Yesterday the National Economic Council called a meeting of the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, which the Biden-Harris administration launched in 2021, to discuss the impact of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the partial closure of the Port of Baltimore on regional and national supply chains.
About once a week I stay late at my office, seeing patients until 8 PM and then doing charts, notes, reviewing test results, patient messages, and even a new post for my substack after all the clinical work is done (!), but as I drive home around midnight there has been a highway construction crew working through the night on route 70 outside of Philly. In cold weather, freezing weather, rain, heat waves, and everything in between. They are breathing in road construction dust and VOC’s, losing hearing to jackhammers and heavy machinery, increasing their personal health risks with sleep deprivation and night shift work, and putting themselves in harm’s way with potentially careless and sleepy and perhaps drunk drivers who speed by. Immigrants and non-immigrants, I’m sure there are both working those hours — I salute their courage, stamina, and work ethic. I’m sure there are many complex reasons why they have to work these hours at such peril and personal cost, so that we who work the day shifts might be less inconvenienced by road construction.
But it always feels wrong driving past them, exhausted as I am from a full day of working, too, but headed to a bed and a privileged place in the daylight the next day.
And let's not forget our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents who were immigrants, who worked hard at difficult jobs for a better life, and to make it possible for us, their descendants, to be privileged. While going through my mother's documents, I found a letter that my grandfather, a Polish immigrant who escaped the pogroms in 1917, wrote to her in 1974, shortly before he died. He wrote, "...I am a good American too, and think that this country has given millions of people a freedom and chance in life that no other country in the world has done and it's worth to be an American."
That's a wonderful passage, Pamela. Three of my grandparents emigrated to the U.S. for a better life -- all from Canada. One grandmother came down to be a NH millworker girl at age 12. Their ancestors came to Canada from France in the 1600s for similar reasons -- opportunity. Our small city was largely composed of French-Canadian, Irish, Greek, Poles and Lithuanians, people who worked in the many mills and shoe factories when I was a child. There were hardly any people of color. Today it's far more common to see retail signs and contractor vehicles with Spanish names. There's also a growing Indian population, mainly of tech and medical workers. We should welcome them all, as they make the fabric of our community more colorful.
All four of my grandparents were immigrants from northern Europe. All from different countries. "McFarland, USA" is a wonderful movie with Kevin Costner who brings his family to the little town and meets Hispanic people for the first time. He is a high school teacher who starts a cross country team with a few students. The kids are farm workers who can really run. The Rotten Tomatoes scores are 80/88. The film is based on a true story. It is inspirational.
Our family members might have known each other back in the 1600's, my father's ancestors emigrated to Canada maybe even a little earlier than that. I often wonder about them and what their lives were like, why did they leave France? They were still in Canada up until the time of the civil war.
French citizens were offered the chance to own property if they successfully homesteaded in New France for 3 years -- it was a way for France to reinforce its foothold on the continent and expand its lucrative fur trade. Emigrants were given long slices of property (measured in arpents) on the North side of the St. Lawrence River to clear and make productive; they could fish from their waterfront along the river. The slices were about 400 ft wide and went back a few miles. My father's ancestor was given such a plot, and he and others established a church in the town. The small stone chapel remains today, and there is a plaque of granite with a map of the plots and land owners -- our ancestors are shown on it. His original house foundation is still there on a bluff overlooking the river, although a newer house sits on it. I've had the chance to visit these sites, along with the town my ancestors came from in France -- the churches where the brothers were baptized and married are still there.
Thank you for that Doug, I’m 77 and have been hearing about family history all my life, I have never heard of that program before, we have a large family who are very interested in our past, we were called LaMontagne until the late 1800’s. My grandparents born in the 1890’s spoke French as well as English. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they had been part of a program like that, what an opportunity that must have been, that’s a lot of land and on the water, I’d be sorely tempted by an offer like that today.
Dick, one resource I found to be very helpful to get information about family history (which wouldn't be helpful to your family) was compiled by a Catholic priest who shares my last name. He has done a lot of research into the family history, going back to France. I used his work to visit locations in Canada and France. Similarly, my mother's uncle was a priest and commissioned someone in Montreal in the 1930s to compile a family history on her side. The work was extensive, and typewritten pages and photos were bound into a thick book which is now on my possession. Unfortunately, it's written in French, and while I can discern much of what is on the pages, Google translate is often of little help, as there are some corrected typos which mess with character reading software.
My point is, you may find research that a priest did on your family's history. I can also recommend a book -- A People's History of Quebec by J. Lacoursiere and R. Philpot which covers French colonization of the province and extends into the 20th century -- I found it very interesting. Another book which I own but haven't yet read is 'Jeanne Chevalier, Fille du Roi' by L. Levesque. Filles du Roi were women sent to New France by King Louis XIV to help populate their territory.
I suspect that France stopped its homesteading program by 1763, when they lost Canada to Great Britain in the French and Indian War ;-) Such colonization was inherently dangerous -- my ancestors on my dad's side who I mentioned before was killed by Iroquois, as was one on my mom's side. The Indians didn't take too kindly to French settlers exploiting their resources and stealing their land.
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.
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.
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.
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?
My mother's parents both came to the New World from Yugoslavia, and had 7 children, and worked so hard to provide for them through the depression, doing work that wasn't what they were used to. At the beginning, they were moderately well off; by the end, well, not so much. We mustn't forget them - the ones who survived through the depression! They were immigrant heros!
Thanks Dr. McCormick for that heartfelt expression of gratitude for everyone who believes in the dignity and equality of all human beings! Thanks Pamela for reminding all of us that we, too, most likely are the descendants of immigrants! And thanks Dr. Richardson for a recounting of the many positions that our political parties have avowed and disavowed throughout our history as a nation as well as how the current MAGAites are now positioning themselves to be in the protectionist thread that has really never been totally absent in American politics. Since we, as a nation, have been able to effectively counter this protectionist stance before, we must work diligently to do so again!
Pamela, that brought chill to my spine and tears to my eyes as I too am from immigrant grandparent from Italy who I never heard them speak unjustly about the opportunity they had in coming to America. They were not rich, but they had a good life and raised productive children, my parents, and grandchildren, myself included. They too, we’re so grateful for the opportunity afforded them in coming here and became naturalized citizens who lived by the rule of law in this country, proud to be Americans.
When immigration is used as a political weapon, every American is a target. Those who use it in such a way are, therefore, Un-American. Shame on them and their
Maybe immigration people should screen their applicants better. They let in a draft dodger who later dealt in shady real estate deals, and owned brothels.
Beautifully said and communicated with feeling. I admire your capacity for empathy. There is such scarcity of it in those with privilege, power and status.
yes, I too always feel grateful for the roadwork crews out there making it possible for us to commute or even just get around town, when they are out under a blazing sun toiling in the dust, heat and noise, or in the cold of winter, or really, any time at all, taking all the risks associated with inattentive or inconsiderate motorists.
Least we not forget that Texas through HB 2127 prohibited local municipalities and counties from mandating water breaks for workers. Thanks to Judge Maya Guerra Gamble it was ruled unconstitutional. But that’s how Texas wanted to treat their work force. Taking away protections for heat related injuries.
Florida HB 433, effective July 1.Our own version of Texas’ “Death Star Law”.
“The Florida legislature passed a bill on Friday that prevents any city, county, or municipality in the state from adopting legislation aimed at protecting outdoor workers from extreme heat, prompting many to call out lawmakers for being “cruel” to the “most vulnerable workers”.
Karen here, also from Pgh, PA. Grandfather-immigrant, coal miner at age 12 from Hungary.
Great grandparents-immigrants from Hungary, great-g-ma (15 yrs old) sponsored by upper middle class Hungarian Jewish family living in Squirrel Hill as a nanny. After she’d worked off her obligations they saw to she married a good man and remained life-long friends.
My great-grandparents had 5 children. All participated in the war efforts (WWII). Their only son served in Europe, injured in France.
Once the miners began unionizing, great-grandma made moonshine to support the family until they saved up enough to open a very nice department store. Included a butcher shop and fabric department. She didn’t want great-grandpap going back into the mines. The miners were looking for worker protections that could save their lives. Just like the ones FL and TX stripped away.
I came from immigrants looking for a better life, and willing to work hard for it.
The people coming today are looking for work. Looking to take care of their families. The same reasons they’ve always come. Mel Brooks movie, “Blazing Saddles “ says it best after Asian railroad worker faints in the dessert;
Lyle; “Come on, boys! The way you're lollygaggin' around here with them picks and them shovels, you'd think it was a hundert an' twenty degrees...! Can't be more than a hundert an' fourteen! [Asian railroad worker collapses from heat exhaustion] “Dock that Chink a day's pay for napping on the job.”
I recently watched Blazing Saddles again. It was a “date” movie when I was in HS. Fifty years later I wonder what was so funny, though it was clearly satirical even at the time. Mel hit every group; women, African Americans, Chinese, cowboys even the military.
My favorite is when a young woman had to go to court to get permission for an abortion. It was granted, but Paxton ( a person with a questionable reputation at best) nixxed it
It is hard to decide which of the evil trio is worse. Paxton gets more press, but Dan Patrick was a loser as sports reporter when I lived in Houston. Now he has illusions of grandeur and is an idiot. Well, Abbott is the leader of the pack of wolves. Freud was right. Man is wolf to man, especially this pack.
At least 'today' we can learn of these acts of vile-ence by clicking onto NEWS, providing of course.., you are a "subscriber"! Ya.., that'll be $12.99 a month, thank you, which kinda ticks me off, bbbuttt.. I'm trying to re-subscribe as I seem to be missing too much. PayPal is standing by.
‘Taking away protections’ are the key words… too many corporate interests don’t want to pay to keep labor safe … they want it cheap and illegal. Thank you HCR for a beautifully written article.
Valid point. But let's forget Governor Abbott's treatment of these immigrants and the abuse that they endured. Some of them died because the border petrol was prevented by the national guard from helping them.
I'm thinking that Texas is a very hostile, inhuman and violent state riddled with corruption (Paxton for one). I'm sure there could be serious ramifications for everyone especially since they are a big oil state, but maybe they should secede. I fear for people trying to cross the border though.
JustRaven, I have been thinking about the road work going on for two years as the city built a new sewer pumping station across the street along with the street improvements. Immigrants did all of the dirty hot work, roofing, sidewalk cement, road repairs, landscaping elements on the borders of the pump house. Our lawn crew are immigrants as is any roofing project going on in the neighborhood. Then there are the immigrants who pick our food, work on dairies, and are part of the workforce in slaughterhouses and food processing. Incidentally, we have a house in the neighborhood which has a sign which reads: "This is Calipuya land" (local Native Americans who were here before). Personally in my garden, I am always mindful about this and treat the land with respect. No spraying of harmful chemicals, etc. I am grateful for the land and the bounty it gives us, enabling us to also share with our neighbors, always remembering that I am a late comer.
I can recall road trips taken in the seventies, eighties and into the nineties where traffic came to a halt where construction, maintenance and repair crews would need to stop traffic flow in one direction at a time to bypass construction areas causing long delays. Now, with the use of high-powered lighting, construction crews can work in areas at times when there’s much less traffic on the major roadways and not causing delays. “Progress is our most important product”.
I find critics of using federal $$ to repair the Key Bridge, like representatives from South Carolina, whining toddlers—“It’s not fair!!” SC has received millions from the infrastructure act to repair its highways and bridges and has it sent the money back to the federal government in protest? Ummm, no it has not. So tired of the hypocrisy.
ML, this is the usual R mantra. Dead silence when the bridge collapse (or any other disaster) is in their state and screaming protest if it is elsewhere. Also this bridge is part of the Interstate system. We were just saying yesterday while discussing all this how tired we are of this sort of ugly selfishness and hypocrisy.
Biden made a point of that in his State of the Union address. He mentioned his infrastructure bill (which a lot of you vetoed, but were sure happy to take the money. Maybe you should give it back.
An excerpt from a joint Press Conference with the Governor Moore, Senators Van Hollen and Cardin, various Federal, State, and Coast Guard officials on the collapsed bridge.
