work precludes it from being a way out of indebtedness.

To fill this gap in labor, capital – with the knowing wink of governments across America – permitted the entry of hundreds of thousands, then millions, of undocumented workers. These are jobs citizens would do if the wages and benefits were at the level they should be. The capitalists who run these operations care not a wit about economic dislocation of the citizenry, not a bit about local culture clashes as neighborhoods, schools and shopping areas turn over, nor the long-term effects of a nation going from being a solidly recompensed organized labor force in the core sectors, to unorganized near-slave-waged work in the peripheral sector. Benefit packages, sick days, and regular wage increases have disappeared. So LET’S BLAME THE MEXICANS.

You DID recognize that it’s the corporations that are hiring cheap foreign labor. And then you demand that these laborers stop tearing down our country. Is it not clear to you that the effort by the corporations is to lower US salaries to the level of Mexico? And that the only thing that stands in the way of parity is that Mexican wages too have dropped over the decades. This is why Mexicans (and other Latinos) are coming here to work. Don’t knock them for doing so – they’ll pick your crops, bus your restaurant table, landscape your yard, and staple your roof in place. Adn with the wages you (we) now make, they are the only labor we can afford to hire.

But that’s unbridled capitalism.

Interesting that you’d bring up slavery…Is that cool with you when it’s legal?

Illegal, or unlawful, is used to describe something that is prohibited or not authorized by law or, more generally, by rules specific to a particular situation.

Illegal immigration refers to immigration across national borders in a way that violates the immigration laws of the destination country. Illegal immigrants are also known as illegal aliens to differentiate them from legal immigrants. In politics, the term may imply a larger set of social issues and time constraints with disputed consequences in areas such as economy, social welfare, education, health care, slavery, prostitution, legal protections, voting rights, public services, and human rights. Conversely, Illegal emigration refers to unlawfully leaving a country.

Persons being here in the USA illegal insults me as a American and dose not have respect for my country or the people living it it.

“The illegal immigrants need to do the difficult job of building up their own countries rather than tearing down ours.”

Some of what you are saying is a part of a larger economic context; you just end up blaming the wrong people.

The consolidation of industries and union breaking during the 80′s (starting in the 70′s) is part a bigger picture, specifically a shift of an economic model. In the 70s and 80s, the US ruling class (CEOs, stockholders, capitalists, politicians) reached consensus; they shifted away from demand-side economics (Keynesianism) to supply-side economics (neoliberalism or Friedmanism). Demand-side economics means that more capital is put into public works and social programs, with an emphasis on manufacturing and industry. Supply-side economics means “free trade,” deregulation, de-unionization, lower corporate taxation, privatization, so called “trickle down economics.” The consequence of this has been devastating for working people worldwide, but in the US, the standard of living for workers has not increased since the 70′s. Yet, the average CEO now makes over 400 times what a worker makes; this increase happened mostly during the 80-90s. While, this shift of economic models has hurt US workers, it has devastated workers in Latin America even more. You referenced how the “big companies” affected industry in your town; other big companies (ie: corporations) have turned Latin America into a corporate plantation. For instance, the US ruling class has always controlled the Mexican economy and political landscape; thus, Mexico’s trade policy was changed from an import to an export driven economy (ie: NAFTA, deregulation). So an agrarian country (Mexico) was gradually changed to a country where corporations control agriculture and build “industrial zones” where people work for six dollars a DAY. Thus, creating a situation where there is virtually no middle class, basically a hand full of rich people and millions of poor people desperate to provide for their families beyond six dollars a day.
Essentially, you, your family and immigrants from Latin America are experiencing the consequences of this in different ways.

This is not the fault of undocumented immigrants; they did not gather in the back of some smoky room in the 70′s, inventing a new economic model to restore and increase profits. You are blaming the wrong people, the ruling class is at fault; the CEOs, the politicians, the corrupt governments (Latin America, US and worldwide) that are complicit in the gutting of the world economy (globalization).

“Divide and Conquer” is the ruling classes’ greatest tool; they pit male workers against female workers, black workers against white workers, union workers against non-union works and yes , undocumented workers against native born workers. This minimizes class-consciousness; workers are too busy fighting with other workers, while the people at the top of society are laughing all the way to the bank. Yet, if you look at labor history; one of main reasons labor unions were won in the 1920-1930s was because people organized blacks, whites, men, women, native-born and immigrants. The last thing the ruling class wants people to realize (or re-learn) is that there are two real divisions in society, workers and capitalists.

In addition, there is no such thing as “your job,” ownership implies control, you don’t own the office, equipment, assembly line or what have you (unless you own your own business). Furthermore, if something is yours you can do anything you want with it; if I own my car, I can paint it a different color and do whatever I want to it. In most workplaces, workers are told when to start work, when to go on break, how much work to do, what to wear, where to park and when to go home. The owners of the company decide whom to give jobs to; if they own the means of production, they own the jobs. They decide which workers to give the jobs to; and they have an explicit goal to maximize profits; which means they will be happy to pit workers against other workers. Workers are wage slaves, jobs are rented to them by capitalists to maintain and increase their profit; the only thing workers “own” is the ability to sell their labor to a capitalist. All workers are being used; that’s what “profit” is; workers (native-born, undocumented..ect) work hard to provide for their families, yet the people who do no work reap the benefits.

The only thing driving Americans away from these jobs is low wages. The wages were not low in these businesses till the 1980′s and the growth of Iowa Beef Packers, Tyson, Smithfield Foods and others which imported illegal immigrants to break the unions and cut wages. The immigrants are just being used by the big companies to drive wages down and take away from the workers. Once that is done they will be disposed of too and they will NOT have a better life.

The illegal immigrants need to do the difficult job of building up their own countries rather than tearing down ours.

Go work at these meat packing plants where workers are abused and exploited, sometimes worse than how they would be treated in their own country.

No one wants to work for minimum wage, you want your cushy office job with the view, with a 9-5 Monday through Friday workweek, and a good paycheck to pay for your plasma screens and your SUVs.

My family came into this country for the same reasons your ancestors did 200+ years ago- to find a better place to raise a family. It was okay when it was your ancestors that needed to get away from being oppressed, but now because it’s not convenient for you, you want to prevent others from coming in because they’re “taking your jobs?”

Illegal immigrants do the jobs that “American Citizens” don’t want to do. If you don’t want them here, then take the job they’re doing.

These meat packing jobs paid a good living wage before companies were allowed to bring illegal immigrants. The arguments that Americans will not do this work are nonsense or worse. Both of my grandfathers, several uncles and many friends worked in the packing houses in Iowa for most of their lives when the wages were still sufficient to live on. The ONLY reason for bringing in immigrants to do this work is to cut the wages and life of the workers.

I feel sorry for the Mexican people with the corruption and poverty driving them to come here. Bringing that poverty and corruption to the United States will not help them. Driving down the wages and life here will only help them minimally and briefly. To do any good everyones life needs to be improved. Campaigning for relaxed immigration, amnesty and no deportation only serves to hurt the Americans in the short term and then the Mexicans when our life style is torn down.

You may not like me for saying this , but I hope it is your job taken and your family hurt by immigrants coming here and driving out the very few honest employers left. I am tired of my family and friends being hurt by this garbage.