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Harvey Kravetz's avatar

For god’s sake we are all immigrants or descendants. And we have won the lottery of life living with more than 90% of all the people on earth. STOP with this stupid anti immigration nonsense. If there is a problem it is a nonpartisan issue to deal with.

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Patricia  A  Martinez's avatar

We have a failed system about immigration that should of been dealt with years ago. Every time we have a Republican candidate running for the presidency, the first thing they used is, immigration. Then they turn it into racial issue by labeling these people. Instigating hatered and division. Yes , I agree with you. We have to fix it. But not by labeling, hatered and division.

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David Holzman's avatar

Biden is the best president of my lifetime, which began during the first summer of the Eisenhower Administration. He has been wonderful for this nation. The only place I disagree with him is on immigration.

Immigration is Big Biz' way to keep wages down. In 1980, meat packers were Black, and they were earning decent middle class wages. By that decade's end, meat packers were immigrants, toiling for barely above minimum wage, under atrocious conditions, where amputations were frequent.

Similar changes took place in other low-skilled, no-skilled lines of work, once again reducing wages. Cesar Chavez understood how immigration undercut his workers' wages, and reported illegal immigrants to ICE's predecessor.

In his book, Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth, author Roy Beck gave the lie to the notion that there are jobs Americans won't do. As part of his reporting, he interviewed Black poultry workers who'd recently lost their jobs to immigrants. Would they take back their jobs if offered?

No, they told him. They didn't want to sleep in their cars, or live many to a house, as the immigrants were doing on the poor remunerations they were receiving.

It is a form of American exceptionalism that says that we can keep importing foreign workers to take American workers' jobs. If we’re going to save our country for our progeny, we need to face the fact that we can’t save the world.

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Karen Jacob's avatar

It almost sounds like what was done in slavery, only the immigrants were barely paid and probably had to supply their own food and shelter.

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celeste k.'s avatar

Well said Harvey.

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Karen Jacob's avatar

Republicans have this mantra: immigrants (illegals) are violent, drug dealers, looking to sponge off our government, human exploitation. They evidently haven't read that immigrants (undocumenteds) have a much lower rate in violent crimes, that they have paid several billion dollars into our federal government and Social Security. How much in taxes has trump paid? Zero or $750 was a number I heard.

Round them all up and send them home. You think produce prices are high now? Just wait. Who are the landscapers? High school kids don't mow lawns any more. Who works in those dreadful Southern chicken factories? 800 undocumented workers did. Who worked in trump's vineyard?

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