According to Governor Moore, the Biden Administration immediately released sixty million dollars to start debris removal, particularly the several thousand tons sitting atop that bloated boat. The highlight, for me, was Representative Kweisi Mfume's appeal to bi-partisanship owing to the importance of the bridge, the port, and the estuary.
Thank you for your note, Lynell. Let us hope that Representative Mfume is viewed by the G.O.P. as a a good Congressman and decent human being making a heart-felt plea on behalf of his constituents.
Great clip! Thanks for sharing. I went to nursing school at Univ of MD in Baltimore, My daughter is a UMD College Park graduate (go TERPS) and I worked as a ICU RN at the world renown R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center on Pratt Street for many years! It was a very very sad moment to see the tragedy of the bridge collapse and the victims it took with it. I have traversed over that bridge countless times, I grew up going to the eastern shore in the summers and boating on the Chesapeake bay, even now, when I visit my family back east. My heart aches for Baltimore and its people. Rep Mfume did a good job at stating the importance, as you said, of the bridge, the port, its people and the rich ecosystem the estuary provides.
I live in Annapolis, though I grew up in PGH. Very sad to the the U.S., Maryland, and U.S. Naval Academy flags at half-staff. Here is the whole press conference, if you are interested. Thank you for a thoughtful note, Barb. Maryland is a great state.
P.S., I hope you enjoy your next trip back to Baltimore. Coming of age in the 1970s, Baltimore was the arch-enemy of Pittsburgh with the World Series rivalry. So, when my sister married a 'Baltimoriole', I screamed high treason. 😉 For one of the 'other' my brother-in-law is great and my sister happy. 🙂
I LOVE Maryland! I live in Santa Cruz, CA now (18 years now) but have so many ties back there. I was born and raised in York/Lancaster PA, have my siblings, daughters and grandchildren living in PA, go back often. Always visit my best friend, who has resided in Linthicum for decades and I always stay connected with my MD peeps when I go back. A trip to B'more is always a must or Pasadena, MD or the eastern shore for some of the best crab on the planet! YUM!! Roll out that brown crab paper and pass the mallots!
Thank you for your comment. I actually teared up at Ms. Richardson's inclusion of comment by one of these men's relatives, “The kind of work he did is what people born in the U.S. won’t do. People like him travel there with a dream. They don’t want to break anything or take anything.” These are just people, people, muddling along through this Blessed Gift of Life as best they can - just like us. Namaste - "The Spirit in me, sees the Spirit in you, and knows that we are the Same"
So many people come to America with little but the clothes on their backs. They come hoping to find any kind of work to make money to care for their families. They frequently take low wage, physical labor jobs and live in cramped apartments, houses, rooms with others like themselves, working and hoping for a better day.
I grew up on a farm, working in the fields, harvesting the crops. I can tell you that field work is not a job Americans aspire to, nor is manual labor construction, or working in a meat processing plant. The competition for such jobs comes from other immigrants. People who come to this country want to be able to educate their children, so they can have a better life.
The people we can do without are the hate filled politicians like Greg Abbott, Ron DiSantis, et. al. who work to make others' lives miserable.
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.
I did the same. It saddens, and infuriates, me to realize how much HARD work is done by immigrants and how little it is appreciated by the ones who wouldn’t be caught EVER doing any of crucial work they do.
In 1904, Henry James made a sentimental journey home, publishing his observations as The American Scene. In Rhode Island James winces at 'Italian laborers, so picturesque on the hillsides of their native land, a truculent blot on the landscape' of his friends' estates. In Cambridge he whines about 'crossing Harvard Yard and for the first time having to ask whose sons are these.' (Don't get him started on 'the rustle of skirts in the groves of academe where once were only heard the whisper of the muses airy coverings.') Slumming in NYC, he finds the Lower East Side 'a fetid aquarium of jostling large proboscis fish.' And in a deli, says 'whatever these Yiddish speakers make of the English language, it will never be English literature.' (Ha!) In general James is viscerally offended at the 'monstrous presumption of aliens, their loud alienism, their quantity and quality, their note of settled possession'. And that "we, not they, must make the surrender and accept the orientation. We must go, in other words, more than half-way to meet them..."
James has been treated with kid gloves by generations of apologists. He is a complex and beautiful writer. James was also a complex and loathsome person whose profound snobbery and prejudice inform an instinctive sympathy with oppressors of any sort from ruined slave holders at home to craven aristocrats abroad. Although he 'knew' better. Like his fellow Americans who surely 'know better' but who indulge their ingrained and ill informed passions against 'others' and 'the othered.'
From James' The American Scene
"Is not our instinct in this matter, in general, essentially the safe one—that of keeping the idea simple and strong and continuous, so that it shall be perfectly sound? To touch it overmuch, to pull it about, is to put it in peril of weakening; yet on this free assault upon it, this readjustment of it in their monstrous, presumptuous interest, the aliens, in New York, seem perpetually to insist. The combination there of their quantity and their quality—that loud primary stage of alienism which New York most offers to sight—operates, for the native, as their note of settled possession, something they have nobody to thank for; so that unsettled possession is what we, on our side, seem reduced to—the implication of which, in its turn, is that, to recover confidence and regain lost ground, we, not they, must make the surrender and accept the orientation. We must go, in other words, more than half-way to meet them; which is all the difference, for us, between possession and dispossession. This is sense of dispossession, to be brief about it, haunted me so, I was to feel, in the New York streets and in the packed trajectiles to which one clingingly appeals from the streets, just as one tumbles back into the streets in appalled reaction from them, that the art of beguiling or duping it became an art to be cultivated—though the fond alternative vision was never long to be obscured, the imagination, exasperated to envy, of the ideal, in the order in question; of the luxury of some such close and sweet and whole national consciousness as that of the Switzer and the Scot."
Yeah, pretty thoughtless drek from an otherwise in some ways pretty thoughtful person. Amusing to compare with his insights upon how he and his father and other Americans were treated by the English when he worked there earlier in his career. In other words: shoe, foot, other.
He was from the notionally superior class of Harvard grads who knew everything there was to know. Then he hit London, and found himself adrift in a vast sea of ignorance, yet held the fact of his ignorance as if it was only because most of the English were so vile to him. His self-described 'education' was first and foremost an illumination of his failings (to his credit), but to the end his class prejudice stood out like a red flag.
Edited (HT: lin•) to add: Adams, James? How many Henries ARE there? Who can keep track anymore?!
Anyway, I s'pose the jist of that hot mess^^stands, tho any sensible person (ie not me) woulda just deleted it and walked away mortified...
The story of the way Henry A. treated his wife, and erased her from his history seems timely support for Bern's description, even if it was just a coincidental way to describe Henry A and Henry J.
Jim, a bit off-topic, but that statue of grief was completed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whose summer home and studio where it was created is NH's only National Park, in Cornish, NH. Models of his works can be seen there, along with his studio as it was. In western Massachusetts, the home and studio of Daniel Chester French, who created the Seated Lincoln statue for the D.C. Memorial are similarly open to the public. Both have lovely gardens, perfect to spend a languid summer's day.
Jim, my junior high brain is in charge today (I'm fighting off a migraine and preparing to go on a weekend trip, so most of my energy is focused there. I am currently taking a coffee break,..) I kind of like Henry A$$hole and Henry Jacka$$ for those monikers.
Oh don't delete it. Your observations are still useful/valid. Just edit it to note that Adams and James had similar privileged backgrounds and experiences. They knew each other for decades and corresponded with each other. And personify their time, place, caste.
Lin, I'm stunned at how you can pull these quotes in the middle of the night -- brava! Also, I'd speculate that James said what many other "landed" Americans also said and thought, albeit with much more florid language.
HaHa. Some things stick. Like the Rhinegold jingle which popped up out of nowhere the other day. Just don't ask me today's date. Ahh ... brain science!
More things slide out than stick in my brain. Except weird stuff -- not the Rheingold jingle but similar. My wife is constantly amazed and amused at how I remember that stuff yet not the premise of the movie we watched last night.
Boy, that is one continuous run on sentence from Harvard educated Henry James in the “American Scene ! But he always was an over educated righteous prig. Essentially the flaw in James et al and today’s Republican politicians is a unique lack of human kindness. That is what dooms DEI initiatives and corporate Me Too training and ESG practices. We are not kind to ourselves, to others and to the earth.
I never much liked any of James' work--even if so much of it is so beautifully written (and it is). His work gave me vibes of privilege and elitism even when I was in high school....how nice it is to discover, 50 years out of HS, that he was a "...complex and loathsome person whose profound snobbery and prejudice inform an instinctive sympathy with oppressors of any sort...." and that I wasn't wrong!
Thank you for this note. I can never understand why so many workers, road and otherwise are not wearing PPE, so important for eyes, ears, lungs, etc . OSHA is everywhere, but there are huge gaps in who is covered under OSHA. And also thank you for your own dedication and long hours. Did much of that as an FNP, and it's tiring, and yes, we are lucky to go home to a comfortable place with family and food.
This country thrives because of those less fortunate who so appreciate the work. They are always polite and smiling.
Barbara, as to PPE -- I think it's personal choice. I used to own a nursery and landscape business and we furnished PPE (dust masks, hearing protection, nitrile gloves, etc.) to staff, and all used it. I personally witnessed owners and employees of many other small landscape gardening firms eschewing PPE. In one memorable case, there was a person dry-cutting granite with a diamond-bladed saw -- a noisy, dusty operation, with no PPE and a cigarette dangling from his lips, all while being watched by 2 other workers with no PPE and smoking. I asked them why they're risking their hearing and lungs, and they laughed me off.
It's possible that road workers and the like use at the very least hearing protection: foam plugs squished into the ear canal, an OSHA mandate if exposure to noise is part of the job.
Thank you! You sound like a REAL doctor. I.e., one who is skilled, but also cares deeply about the well-being of others. It's lovely to know you are here. 😊🥰
Another point that relates is retirement--an expected reward for most of us, yet an unattainable luxury for others.
I hope voters who work in trades that destroy their bodies---making working even to 65 difficult--will consider that the GOP thinks they can make another 7 years!! My own observations of friends and families--and in myself--is that the aging process of 60-70 years is much different than the 50-60 years.
I, too, drive through a construction zone every day on my way from small-town east Texas to smaller-town east Texas. I am appalled by the number (an overwhelming majority) of drivers who continue at 75 mph through the four-mile 60 mph zone. No consideration whatsoever for workers (or other drivers with narrow lanes, shorter entrance ramps, rerouted lanes, etc.). Our state troopers are all at the border keeping us safe from "sex trafficking immigrants" rather than keeping us safe in traffic on our highways.
Well said. And I have experienced what you describe - me at the end of my day driving in traffic, often rain, but then seeing workers on roads or highways - likely starting their day.
I would humbly suggest that you need not feel wrong driving past those workers. Appreciating their work - appreciating the work of all the folks who make our lives easier - is what’s important.
I wonder if the replacement bridge could be named in honor of those who died instead of after Francis scott Key the enslaver. (Yeah i know, Ft McHenry and all.). Or maybe something that honored both?
Good night, Doc, and thank you for the story. As someone who worked overnights (we always called it graveyard rather than NOC) I patrolled many HWZ's in my time; most of the crews in this neck of the woods are white, but a fair number of Hispanic folks were there as well.
HWZ = Highway Work Zone. Always good for an additional 25% raise of the basic citation fine, on par with School Zones.
Mar 29·edited Mar 29Liked by Heather Cox Richardson
Thank you for this lesson on immigration. I’d heard about the “No Irish need apply” signs in New York when my mother’s people came over.
I cringe at the new underclass being created by undercutting the labor protections of teenagers (usually immigrants or the children of undocumented people). These students are working 8 hour shifts after school and are often forced to do extremely hazardous work. There is little time to do homework or sleep.
How is this even possible? Have they no shame, no concern for the children working in these jobs for starvation wages? Have we gone back to the 19th century? Have we learned nothing from the history of our own people?
This is who the Republicans are. Most of the children are immigrants: they do not consider them worthy of being here, so putting them to work is entirely in character.
« Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed off on House Bill 49, keeping the 30-hour work week limit for 16- and 17-year-olds when school is in session. What’s new is now parents, guardians, and school superintendents have the ability of waiving the 30-hour limit. »
“During fiscal year 2022, there was a 37% increase in child labor law violations across the country, with at least 688 children working in dangerous conditions.”
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“More than 100 children have been discovered to be illegally employed by a slaughterhouse cleaning firm across the country……”
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“Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services Inc (PSSI) employed at least 102 children….. to work overnight shifts at 13 meat processing facilities in eight states.”
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“According to court documents, a 14-year-old child worked at a Nebraska facility from 11pm to 5am five to six days a week from December 2021 to April 2022, cleaned machines “used to cut meat”.
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“At one point, the child fell asleep in class and also missed class after suffering injuries as a result of chemical burns. Several other children were also reported to have suffered from chemical burns.”
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“…… a 14-year-old student came to school with acid burns on her hands and knees. The girl told staff that she was working night shifts at a local slaughterhouse plant. Teachers also noticed that other students were falling asleep in class after reportedly working at the plant at night”
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“‘They were little’: photos show children illegally working in US slaughterhouse”
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“Despite…..[the fact that] child labor violations have increased since 2015, Republican lawmakers across the country have in recent months been pushing for the expansion of the types of approved work, as well as work hours.”
Why? Why do the "children need to work to help their families"? We should not accept that those children need to work. All children need to go to school and get an education. In order to get an education they need to be well rested and well fed.
There shall be, there must be, a statue or memorial to these workers on the bridge at the entrance to the new crossing when it is rebuilt. Decency demands it. Visible to those tens of thousands crossing every day, with a light on it that remains on, always.
R M Jory, I second that. The sheer courage and skills of those immigrants are overlooked & squashed by people who aren’t willing or more likely able to do the work they’re doing. The sheer horror of our prejudicial history HCR was able to encapsulate in this letter left my mouth dry. Plus a deep feeling of shame about all those times I’ve sat in my comfortable car complaining about ‘construction!’
What would I do without Heather’s knowledge and brilliance? I don’t want to go there…but yes, I know-acknowledge my ignorance would probably prevail .
The Republicans, and especially many of the southern states, seem intent on bringing us back into some Dickensian form of child labor, low wages and unregulated industrialism that requires some underclass or caste system. They never make it clear what is meant by make America great again: what time period was that, who was it great for?
If the MAGA party doesn't want any immigrants they have to know there are many jobs that no American would do or for those wages. Like one of the men from Honduras that was killed from working on the bridge when it collapsed, his nephew told the Associated Press, “The kind of work he did is what people born in the U.S. won’t do. People like him travel there with a dream. They don’t want to break anything or take anything.”
It seems that rolling back child labor laws ties in with the attacks on abortion, birth control and women's rights in general. More unwanted pregnancies, desperate economic circumstances, dismal education or maybe lacking altogether. The MAGAsses are wantonly giving us a dystopia that we don't want any part of or have already seen how bad it ends.
Jeri.. C'mon... we've replaced Dickens with Capt'n Underpants on the 2nd & 3rd grade bookshelf. And Cursive employs the "curse" word so that's been eliminated. The little Golden Book tales which contained all the lessons of life, effectively branded as offensive to (???), for mature audiences only. Mature? zzzzzztt!
The legal ramifications of the collapse are catastrophic. What I still want to understand is how the Dali's multiple fail safe systems failed. It has been described as a "perfect storm" of complimentary failures but I want the facts of how a ship this enormous could have multiple compounding catastrophic failures.
My heart hurts so for those who lost their lives and their families wherever they may be on our shared planet.
I feel such respect and pride in the leadership response of so many to this horror.
I think President Biden is the most competent President in our history.
"Pete Buttigieg is rising to the occasion looking skillful too."
They all are. This is what happens when you put motivated, competent people in positions of responsibility and authority directed and empowered by a real leader.
This might be a good time to imagine the likely response of a Trump Administration to the events in Baltimore. Eek!
Confession: As my version of “uncommitted,” I wrote Pete Buttigieg in as my choice for President in the recent California primary election. I think Buttigieg would make a great President one day. His handling of the Baltimore bridge disaster is impressive.
Also, Biden’s uncritical military support policy for Israel’s war against Hamas (and the people of Gaza ) seems to be shifting—possibly in part because of all those “uncommitted” primary votes.
And if the Baltimore catastrophe helps raise awareness of how essential immigrants are to our economy, society, culture, and identity as a nation of immigrants, the tragic deaths of those unfortunate bridge workers may not have been entirely in vain.
I read that there were no fail safe systems. A single engine and a small emergency generator is all. The ship was built as big as possible but as cheaply as possible. Money is always the root cause.
The FSK Bridge was built in the 1970's. This article gives a good overview of the history of bridge-building and engineering efforts to resist collisions by ships.
"Other changes since the 1970s are that cargo ships have increased in size and weight. The ship that brought down the Sunshine Skyway in 1980 weighed 35,000 tons, while the ship that collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge weighed 95,000 tons."
I too am most eager to learn the series of events that resulted in the catastophic loss of all power on the Dali. Many years ago I was an engineering crew member on a ship that lost power in the middle of the night. It is a horrible feelng when the reassuring thrum of the engines goes silent, the lights go out, and the engine room alarm sirens start to wail.
After reading Heather's poignant and as always thoughtful Letter, my second thought this morning was profound relief that the Biden administration is in charge - competence, leadership, and compassion reign!! A message to MSM: start carrying that story 24/7 and stop filling the "airwaves" with the batshit craziness that is trump.
Welp Sabrina, your second sentence is so profound, it fits perfectly what I just happened to read(*) the day prior to the collision. Ostensibly, item #8 on a page out of "the al-Qaeda manual" calls for "Blasting and destroying bridges leading into and out of the cities." Certainly this untimely event and the scenario on board the Dali is going to give Faux-news et Al plenty of material for conspiracy theories. Okay. Just the same, while I am hoping for a proper investigation, I remain so skeptical of how the facts might be conveyed to us. Like, will be bomb Afganistan when the hijackers were Saudi's? That kind of crap, as condoned by our politicians, much to our demise. We can only hope that our government will get that Port opened up using any means necessary, bar none!
Thank you for this historical perspective. How far the party of Lincoln has fallen.
You are right. The six workers died as Americans. However, even if they are documented, they and their survivors likely do not have the protections that citizens would have.
As for the Republicans sniveling and whining about funding the necessary work to clear the river and rebuild the bridge…..where oh where is thy humanity.
In my opinion, this is exactly the situation where the federal government needs to step in. Disasters, be they man made as in this case or natural, as well as an attack by a foreign country is exactly what the government is meant to cope with. The Republicans are mired in partisan politics. Trump is whispering in their ears and pulling the strings. Don’t do anything that would help Biden. Don’t give money to a blue state.
Let’s wash these selfish short sighted immoral and unfeeling sad excuses for human beings away in a blue tsunami. They are not public servants. They are self serving grifters.
"...On the living conditions in the labor camp in Pascagoula, Miss.
Conditions were atrocious. There were no apartments, there were no decent living quarters. The men lived 24 to a single trailer in a company "man camp" — that was actually what the company called it. And this "man camp" was built above a toxic waste dump. ...
They could come in and out of the labor camp. Usually they were taken on chaperoned visits where they were surveilled by a company official, put in a company van, taken to Walmart to buy groceries and other things and [brought] back to the camp. They were heavily surveilled. And while they were theoretically allowed in and out, they could never do it without a company official with them. The more important thing was their fear of deportation kept them in the camp. For some amount of time, they were in the camp legally and on these legal visas, but after a certain time, their visas lapsed. But the company kept using them on these 24-hour shifts that they would rotate on, the day shift and the night shift. And they couldn't leave the labor camp because of their own fear that they would be picked up and deported if anyone discovered that they were now undocumented.
On how the workers were charged rent to live in squalid conditions
The senior vice president who had the idea to build the labor camps thought that workers would be only too happy to get up, roll out of bed and be able to walk to work. This is a man who had never been to India, but somehow he thought that compared to conditions in India, these workers would be "happy campers." That's the way he put it. The company ended up charging the workers enormous amounts of money deducted from their paychecks to pay for the millions of dollars it took to construct the labor camps: $1,000 a month..."
She speaks the truth I've always felt about immigrants to the U.S. -- and the strengths, openness, and freedoms they contribute, beyond the labor that keeps America open.
Two of my grandparents were immigrants, both from the old Austro-Hungarian empire, both coming to the U.S. three years apart, 120 years ago. Both speaking Hungarian and Slovak. Neither knowing each other till they met in one of the coal towns south of Pittsburgh. She, five years older than him, and six inches taller. Thus, she had effectively no life back in her village in a Slovak valley in Hungary.
My other grandparents were Scotch-Irish mostly, with a little German -- and had come to the U.S. poor before the U.S. declared independence from the crown in 1776. Their people emigrated away from the 13 colonies, over the Appalachians in defiance of royal orders forbidding that.
So much I appreciate the words of our Heather today -- even her quoting Reagan backing up Lincoln on the vitality, boost to real democracy which immigrants have always given America.
Agreed, Phil. We could be kin. I have Irish ancestors who came over in the Potato Famine era, and from that same line (matrilineal) a Scotsman who settled on the east coast whose child went west to California (family lore is that she ran a brothel in SF, but I have no way to trace that.)
The workers who died in the bridge collapse on Tuesday “were not ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’” Will Bunch wrote, quoting Trump; “they were replenishing it…. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans.”
Our forefathers, who imposed their dreams on stolen lands were welcomed to this land in peace, and proceeded to excavate and dominate the continent, presuming that right because nobody was using or exploiting the land in ways our limited (limiting) vision could perceive.
We have been very poor houseguests indeed (if not in fact!)
If any immigrants are "poisoning the blood of this land" it would be those who came here, claiming superiority - even supremacy - and the right to murder, rape and pillage without constraint - in the name of the LORD, no less ....
I have no argument with what you've written about our forefathers, Kathleen... except for this one point: Since we cannot go back in time to stop what they did, I believe our focus must be on being the best people we can be today... which includes being inclusive of the Native Americans who are here despite the attempts made years ago to either wipe them out physically or eliminate their culture through "schools" such as the one in Carlisle, PA (where Jim Thorpe went).
We cannot eliminate the "poison" our forefathers injected into the blood of the people who were here first. But we can seek to learn from those lessons to make sure no new poison is injected into our nation ... by anyone... including those who support Putin!
" ... our focus must be on being the best people we can be today... which includes being inclusive of the Native Americans who are here despite the attempts made years ago to either wipe them out physically or eliminate their culture through "schools" ..."
I agree we must continue to work at being the best people we can be ... mindful that not all people uphold the same standards of virtue and integrity ... native women and children still are murdered and missing; treaty rights still are violated by corporations building pipelines, mining uranium and rare earth minerals and now seeking grounds to excavate lithium for EV industries; not to mention pollution of frontline communities - a most egregious example being the radioactive waste at Hanford, with no viable plans to repair leaking storage containers, and now, rather than returning that land to native governance, as promised, moving ahead with plans to construct 3 new generators along the already contaminated Columbia River ... how good can we be as individuals - and what difference will it make when the collective trend is to expand, regardless of who or what gets stepped on or obliterated along the way ...?
Support the Establishment of a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Christian churches collaborated with the government to create hundreds of boarding schools for Native American children. The conditions at these institutions, some of them Quaker-run, were horrific. Abuse, malnutrition, and even death were commonplace.
Yet, the United States government has never truly acknowledged the historical trauma of the Indian boarding school era. We can change that in the 118th Congress.
The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act (S. 1723; H.R. 7227) has been re-introduced in both the Senate and House. We must now ensure the bill is passed in both chambers.
Tribal nations are working to advance legislation establishing a federal commission to formally investigate Indian boarding school policy and develop recommendations for further governmental action. As advocates for peace and justice, we are called to stand with them in solidarity.
Remind your members of Congress of their responsibility to tribal nations, and urge them to start the healing process by passing the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies bill!
One reason Native Americans were a bit more accepting of the English seems to be that they were led to believe they would be protected from the Spanish (mostly) who had a worse reputation from areas they took by conquest. The French seemed to be more interested in trade than sending anywhere near as many immigrants that would become hostile to them.
I agree with you entirely, Michael -- your substance and your tone.
Let's extend one caveat, though -- the schools of these poisoned, scurrilous, hate-filled souls obviously learned zero humanities, zero arts for empathy, for seeing other contexts.
So I feel for them, in the sense that, first, they're victims of the billionaire classes who offshored the millions of U.S. working class jobs. They're also victims of failures in America's health, safety, and environmental protections -- which the billionaires by their project 2025 want to eviscerate totally. Add in the social media billionaires quite deliberately spewing hate by algorithms. And finally the schools, so totally now having abandoned humanities.
I used to hitch-hike all over America, Michael. I felt welcome in every community -- skin color didn't matter, income didn't matter. Woody Guthrie's words about this land being your land, this land being my land rang true, so true.
Thank you for a very helpful reminder of our country’s history, much of it shameful in regards to each generation’s current immigrants.
Sad how quickly people that are themselves descendants of immigrants turn on those behind them (“pulling the ladder up behind them”).
I’ll bet few of the current GQP would believe Reagan’s speech actually occurred. They forget that while he did many despicable (and criminal) things, he wasn’t nearly as anti-immigrant as the current GQP scumwads.
The Asian immigrants that I worked with years ago never “pulled the ladder up behind them.” They supported each other, I was impressed by their extended family support.
There are many stories such as this one about child laborers in other companies in the USA.
'Kids as young as 14 were found working at a Tennessee factory that makes lawn mower parts for John Deere and others' (NBCNEWS, Child Labor, By Laura Strickler)
'The company, Tuff Torq, was fined nearly $300,000 for hiring 10 children. It must also set aside $1.5 million to help the immigrant minors who were illegally employed.'
Immigrant children as young as 14 were found working illegally amid dangerous heavy equipment at a Tennessee firm that makes parts for lawn mowers sold by John Deere and other companies, according to Labor Department officials.
The company, Tuff Torq, was fined nearly $300,000 for hiring 10 children. As part of a consent agreement with the federal government, the company is also required to set aside $1.5 million to help the children who were illegally employed. Ryan Pott, general counsel for Tuff Torq’s majority owner, the Japanese firm Yanmar, acknowledged the violations to NBC News.
“The department will not tolerate companies profiting on the backs of children employed unlawfully in dangerous occupations,” said Seema Nanda, the department’s chief legal officer, whose office obtained the consent judgment against Tuff Torq. “Tuff Torq has agreed to disgorge profits, which will go to the benefit of the children. This sends a clear message: putting children in harm’s way in the workplace is not only illegal, but also comes with significant financial consequences.”
The Labor Department did not specify what work the children were doing. But Labor official Juan Coria said what his investigative team found in Tuff Torq’s “very busy” Morristown manufacturing plant was “astonishing.”
'Coria, southeast regional administrator for the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, described an environment that he says caused anxiety among his investigators who witnessed children as young as 14 working late at night at the 24-hour manufacturing facility amid power-driven equipment that was being moved around the plant.'
'Pott, the general counsel for Tuff Torq’s majority owner, said the child workers were temporary and were not hired directly by Tuff Torq. He said they used fake names and false credentials to obtain jobs through a temporary staffing agency, and said Tuff Torq is “transitioning” away from doing business with the staffing company.'
“Tuff Torq is dedicated to ensuring that their products and services are produced under ethical conditions, with a strong emphasis on fair labor practices, and Tuff Torq is further strengthening our relevant training and compliance programs,” said Pott. “We are also actively engaging with our suppliers to reinforce our expectations regarding ethical labor practices and collaborate with them on implementing our updated policies.”
'According to the Labor Department, within 30 days Tuff Torq must also hang signs at every entrance to the plant that say, “Stop! You must be at least 18 years of age to enter and work in this building.” (NBCNews) See link below.
Hannah Dreier, Brent McDonald, Nicole Salazar, Annie Correal and Carson Kessler, New York Times, Dec. 14, 2023
"... Children working on construction sites are six times as likely to be killed as minors doing other work, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Roofing is particularly risky; it is the most dangerous job for minors other than agricultural work, studies show. Labor organizers and social workers say they are seeing more migrant children suffer serious injuries on roofing crews in recent years. A 16-year-old fell off a roof in Arkansas and shattered his back. A 15-year-old in Florida was burned all over after he slipped from a roof and onto a vat of hot tar. A child in Illinois stepped through a skylight and fractured his spine. ..."
'How child migrants are put to work in unsafe and illegal conditions'
Jan 1, 2024 6:40 PM EDT (PBSNEWSHOUR)
'Migrant children in the U.S. are working some of the most dangerous jobs in the country and private auditors assigned to root out unlawful labor practices often overlook child labor. The most common job for migrant children is also one of the most hazardous, roofing and construction, despite laws prohibiting anyone under 18 from doing so. Laura Barrón-López discussed more with Hannah Dreier.' (PBS) See link below.
'Immigrant child laborers are being killed in US factories. Companies are walking away with fines' (TheGuardian by Gloria Oladipo in New York, Mon 12 Feb 2024 07.00 EST)
'Sawmills and slaughterhouses collect citations amid landscape of ‘underfunded and under-resourced’ regulators'
'Duvan Thomas Pérez was just 16 when he was fatally injured while cleaning machinery at a Mississippi slaughterhouse. The penalty for the Mar-Jac Poultry processing plant was just $212,646 in federal fines and 17 safety citations, despite the incident being one in a series.'
“Mar-Jac Poultry is aware of how dangerous the machinery they use can be when safety standards are not in place to prevent serious injury and death. The company’s inaction has directly led to this terrible tragedy, which has left so many to mourn this child’s preventable death,” the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) regional administrator, Kurt Petermeyer, said in a statement last month.'
'But it was not the first time the factory had had a workplace death or faced citations for safety procedure violations in recent years. Despite previous incidents, and as the Mississippi factory became notorious, Mar-Jac continued to receive only fines.'
'Now experts, outraged at the latest death, are demanding stronger consequences for companies that violate safety procedures – and use child labor. Experts are also arguing that Pérez’s death highlights how immigrant minors may be more vulnerable to dangerous working conditions.'
“The fines imposed by Osha on this particular poultry plant are not sufficient to deter massive exploitation of child migrants, especially undocumented child migrants,” 'Elora Mukherjee, a professor of law at Columbia Law School in New York, said.' (The Guardian) See link below.
My main purpose in writing the lines that follow was not to add to or comment on the criminal exploitation of children but to draw attention to a positive reality: existing programs to help integrate immigrant families into American society and those who have undertaken the challenging but essential work of teaching their children English and so enabling them to join the educational mainstream.
*
Led by the criminal who, as all informed New Yorkers I have ever met well know, systematically and for decades stiffed all “the little people”—workers and subcontractors regardless of origin—and got away with it, the hijacked GOP, now his very own thing, will turn the US into a larger version of Guatemala or Honduras. Complete with peones, death squads and, almost certainly, far worse even than those evils.
Unless he and his army of crime are stopped.
These people represent all the country’s corporate exploiters and their gangland subcontractors.
Meanwhile, throughout the land, federal and other programs are helping integrate immigrants and their children, and many Americans are hard at work doing their damnedest to perform that difficult and absolutely necessary task. Especially when it comes to the essential business of teaching children uprooted from their birth environment the English language and making them feel welcome and warmly accepted in America.
Should we not all celebrate these efforts and, if given the chance, help with them?
[Today, in my copy of The Economist, an article, “A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS”, subhead: “Britain has a larger share of foreign-born inhabitants than America. They are thriving”. So… something is working in my poor country, despite an imploding government, which at least has the virtue of being led by a Prime Minister of Indian descent…]
In Scotland, I lived near and often visited Robert Owen’s great social project, New Lanark: https://www.newlanark.org/introducing-robert-owen. From the start of the 19th century, Owen worked there to overcome and avoid evils which America is still facing 224 years later…
It astounds me that this is happening in the 21st century rather than the 19th. The fines that these companies are required to pay are a mere slap on the wrist. There should be greater consequences for using child labor.
'The Global March Against Child Labor (Global March) is a wide network of civil society organizations, trade unions and teachers, who work together to eliminate and prevent all forms of child labor, slavery and trafficking and that all children have access to free and quality public education.'
'The organization works to ensure that all children enjoy their rights, including free education, and that they are protected from being forced into labor, which hinders their development. The network mobilizes actors from across the world, to promote and protect rights of all children, especially the right to be free from economic exploitation and performing any type of labor that might hinder their mental, physical, spiritual, social and moral development. The network works to increase awareness about child labor and encourages countries to adopt and ratify conventions related to child labor. It also publicly engages to fight prejudices that contribute to child labor and works on eradication of the most oppressive forms of child labor.' (humanrightscareers) See link below.
'Child labor laws are under attack in states across the country'
'Amid increasing child labor violations, lawmakers must act to strengthen standards
Report • By Jennifer Sherer and Nina Mast • March 14, 2023'
'Updated December 21, 2023'
Open link below to view updated 50-state maps showing legislation to roll back or strengthen child labor protections.
'What this report finds: States across the country are attempting to weaken child labor protections, just as violations of these standards are rising. This report identifies bills weakening child labor standards in 10 states that have been introduced or passed in the past two years alone. It provides background on child labor standards and the coordinated push to weaken them, discusses the context in which these laws are being changed, and explains the connection between child labor and the United States’ broken immigration system. It also provides data showing that declines in labor force participation among young adults reflect decisions to obtain more education in order to increase their long-term employability and earnings, and that nearly all youth currently seeking work report being able to find it.'
'Why it matters: Federal laws providing minimum protections for child labor were enacted nearly a century ago, leading many to assume that children working in grueling and/or dangerous jobs was a thing of the past. In fact, violations of child labor laws are on the rise, as are attempts by state lawmakers to weaken the standards that protect children in the workplace.'
'What lawmakers can do about it: This report provides policy recommendations for lawmakers at both the federal and state levels. At the federal level, Congress should heed calls to increase penalties for child labor violations and address chronic underfunding of agencies that enforce labor standards, eliminate occupational carve-outs that allow for weaker standards in agricultural employment, pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, and implement immigration reforms that curb the exploitation of unauthorized immigrants and unaccompanied migrant youth. At the state level, lawmakers should eliminate subminimum wages for youth and raise the minimum wage, eliminate the two-tiered system that fails to protect children from hazardous or excessive work in agriculture, strengthen labor standards enforcement, and empower young people to build and strengthen unions.' (EconomicPolicyInstitute) See link below.
Compounding this problem is the increasingly common practice of using outside companies to find and hire workers. This is very common in the healthcare industry, and can result in unqualified, improperly vetted people being hired. Quite often, unaccompanied immigrant children are sent to a 'relatives' home in the US, which actually turns out to be run by people funneling them into dangerous low paying jobs. Outside HR companies offer a way for companies to claim they did not know they are hiring children or undocumented people in general.
Thank you, Steve, for pointing to this common practice.
'What Is a Shell Corporation?' (Investopedia)
'A shell corporation is a corporation without active business operations or significant assets. These types of corporations are not all necessarily illegal, but they are sometimes used illegitimately, such as to disguise business ownership from law enforcement or the public. Legitimate reasons for a shell corporation include such things as a startup using the business entity as a vehicle to raise, funds, conduct a hostile takeover or to go public.'
'Understanding Shell Corporation'
'Shell corporations are used by large well-known public companies, shady business dealers and private individuals alike. For example, in addition to the legal reasons above, shell corporations act as tax avoidance vehicles for legitimate businesses, as is the case with Apple's corporate entities based in the United Kingdom. They are also used to obtain different forms of financing.'
'However, tax avoidance is sometimes seen as a loophole to tax evasion, as these corporations have been known to be used in black or gray market activities. It's natural to be suspicious of a shell corporation and it's important to understand the various scenarios in which they arise.'
More information, including 'Ways That People Abuse Shell Companies' can be found by opening the link below. I believe other good and more detailed sources to be found concerning the use of 'shells'.
Many of us have moments, hours, days, weeks, months and years during which we feel the depth of harm DJT has caused to life, trust, liberty, health, education, Democracy... It is as weighing DJT's and his gang's crimes against humanity.
Thank you Heather, this could not be more timely. I was reading this morning a book by Teilhard de Chardin the Jesuit Priest, paleontologist and Philosopher where he compares the beautiful diversification of nature must also apply to society to thrive and be resilient. Your essay speaks to the need, incredible opportunity and necessity that immigration has served us in the past and is an essential path to our future. We don’t need a wall, we need an intelligent gate.
What a stirring tribute by Will Bunch - “they died as Americans!” What are we so damned afraid of? How did such a large swath of us become such little, ugly people? Have we no capability to share our bounty? To put a hand out to those who have come after our own immigrant ancestors came here? The frigid waters of the Patapsco didn’t care whether they had papers or not. Neither should we. I remember the words of John Adams from “1776” when he was questioned as to whether he really meant that slaves were citizens. “They’re here and they’re people. I don’t know of any other requirement.” Whether he really said those words or not, the concept remains. They were here and they were people. That should be enough.
A most important refrain- we are blessed to be a nation of immigrants. Women and Native Americans also face hateful discrimination. We are still striving to become a more perfect union. Events provide opportunities.
Another important Letter. Will you help us on this journey?
Brilliant powerful letter Taking the trafic current event to a strong defense of our immigrants And wrapping it into a fascinating history lesson on immigration Again wish all in this country of immigrants would read this to create an understanding of what made and continues to make this a living nation dedicated to to all people
Thank you Heather for a moving accounting of those 6 brave souls who perished while working on the bridge that collapsed. I hope this situation will also focus on how Biden’s infrastructure plan is a key component to rebuilding our nation and moving it forward. Blessings for your hard work. It can’t be easy but it is a noble gesture toward saving our nation from senseless harm 🇺🇸🗽🗳️🕯️🥁
“The workers who died in the bridge collapse on Tuesday “were not ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’” Will Bunch wrote, quoting Trump; “they were replenishing it…. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as .Americans.”
About once a week I stay late at my office, seeing patients until 8 PM and then doing charts, notes, reviewing test results, patient messages, and even a new post for my substack after all the clinical work is done (!), but as I drive home around midnight there has been a highway construction crew working through the night on route 70 outside of Philly. In cold weather, freezing weather, rain, heat waves, and everything in between. They are breathing in road construction dust and VOC’s, losing hearing to jackhammers and heavy machinery, increasing their personal health risks with sleep deprivation and night shift work, and putting themselves in harm’s way with potentially careless and sleepy and perhaps drunk drivers who speed by. Immigrants and non-immigrants, I’m sure there are both working those hours — I salute their courage, stamina, and work ethic. I’m sure there are many complex reasons why they have to work these hours at such peril and personal cost, so that we who work the day shifts might be less inconvenienced by road construction.
But it always feels wrong driving past them, exhausted as I am from a full day of working, too, but headed to a bed and a privileged place in the daylight the next day.
Speaking of which, good night 😴
And let's not forget our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents who were immigrants, who worked hard at difficult jobs for a better life, and to make it possible for us, their descendants, to be privileged. While going through my mother's documents, I found a letter that my grandfather, a Polish immigrant who escaped the pogroms in 1917, wrote to her in 1974, shortly before he died. He wrote, "...I am a good American too, and think that this country has given millions of people a freedom and chance in life that no other country in the world has done and it's worth to be an American."
That's a wonderful passage, Pamela. Three of my grandparents emigrated to the U.S. for a better life -- all from Canada. One grandmother came down to be a NH millworker girl at age 12. Their ancestors came to Canada from France in the 1600s for similar reasons -- opportunity. Our small city was largely composed of French-Canadian, Irish, Greek, Poles and Lithuanians, people who worked in the many mills and shoe factories when I was a child. There were hardly any people of color. Today it's far more common to see retail signs and contractor vehicles with Spanish names. There's also a growing Indian population, mainly of tech and medical workers. We should welcome them all, as they make the fabric of our community more colorful.
All four of my grandparents were immigrants from northern Europe. All from different countries. "McFarland, USA" is a wonderful movie with Kevin Costner who brings his family to the little town and meets Hispanic people for the first time. He is a high school teacher who starts a cross country team with a few students. The kids are farm workers who can really run. The Rotten Tomatoes scores are 80/88. The film is based on a true story. It is inspirational.
I was a minority in high school.
Our family members might have known each other back in the 1600's, my father's ancestors emigrated to Canada maybe even a little earlier than that. I often wonder about them and what their lives were like, why did they leave France? They were still in Canada up until the time of the civil war.
French citizens were offered the chance to own property if they successfully homesteaded in New France for 3 years -- it was a way for France to reinforce its foothold on the continent and expand its lucrative fur trade. Emigrants were given long slices of property (measured in arpents) on the North side of the St. Lawrence River to clear and make productive; they could fish from their waterfront along the river. The slices were about 400 ft wide and went back a few miles. My father's ancestor was given such a plot, and he and others established a church in the town. The small stone chapel remains today, and there is a plaque of granite with a map of the plots and land owners -- our ancestors are shown on it. His original house foundation is still there on a bluff overlooking the river, although a newer house sits on it. I've had the chance to visit these sites, along with the town my ancestors came from in France -- the churches where the brothers were baptized and married are still there.
Thank you for that Doug, I’m 77 and have been hearing about family history all my life, I have never heard of that program before, we have a large family who are very interested in our past, we were called LaMontagne until the late 1800’s. My grandparents born in the 1890’s spoke French as well as English. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they had been part of a program like that, what an opportunity that must have been, that’s a lot of land and on the water, I’d be sorely tempted by an offer like that today.
Dick, one resource I found to be very helpful to get information about family history (which wouldn't be helpful to your family) was compiled by a Catholic priest who shares my last name. He has done a lot of research into the family history, going back to France. I used his work to visit locations in Canada and France. Similarly, my mother's uncle was a priest and commissioned someone in Montreal in the 1930s to compile a family history on her side. The work was extensive, and typewritten pages and photos were bound into a thick book which is now on my possession. Unfortunately, it's written in French, and while I can discern much of what is on the pages, Google translate is often of little help, as there are some corrected typos which mess with character reading software.
My point is, you may find research that a priest did on your family's history. I can also recommend a book -- A People's History of Quebec by J. Lacoursiere and R. Philpot which covers French colonization of the province and extends into the 20th century -- I found it very interesting. Another book which I own but haven't yet read is 'Jeanne Chevalier, Fille du Roi' by L. Levesque. Filles du Roi were women sent to New France by King Louis XIV to help populate their territory.
I suspect that France stopped its homesteading program by 1763, when they lost Canada to Great Britain in the French and Indian War ;-) Such colonization was inherently dangerous -- my ancestors on my dad's side who I mentioned before was killed by Iroquois, as was one on my mom's side. The Indians didn't take too kindly to French settlers exploiting their resources and stealing their land.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well said Harvey.
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?
My mother's parents both came to the New World from Yugoslavia, and had 7 children, and worked so hard to provide for them through the depression, doing work that wasn't what they were used to. At the beginning, they were moderately well off; by the end, well, not so much. We mustn't forget them - the ones who survived through the depression! They were immigrant heros!
W O W … impressive!
Thanks Dr. McCormick for that heartfelt expression of gratitude for everyone who believes in the dignity and equality of all human beings! Thanks Pamela for reminding all of us that we, too, most likely are the descendants of immigrants! And thanks Dr. Richardson for a recounting of the many positions that our political parties have avowed and disavowed throughout our history as a nation as well as how the current MAGAites are now positioning themselves to be in the protectionist thread that has really never been totally absent in American politics. Since we, as a nation, have been able to effectively counter this protectionist stance before, we must work diligently to do so again!
Pamela, that brought chill to my spine and tears to my eyes as I too am from immigrant grandparent from Italy who I never heard them speak unjustly about the opportunity they had in coming to America. They were not rich, but they had a good life and raised productive children, my parents, and grandchildren, myself included. They too, we’re so grateful for the opportunity afforded them in coming here and became naturalized citizens who lived by the rule of law in this country, proud to be Americans.
When immigration is used as a political weapon, every American is a target. Those who use it in such a way are, therefore, Un-American. Shame on them and their
hate -filled swill.
Maybe immigration people should screen their applicants better. They let in a draft dodger who later dealt in shady real estate deals, and owned brothels.
My grandfather could have written that.
Beautifully said and communicated with feeling. I admire your capacity for empathy. There is such scarcity of it in those with privilege, power and status.
Hear Hear !! Thank you ☺️ 🙏 Heather Cox Richardson !!! And loyal readers (& to those who comment 😘)!
Your welcome.
yes, I too always feel grateful for the roadwork crews out there making it possible for us to commute or even just get around town, when they are out under a blazing sun toiling in the dust, heat and noise, or in the cold of winter, or really, any time at all, taking all the risks associated with inattentive or inconsiderate motorists.
Least we not forget that Texas through HB 2127 prohibited local municipalities and counties from mandating water breaks for workers. Thanks to Judge Maya Guerra Gamble it was ruled unconstitutional. But that’s how Texas wanted to treat their work force. Taking away protections for heat related injuries.
Florida HB 433, effective July 1.Our own version of Texas’ “Death Star Law”.
“The Florida legislature passed a bill on Friday that prevents any city, county, or municipality in the state from adopting legislation aimed at protecting outdoor workers from extreme heat, prompting many to call out lawmakers for being “cruel” to the “most vulnerable workers”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/08/florida-bill-extreme-heat-worker-protection
That is just despicable. Don't these legislators have anything positive to contribute to society??
Ellen, if they are MAGA Rs, at this point, no they don't....only being good members of the party of death.
Perhaps you should give EMPTY GREENE a ring (706) 226-5320, or (866-909-4458, Waste Management cust svc). Juss sayin.
No, they are The Repugnant Party
Spot on Rob, I've been calling them repugnantkins for years now they and the maggots they spawned.
Their resignations!
Reply to Ellen.
Florida saying to Texas, hold my beer.
Karen here, also from Pgh, PA. Grandfather-immigrant, coal miner at age 12 from Hungary.
Great grandparents-immigrants from Hungary, great-g-ma (15 yrs old) sponsored by upper middle class Hungarian Jewish family living in Squirrel Hill as a nanny. After she’d worked off her obligations they saw to she married a good man and remained life-long friends.
My great-grandparents had 5 children. All participated in the war efforts (WWII). Their only son served in Europe, injured in France.
Once the miners began unionizing, great-grandma made moonshine to support the family until they saved up enough to open a very nice department store. Included a butcher shop and fabric department. She didn’t want great-grandpap going back into the mines. The miners were looking for worker protections that could save their lives. Just like the ones FL and TX stripped away.
I came from immigrants looking for a better life, and willing to work hard for it.
The people coming today are looking for work. Looking to take care of their families. The same reasons they’ve always come. Mel Brooks movie, “Blazing Saddles “ says it best after Asian railroad worker faints in the dessert;
Lyle; “Come on, boys! The way you're lollygaggin' around here with them picks and them shovels, you'd think it was a hundert an' twenty degrees...! Can't be more than a hundert an' fourteen! [Asian railroad worker collapses from heat exhaustion] “Dock that Chink a day's pay for napping on the job.”
Mel wasn’t joking.
I recently watched Blazing Saddles again. It was a “date” movie when I was in HS. Fifty years later I wonder what was so funny, though it was clearly satirical even at the time. Mel hit every group; women, African Americans, Chinese, cowboys even the military.
Florida is moving to the bottom of the barrel.
This is legislated torture. People will die.
They like the color red so much, how about a banner year of red tide and sargassum seaweed (which stinks) to close their beaches for a while?
How do they justify such legislation? Surely it does not save the taxpayers money.
Typical MAGA inhumanity; cruelty is the point, after all.
The contractors had to hire undocumented workers to clean up after one of their hurricanes. The contractor said he couldn't get Americans to work.
What the actual f***??? What year was that passed?
Passed ➡️03/08/2024
https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/433/?Tab=BillHistory
I clicked on the link - thanks - but how does it have any effect on anything but minimum wage (which is bad enough)?
I simply can’t understand why republicans feel the need to be so cruel.
Does the cruelty ever end?
Lawmakers are busy drinking sweet tea or mint juleps in air conditioned offices.
Texas govt is vile
My favorite is when a young woman had to go to court to get permission for an abortion. It was granted, but Paxton ( a person with a questionable reputation at best) nixxed it
It is hard to decide which of the evil trio is worse. Paxton gets more press, but Dan Patrick was a loser as sports reporter when I lived in Houston. Now he has illusions of grandeur and is an idiot. Well, Abbott is the leader of the pack of wolves. Freud was right. Man is wolf to man, especially this pack.
Abbott and his followers are pure evil, They are doing everything possible to suppress the vote.
At least 'today' we can learn of these acts of vile-ence by clicking onto NEWS, providing of course.., you are a "subscriber"! Ya.., that'll be $12.99 a month, thank you, which kinda ticks me off, bbbuttt.. I'm trying to re-subscribe as I seem to be missing too much. PayPal is standing by.
‘Taking away protections’ are the key words… too many corporate interests don’t want to pay to keep labor safe … they want it cheap and illegal. Thank you HCR for a beautifully written article.
OMG ...... just like Amazon's practices.
Valid point. But let's forget Governor Abbott's treatment of these immigrants and the abuse that they endured. Some of them died because the border petrol was prevented by the national guard from helping them.
Now they are trying to do that with pregnant women who work in factories ! WTF !!!
I'm thinking that Texas is a very hostile, inhuman and violent state riddled with corruption (Paxton for one). I'm sure there could be serious ramifications for everyone especially since they are a big oil state, but maybe they should secede. I fear for people trying to cross the border though.
It ain’t fun on either side.
JustRaven, I have been thinking about the road work going on for two years as the city built a new sewer pumping station across the street along with the street improvements. Immigrants did all of the dirty hot work, roofing, sidewalk cement, road repairs, landscaping elements on the borders of the pump house. Our lawn crew are immigrants as is any roofing project going on in the neighborhood. Then there are the immigrants who pick our food, work on dairies, and are part of the workforce in slaughterhouses and food processing. Incidentally, we have a house in the neighborhood which has a sign which reads: "This is Calipuya land" (local Native Americans who were here before). Personally in my garden, I am always mindful about this and treat the land with respect. No spraying of harmful chemicals, etc. I am grateful for the land and the bounty it gives us, enabling us to also share with our neighbors, always remembering that I am a late comer.
I can recall road trips taken in the seventies, eighties and into the nineties where traffic came to a halt where construction, maintenance and repair crews would need to stop traffic flow in one direction at a time to bypass construction areas causing long delays. Now, with the use of high-powered lighting, construction crews can work in areas at times when there’s much less traffic on the major roadways and not causing delays. “Progress is our most important product”.
I find critics of using federal $$ to repair the Key Bridge, like representatives from South Carolina, whining toddlers—“It’s not fair!!” SC has received millions from the infrastructure act to repair its highways and bridges and has it sent the money back to the federal government in protest? Ummm, no it has not. So tired of the hypocrisy.
ML, this is the usual R mantra. Dead silence when the bridge collapse (or any other disaster) is in their state and screaming protest if it is elsewhere. Also this bridge is part of the Interstate system. We were just saying yesterday while discussing all this how tired we are of this sort of ugly selfishness and hypocrisy.
Well put. Been tired of hypocrisy since I was a teenager.
Biden made a point of that in his State of the Union address. He mentioned his infrastructure bill (which a lot of you vetoed, but were sure happy to take the money. Maybe you should give it back.
An excerpt from a joint Press Conference with the Governor Moore, Senators Van Hollen and Cardin, various Federal, State, and Coast Guard officials on the collapsed bridge.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5112035/user-clip-rep-kweisi-mfume-key-bridge (2min.vid.)
According to Governor Moore, the Biden Administration immediately released sixty million dollars to start debris removal, particularly the several thousand tons sitting atop that bloated boat. The highlight, for me, was Representative Kweisi Mfume's appeal to bi-partisanship owing to the importance of the bridge, the port, and the estuary.
Good clip, thanks, Ned. I hope Rep Mfume's plea to make this a bipartisan effort gets realized.
Thank you for your note, Lynell. Let us hope that Representative Mfume is viewed by the G.O.P. as a a good Congressman and decent human being making a heart-felt plea on behalf of his constituents.
Great clip! Thanks for sharing. I went to nursing school at Univ of MD in Baltimore, My daughter is a UMD College Park graduate (go TERPS) and I worked as a ICU RN at the world renown R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center on Pratt Street for many years! It was a very very sad moment to see the tragedy of the bridge collapse and the victims it took with it. I have traversed over that bridge countless times, I grew up going to the eastern shore in the summers and boating on the Chesapeake bay, even now, when I visit my family back east. My heart aches for Baltimore and its people. Rep Mfume did a good job at stating the importance, as you said, of the bridge, the port, its people and the rich ecosystem the estuary provides.
I live in Annapolis, though I grew up in PGH. Very sad to the the U.S., Maryland, and U.S. Naval Academy flags at half-staff. Here is the whole press conference, if you are interested. Thank you for a thoughtful note, Barb. Maryland is a great state.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?534578-1/maryland-officials-provide-update-baltimore-bridge-collapse
P.S., I hope you enjoy your next trip back to Baltimore. Coming of age in the 1970s, Baltimore was the arch-enemy of Pittsburgh with the World Series rivalry. So, when my sister married a 'Baltimoriole', I screamed high treason. 😉 For one of the 'other' my brother-in-law is great and my sister happy. 🙂
I LOVE Maryland! I live in Santa Cruz, CA now (18 years now) but have so many ties back there. I was born and raised in York/Lancaster PA, have my siblings, daughters and grandchildren living in PA, go back often. Always visit my best friend, who has resided in Linthicum for decades and I always stay connected with my MD peeps when I go back. A trip to B'more is always a must or Pasadena, MD or the eastern shore for some of the best crab on the planet! YUM!! Roll out that brown crab paper and pass the mallots!
Well, the home of the Preakness will always welcome its wandering daughters.
Thank you for your comment. I actually teared up at Ms. Richardson's inclusion of comment by one of these men's relatives, “The kind of work he did is what people born in the U.S. won’t do. People like him travel there with a dream. They don’t want to break anything or take anything.” These are just people, people, muddling along through this Blessed Gift of Life as best they can - just like us. Namaste - "The Spirit in me, sees the Spirit in you, and knows that we are the Same"
So many people come to America with little but the clothes on their backs. They come hoping to find any kind of work to make money to care for their families. They frequently take low wage, physical labor jobs and live in cramped apartments, houses, rooms with others like themselves, working and hoping for a better day.
I grew up on a farm, working in the fields, harvesting the crops. I can tell you that field work is not a job Americans aspire to, nor is manual labor construction, or working in a meat processing plant. The competition for such jobs comes from other immigrants. People who come to this country want to be able to educate their children, so they can have a better life.
The people we can do without are the hate filled politicians like Greg Abbott, Ron DiSantis, et. al. who work to make others' lives miserable.
Very well said!
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.
I did the same. It saddens, and infuriates, me to realize how much HARD work is done by immigrants and how little it is appreciated by the ones who wouldn’t be caught EVER doing any of crucial work they do.
Namaste
In 1904, Henry James made a sentimental journey home, publishing his observations as The American Scene. In Rhode Island James winces at 'Italian laborers, so picturesque on the hillsides of their native land, a truculent blot on the landscape' of his friends' estates. In Cambridge he whines about 'crossing Harvard Yard and for the first time having to ask whose sons are these.' (Don't get him started on 'the rustle of skirts in the groves of academe where once were only heard the whisper of the muses airy coverings.') Slumming in NYC, he finds the Lower East Side 'a fetid aquarium of jostling large proboscis fish.' And in a deli, says 'whatever these Yiddish speakers make of the English language, it will never be English literature.' (Ha!) In general James is viscerally offended at the 'monstrous presumption of aliens, their loud alienism, their quantity and quality, their note of settled possession'. And that "we, not they, must make the surrender and accept the orientation. We must go, in other words, more than half-way to meet them..."
James has been treated with kid gloves by generations of apologists. He is a complex and beautiful writer. James was also a complex and loathsome person whose profound snobbery and prejudice inform an instinctive sympathy with oppressors of any sort from ruined slave holders at home to craven aristocrats abroad. Although he 'knew' better. Like his fellow Americans who surely 'know better' but who indulge their ingrained and ill informed passions against 'others' and 'the othered.'
From James' The American Scene
"Is not our instinct in this matter, in general, essentially the safe one—that of keeping the idea simple and strong and continuous, so that it shall be perfectly sound? To touch it overmuch, to pull it about, is to put it in peril of weakening; yet on this free assault upon it, this readjustment of it in their monstrous, presumptuous interest, the aliens, in New York, seem perpetually to insist. The combination there of their quantity and their quality—that loud primary stage of alienism which New York most offers to sight—operates, for the native, as their note of settled possession, something they have nobody to thank for; so that unsettled possession is what we, on our side, seem reduced to—the implication of which, in its turn, is that, to recover confidence and regain lost ground, we, not they, must make the surrender and accept the orientation. We must go, in other words, more than half-way to meet them; which is all the difference, for us, between possession and dispossession. This is sense of dispossession, to be brief about it, haunted me so, I was to feel, in the New York streets and in the packed trajectiles to which one clingingly appeals from the streets, just as one tumbles back into the streets in appalled reaction from them, that the art of beguiling or duping it became an art to be cultivated—though the fond alternative vision was never long to be obscured, the imagination, exasperated to envy, of the ideal, in the order in question; of the luxury of some such close and sweet and whole national consciousness as that of the Switzer and the Scot."
Yeah, pretty thoughtless drek from an otherwise in some ways pretty thoughtful person. Amusing to compare with his insights upon how he and his father and other Americans were treated by the English when he worked there earlier in his career. In other words: shoe, foot, other.
He was from the notionally superior class of Harvard grads who knew everything there was to know. Then he hit London, and found himself adrift in a vast sea of ignorance, yet held the fact of his ignorance as if it was only because most of the English were so vile to him. His self-described 'education' was first and foremost an illumination of his failings (to his credit), but to the end his class prejudice stood out like a red flag.
Edited (HT: lin•) to add: Adams, James? How many Henries ARE there? Who can keep track anymore?!
Anyway, I s'pose the jist of that hot mess^^stands, tho any sensible person (ie not me) woulda just deleted it and walked away mortified...
Is it possible that you are thinking of 'The Education of Henry Adams' ?
Just yesterday, came across https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/clover-adams-takes-pictures-of-grief/
The story of the way Henry A. treated his wife, and erased her from his history seems timely support for Bern's description, even if it was just a coincidental way to describe Henry A and Henry J.
Jim, a bit off-topic, but that statue of grief was completed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whose summer home and studio where it was created is NH's only National Park, in Cornish, NH. Models of his works can be seen there, along with his studio as it was. In western Massachusetts, the home and studio of Daniel Chester French, who created the Seated Lincoln statue for the D.C. Memorial are similarly open to the public. Both have lovely gardens, perfect to spend a languid summer's day.
I do like that extra connection with Lincoln.
Jim, my junior high brain is in charge today (I'm fighting off a migraine and preparing to go on a weekend trip, so most of my energy is focused there. I am currently taking a coffee break,..) I kind of like Henry A$$hole and Henry Jacka$$ for those monikers.
OOF. Yeah Culpas of me own. I could blame caffeine shortage but no.
I'm also thinking of deleting the whole mess, tho might possibly leave it as an example of fallibility on steroids...
Oh don't delete it. Your observations are still useful/valid. Just edit it to note that Adams and James had similar privileged backgrounds and experiences. They knew each other for decades and corresponded with each other. And personify their time, place, caste.
Thanks. Will consider.
You beat me to it by 4 minutes
Lin, I'm stunned at how you can pull these quotes in the middle of the night -- brava! Also, I'd speculate that James said what many other "landed" Americans also said and thought, albeit with much more florid language.
HaHa. Some things stick. Like the Rhinegold jingle which popped up out of nowhere the other day. Just don't ask me today's date. Ahh ... brain science!
More things slide out than stick in my brain. Except weird stuff -- not the Rheingold jingle but similar. My wife is constantly amazed and amused at how I remember that stuff yet not the premise of the movie we watched last night.
And then there's GoogleLuck!
Boy, that is one continuous run on sentence from Harvard educated Henry James in the “American Scene ! But he always was an over educated righteous prig. Essentially the flaw in James et al and today’s Republican politicians is a unique lack of human kindness. That is what dooms DEI initiatives and corporate Me Too training and ESG practices. We are not kind to ourselves, to others and to the earth.
We run the gamut, don’t we
I never much liked any of James' work--even if so much of it is so beautifully written (and it is). His work gave me vibes of privilege and elitism even when I was in high school....how nice it is to discover, 50 years out of HS, that he was a "...complex and loathsome person whose profound snobbery and prejudice inform an instinctive sympathy with oppressors of any sort...." and that I wasn't wrong!
Ha!Ha! IMHO ;)
Well it is right out there for all to observe that he was not what you'd call class/status blind!
Thank you for this note. I can never understand why so many workers, road and otherwise are not wearing PPE, so important for eyes, ears, lungs, etc . OSHA is everywhere, but there are huge gaps in who is covered under OSHA. And also thank you for your own dedication and long hours. Did much of that as an FNP, and it's tiring, and yes, we are lucky to go home to a comfortable place with family and food.
This country thrives because of those less fortunate who so appreciate the work. They are always polite and smiling.
Barbara, as to PPE -- I think it's personal choice. I used to own a nursery and landscape business and we furnished PPE (dust masks, hearing protection, nitrile gloves, etc.) to staff, and all used it. I personally witnessed owners and employees of many other small landscape gardening firms eschewing PPE. In one memorable case, there was a person dry-cutting granite with a diamond-bladed saw -- a noisy, dusty operation, with no PPE and a cigarette dangling from his lips, all while being watched by 2 other workers with no PPE and smoking. I asked them why they're risking their hearing and lungs, and they laughed me off.
It's possible that road workers and the like use at the very least hearing protection: foam plugs squished into the ear canal, an OSHA mandate if exposure to noise is part of the job.
Thank you! You sound like a REAL doctor. I.e., one who is skilled, but also cares deeply about the well-being of others. It's lovely to know you are here. 😊🥰
He is. His Substack is worth following.
Another point that relates is retirement--an expected reward for most of us, yet an unattainable luxury for others.
I hope voters who work in trades that destroy their bodies---making working even to 65 difficult--will consider that the GOP thinks they can make another 7 years!! My own observations of friends and families--and in myself--is that the aging process of 60-70 years is much different than the 50-60 years.
I, too, drive through a construction zone every day on my way from small-town east Texas to smaller-town east Texas. I am appalled by the number (an overwhelming majority) of drivers who continue at 75 mph through the four-mile 60 mph zone. No consideration whatsoever for workers (or other drivers with narrow lanes, shorter entrance ramps, rerouted lanes, etc.). Our state troopers are all at the border keeping us safe from "sex trafficking immigrants" rather than keeping us safe in traffic on our highways.
😪
Well said. And I have experienced what you describe - me at the end of my day driving in traffic, often rain, but then seeing workers on roads or highways - likely starting their day.
Dr. McCormick, you wrote that with such compassion. We should open our hearts to immigrants to share that "privileged place in the daylight." Cheers!
I would humbly suggest that you need not feel wrong driving past those workers. Appreciating their work - appreciating the work of all the folks who make our lives easier - is what’s important.
I wonder if the replacement bridge could be named in honor of those who died instead of after Francis scott Key the enslaver. (Yeah i know, Ft McHenry and all.). Or maybe something that honored both?
Any ideas?
Profound words, thank you for sharing.
Good night, Doc, and thank you for the story. As someone who worked overnights (we always called it graveyard rather than NOC) I patrolled many HWZ's in my time; most of the crews in this neck of the woods are white, but a fair number of Hispanic folks were there as well.
HWZ = Highway Work Zone. Always good for an additional 25% raise of the basic citation fine, on par with School Zones.
Thank you for this lesson on immigration. I’d heard about the “No Irish need apply” signs in New York when my mother’s people came over.
I cringe at the new underclass being created by undercutting the labor protections of teenagers (usually immigrants or the children of undocumented people). These students are working 8 hour shifts after school and are often forced to do extremely hazardous work. There is little time to do homework or sleep.
https://www.kuaf.com/show/ozarks-at-large/2023-08-15/new-law-weakening-child-labor-protections-in-arkansas-takes-effect?_amp=true
How is this even possible? Have they no shame, no concern for the children working in these jobs for starvation wages? Have we gone back to the 19th century? Have we learned nothing from the history of our own people?
This is who the Republicans are. Most of the children are immigrants: they do not consider them worthy of being here, so putting them to work is entirely in character.
James, talk about the "Know Nothing" party, Republicans are also the "Do Nothing " party.
They should cringe with shame.
You take my impression of the current Republicans as the new Know Nothing party even further-they're both. Thanks!
😊
Do they know anything about the history of America in the 19th century? or of anywhere else?
They may, but they are blinded by hatred and racism.
and greed and fear... the purposeful stimulation of anxiety seems to be part of the plan being followed by the leadership of the new Republican party.
Yes, fear of "the other" is a big part of it.
Not likely
« Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed off on House Bill 49, keeping the 30-hour work week limit for 16- and 17-year-olds when school is in session. What’s new is now parents, guardians, and school superintendents have the ability of waiving the 30-hour limit. »
Claire Alfree, First Coast News, 03/28/2024
To go along with Sarah Sanders’ child labor bill in Arkansas.
How awful!
Well, after all it’s DeSantis, so just one more awful thing to add to the long list of awful things he’s responsible for.
“During fiscal year 2022, there was a 37% increase in child labor law violations across the country, with at least 688 children working in dangerous conditions.”
———
“More than 100 children have been discovered to be illegally employed by a slaughterhouse cleaning firm across the country……”
———
“Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services Inc (PSSI) employed at least 102 children….. to work overnight shifts at 13 meat processing facilities in eight states.”
——-
“According to court documents, a 14-year-old child worked at a Nebraska facility from 11pm to 5am five to six days a week from December 2021 to April 2022, cleaned machines “used to cut meat”.
——-
“At one point, the child fell asleep in class and also missed class after suffering injuries as a result of chemical burns. Several other children were also reported to have suffered from chemical burns.”
——-
“…… a 14-year-old student came to school with acid burns on her hands and knees. The girl told staff that she was working night shifts at a local slaughterhouse plant. Teachers also noticed that other students were falling asleep in class after reportedly working at the plant at night”
——-
“‘They were little’: photos show children illegally working in US slaughterhouse”
——-
“Despite…..[the fact that] child labor violations have increased since 2015, Republican lawmakers across the country have in recent months been pushing for the expansion of the types of approved work, as well as work hours.”
———-
Feb ‘23 article:
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/feb/17/underage-child-labor-working-slaughterhouse-investigation
May ‘23 article:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/09/nebraska-slaughterhouse-children-working-photos-labor-department
So bad. The children need to work to help their families but not like this!
Why? Why do the "children need to work to help their families"? We should not accept that those children need to work. All children need to go to school and get an education. In order to get an education they need to be well rested and well fed.
Despicable. We need to shame and prosecute those who hire them.
The short, simple answer to your questions is . . . . . Yup.
There shall be, there must be, a statue or memorial to these workers on the bridge at the entrance to the new crossing when it is rebuilt. Decency demands it. Visible to those tens of thousands crossing every day, with a light on it that remains on, always.
R M Jory, I second that. The sheer courage and skills of those immigrants are overlooked & squashed by people who aren’t willing or more likely able to do the work they’re doing. The sheer horror of our prejudicial history HCR was able to encapsulate in this letter left my mouth dry. Plus a deep feeling of shame about all those times I’ve sat in my comfortable car complaining about ‘construction!’
What would I do without Heather’s knowledge and brilliance? I don’t want to go there…but yes, I know-acknowledge my ignorance would probably prevail .
The Republicans, and especially many of the southern states, seem intent on bringing us back into some Dickensian form of child labor, low wages and unregulated industrialism that requires some underclass or caste system. They never make it clear what is meant by make America great again: what time period was that, who was it great for?
If the MAGA party doesn't want any immigrants they have to know there are many jobs that no American would do or for those wages. Like one of the men from Honduras that was killed from working on the bridge when it collapsed, his nephew told the Associated Press, “The kind of work he did is what people born in the U.S. won’t do. People like him travel there with a dream. They don’t want to break anything or take anything.”
It seems that rolling back child labor laws ties in with the attacks on abortion, birth control and women's rights in general. More unwanted pregnancies, desperate economic circumstances, dismal education or maybe lacking altogether. The MAGAsses are wantonly giving us a dystopia that we don't want any part of or have already seen how bad it ends.
We have already seen how bad it ends…Dickens told us in the future how bad the past was. Hear and listen
Jeri.. C'mon... we've replaced Dickens with Capt'n Underpants on the 2nd & 3rd grade bookshelf. And Cursive employs the "curse" word so that's been eliminated. The little Golden Book tales which contained all the lessons of life, effectively branded as offensive to (???), for mature audiences only. Mature? zzzzzztt!
To our detriment
Mary NINA signs were prominent in Boston several generations ago.
The legal ramifications of the collapse are catastrophic. What I still want to understand is how the Dali's multiple fail safe systems failed. It has been described as a "perfect storm" of complimentary failures but I want the facts of how a ship this enormous could have multiple compounding catastrophic failures.
My heart hurts so for those who lost their lives and their families wherever they may be on our shared planet.
I feel such respect and pride in the leadership response of so many to this horror.
I think President Biden is the most competent President in our history.
''I think President Biden is the most competent President in our history.''
He is the man of the hour.
Pete Buttigieg is rising to the occasion looking skillful too.
"Pete Buttigieg is rising to the occasion looking skillful too."
They all are. This is what happens when you put motivated, competent people in positions of responsibility and authority directed and empowered by a real leader.
This might be a good time to imagine the likely response of a Trump Administration to the events in Baltimore. Eek!
"They all are..." Biden's is an administration of many very very "good people" working to make America America again.
The thought of a trump response is enough to lose one's breakfast!!
Ralph, I am too busy thanking God and all His angels that tfg was not in charge, to imagine your suggested scenario. 😵💫🥶
I did begin to imagine it, eeeeek!
No Pete Buttigieg in a trump administration. In awe of him! (PETE, not trump).
The Ptete Buttigeig's of the world wouldn't go near DJT for love nor money.
Confession: As my version of “uncommitted,” I wrote Pete Buttigieg in as my choice for President in the recent California primary election. I think Buttigieg would make a great President one day. His handling of the Baltimore bridge disaster is impressive.
Also, Biden’s uncritical military support policy for Israel’s war against Hamas (and the people of Gaza ) seems to be shifting—possibly in part because of all those “uncommitted” primary votes.
And if the Baltimore catastrophe helps raise awareness of how essential immigrants are to our economy, society, culture, and identity as a nation of immigrants, the tragic deaths of those unfortunate bridge workers may not have been entirely in vain.
I agree with all you said. And other silver linings to storm clouds might soon appear.
He is the man of the our
I read that there were no fail safe systems. A single engine and a small emergency generator is all. The ship was built as big as possible but as cheaply as possible. Money is always the root cause.
The FSK Bridge was built in the 1970's. This article gives a good overview of the history of bridge-building and engineering efforts to resist collisions by ships.
"Other changes since the 1970s are that cargo ships have increased in size and weight. The ship that brought down the Sunshine Skyway in 1980 weighed 35,000 tons, while the ship that collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge weighed 95,000 tons."
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/failure-of-francis-scott-key-bridge-provides-19372873.php
Holy Cow, a monster on the loose
I too am most eager to learn the series of events that resulted in the catastophic loss of all power on the Dali. Many years ago I was an engineering crew member on a ship that lost power in the middle of the night. It is a horrible feelng when the reassuring thrum of the engines goes silent, the lights go out, and the engine room alarm sirens start to wail.
After reading Heather's poignant and as always thoughtful Letter, my second thought this morning was profound relief that the Biden administration is in charge - competence, leadership, and compassion reign!! A message to MSM: start carrying that story 24/7 and stop filling the "airwaves" with the batshit craziness that is trump.
Welp Sabrina, your second sentence is so profound, it fits perfectly what I just happened to read(*) the day prior to the collision. Ostensibly, item #8 on a page out of "the al-Qaeda manual" calls for "Blasting and destroying bridges leading into and out of the cities." Certainly this untimely event and the scenario on board the Dali is going to give Faux-news et Al plenty of material for conspiracy theories. Okay. Just the same, while I am hoping for a proper investigation, I remain so skeptical of how the facts might be conveyed to us. Like, will be bomb Afganistan when the hijackers were Saudi's? That kind of crap, as condoned by our politicians, much to our demise. We can only hope that our government will get that Port opened up using any means necessary, bar none!
(*) Book "The Unit" Adam Gamal, pg 113
Thank you for this historical perspective. How far the party of Lincoln has fallen.
You are right. The six workers died as Americans. However, even if they are documented, they and their survivors likely do not have the protections that citizens would have.
As for the Republicans sniveling and whining about funding the necessary work to clear the river and rebuild the bridge…..where oh where is thy humanity.
In my opinion, this is exactly the situation where the federal government needs to step in. Disasters, be they man made as in this case or natural, as well as an attack by a foreign country is exactly what the government is meant to cope with. The Republicans are mired in partisan politics. Trump is whispering in their ears and pulling the strings. Don’t do anything that would help Biden. Don’t give money to a blue state.
Let’s wash these selfish short sighted immoral and unfeeling sad excuses for human beings away in a blue tsunami. They are not public servants. They are self serving grifters.
"Humanity".. hahh, standing on the edge of the cesspool we have Jared "waterfront homes" Kushner. There's your "humanity"..
I had wondered how they got so much damage repaired after Hurricane Katrina. See the story of the Indian workers fooled into paying $20,000 each for good jobs and green cards at https://www.npr.org/2023/01/23/1150684455/human-trafficking-katrina-india-great-escape-saket-soni
"...On the living conditions in the labor camp in Pascagoula, Miss.
Conditions were atrocious. There were no apartments, there were no decent living quarters. The men lived 24 to a single trailer in a company "man camp" — that was actually what the company called it. And this "man camp" was built above a toxic waste dump. ...
They could come in and out of the labor camp. Usually they were taken on chaperoned visits where they were surveilled by a company official, put in a company van, taken to Walmart to buy groceries and other things and [brought] back to the camp. They were heavily surveilled. And while they were theoretically allowed in and out, they could never do it without a company official with them. The more important thing was their fear of deportation kept them in the camp. For some amount of time, they were in the camp legally and on these legal visas, but after a certain time, their visas lapsed. But the company kept using them on these 24-hour shifts that they would rotate on, the day shift and the night shift. And they couldn't leave the labor camp because of their own fear that they would be picked up and deported if anyone discovered that they were now undocumented.
On how the workers were charged rent to live in squalid conditions
The senior vice president who had the idea to build the labor camps thought that workers would be only too happy to get up, roll out of bed and be able to walk to work. This is a man who had never been to India, but somehow he thought that compared to conditions in India, these workers would be "happy campers." That's the way he put it. The company ended up charging the workers enormous amounts of money deducted from their paychecks to pay for the millions of dollars it took to construct the labor camps: $1,000 a month..."
One of my favorites of Heather's of all time.
She speaks the truth I've always felt about immigrants to the U.S. -- and the strengths, openness, and freedoms they contribute, beyond the labor that keeps America open.
Two of my grandparents were immigrants, both from the old Austro-Hungarian empire, both coming to the U.S. three years apart, 120 years ago. Both speaking Hungarian and Slovak. Neither knowing each other till they met in one of the coal towns south of Pittsburgh. She, five years older than him, and six inches taller. Thus, she had effectively no life back in her village in a Slovak valley in Hungary.
My other grandparents were Scotch-Irish mostly, with a little German -- and had come to the U.S. poor before the U.S. declared independence from the crown in 1776. Their people emigrated away from the 13 colonies, over the Appalachians in defiance of royal orders forbidding that.
So much I appreciate the words of our Heather today -- even her quoting Reagan backing up Lincoln on the vitality, boost to real democracy which immigrants have always given America.
Agreed, Phil. We could be kin. I have Irish ancestors who came over in the Potato Famine era, and from that same line (matrilineal) a Scotsman who settled on the east coast whose child went west to California (family lore is that she ran a brothel in SF, but I have no way to trace that.)
Yes, Ally, true.
But isn't "We could be kin" also but gentle extension of the Golden Rule?
To some degree, we are all kin, I believe. Even without “traceable” lineage
HCR wrote:
The workers who died in the bridge collapse on Tuesday “were not ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’” Will Bunch wrote, quoting Trump; “they were replenishing it…. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans.”
My thoughts …
The GOP is poisoning the blood of our country. 🤮
Our forefathers, who imposed their dreams on stolen lands were welcomed to this land in peace, and proceeded to excavate and dominate the continent, presuming that right because nobody was using or exploiting the land in ways our limited (limiting) vision could perceive.
We have been very poor houseguests indeed (if not in fact!)
If any immigrants are "poisoning the blood of this land" it would be those who came here, claiming superiority - even supremacy - and the right to murder, rape and pillage without constraint - in the name of the LORD, no less ....
I have no argument with what you've written about our forefathers, Kathleen... except for this one point: Since we cannot go back in time to stop what they did, I believe our focus must be on being the best people we can be today... which includes being inclusive of the Native Americans who are here despite the attempts made years ago to either wipe them out physically or eliminate their culture through "schools" such as the one in Carlisle, PA (where Jim Thorpe went).
We cannot eliminate the "poison" our forefathers injected into the blood of the people who were here first. But we can seek to learn from those lessons to make sure no new poison is injected into our nation ... by anyone... including those who support Putin!
" ... our focus must be on being the best people we can be today... which includes being inclusive of the Native Americans who are here despite the attempts made years ago to either wipe them out physically or eliminate their culture through "schools" ..."
I agree we must continue to work at being the best people we can be ... mindful that not all people uphold the same standards of virtue and integrity ... native women and children still are murdered and missing; treaty rights still are violated by corporations building pipelines, mining uranium and rare earth minerals and now seeking grounds to excavate lithium for EV industries; not to mention pollution of frontline communities - a most egregious example being the radioactive waste at Hanford, with no viable plans to repair leaking storage containers, and now, rather than returning that land to native governance, as promised, moving ahead with plans to construct 3 new generators along the already contaminated Columbia River ... how good can we be as individuals - and what difference will it make when the collective trend is to expand, regardless of who or what gets stepped on or obliterated along the way ...?
https://kathleenallen.substack.com/p/your-comments-are-needed-on-the-hanford
*****
Learn more about Hanford cleanup and how to take action:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AucvNtucDPulcznHWxJ4qfNb5e2nWZjK/view
*****
Washington Dept. of Ecology
Let’s Talk About Hanford conversations?
Check them out on YouTube.
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8BmI4b96dKa2oYst-F65-S4Yg74lpH0x
Support the Establishment of a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Christian churches collaborated with the government to create hundreds of boarding schools for Native American children. The conditions at these institutions, some of them Quaker-run, were horrific. Abuse, malnutrition, and even death were commonplace.
Yet, the United States government has never truly acknowledged the historical trauma of the Indian boarding school era. We can change that in the 118th Congress.
The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act (S. 1723; H.R. 7227) has been re-introduced in both the Senate and House. We must now ensure the bill is passed in both chambers.
Tribal nations are working to advance legislation establishing a federal commission to formally investigate Indian boarding school policy and develop recommendations for further governmental action. As advocates for peace and justice, we are called to stand with them in solidarity.
Remind your members of Congress of their responsibility to tribal nations, and urge them to start the healing process by passing the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies bill!
https://fcnl.quorum.us/campaign/44488/
One reason Native Americans were a bit more accepting of the English seems to be that they were led to believe they would be protected from the Spanish (mostly) who had a worse reputation from areas they took by conquest. The French seemed to be more interested in trade than sending anywhere near as many immigrants that would become hostile to them.
Exactly. The new Nazis have no place in a free and democratic government.
I agree with you entirely, Michael -- your substance and your tone.
Let's extend one caveat, though -- the schools of these poisoned, scurrilous, hate-filled souls obviously learned zero humanities, zero arts for empathy, for seeing other contexts.
So I feel for them, in the sense that, first, they're victims of the billionaire classes who offshored the millions of U.S. working class jobs. They're also victims of failures in America's health, safety, and environmental protections -- which the billionaires by their project 2025 want to eviscerate totally. Add in the social media billionaires quite deliberately spewing hate by algorithms. And finally the schools, so totally now having abandoned humanities.
I used to hitch-hike all over America, Michael. I felt welcome in every community -- skin color didn't matter, income didn't matter. Woody Guthrie's words about this land being your land, this land being my land rang true, so true.
Very very true Steve!!I agree with you the MAGA clan is poisoning the blood of this country!!
Thank you.
Thank you for a very helpful reminder of our country’s history, much of it shameful in regards to each generation’s current immigrants.
Sad how quickly people that are themselves descendants of immigrants turn on those behind them (“pulling the ladder up behind them”).
I’ll bet few of the current GQP would believe Reagan’s speech actually occurred. They forget that while he did many despicable (and criminal) things, he wasn’t nearly as anti-immigrant as the current GQP scumwads.
Hey, George. Not only "pulling the ladder up behind them," but also for support stepping on the heads of people below them, I dare say.
Oh yeah, some do indeed.
Morning (well, here, anyway) Lynell.
I agree that George has hit the nail on the head; pulling the ladder up after they've climbed it.
Yep. Way past both our "Mornings," Ally!
The Asian immigrants that I worked with years ago never “pulled the ladder up behind them.” They supported each other, I was impressed by their extended family support.
We can be proud that we still attract immigrants, but we can do better.
https://yadontknow.blogspot.com/2018/06/what-choice.html
There are many stories such as this one about child laborers in other companies in the USA.
'Kids as young as 14 were found working at a Tennessee factory that makes lawn mower parts for John Deere and others' (NBCNEWS, Child Labor, By Laura Strickler)
'The company, Tuff Torq, was fined nearly $300,000 for hiring 10 children. It must also set aside $1.5 million to help the immigrant minors who were illegally employed.'
Immigrant children as young as 14 were found working illegally amid dangerous heavy equipment at a Tennessee firm that makes parts for lawn mowers sold by John Deere and other companies, according to Labor Department officials.
The company, Tuff Torq, was fined nearly $300,000 for hiring 10 children. As part of a consent agreement with the federal government, the company is also required to set aside $1.5 million to help the children who were illegally employed. Ryan Pott, general counsel for Tuff Torq’s majority owner, the Japanese firm Yanmar, acknowledged the violations to NBC News.
“The department will not tolerate companies profiting on the backs of children employed unlawfully in dangerous occupations,” said Seema Nanda, the department’s chief legal officer, whose office obtained the consent judgment against Tuff Torq. “Tuff Torq has agreed to disgorge profits, which will go to the benefit of the children. This sends a clear message: putting children in harm’s way in the workplace is not only illegal, but also comes with significant financial consequences.”
The Labor Department did not specify what work the children were doing. But Labor official Juan Coria said what his investigative team found in Tuff Torq’s “very busy” Morristown manufacturing plant was “astonishing.”
'Coria, southeast regional administrator for the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, described an environment that he says caused anxiety among his investigators who witnessed children as young as 14 working late at night at the 24-hour manufacturing facility amid power-driven equipment that was being moved around the plant.'
'Pott, the general counsel for Tuff Torq’s majority owner, said the child workers were temporary and were not hired directly by Tuff Torq. He said they used fake names and false credentials to obtain jobs through a temporary staffing agency, and said Tuff Torq is “transitioning” away from doing business with the staffing company.'
“Tuff Torq is dedicated to ensuring that their products and services are produced under ethical conditions, with a strong emphasis on fair labor practices, and Tuff Torq is further strengthening our relevant training and compliance programs,” said Pott. “We are also actively engaging with our suppliers to reinforce our expectations regarding ethical labor practices and collaborate with them on implementing our updated policies.”
'According to the Labor Department, within 30 days Tuff Torq must also hang signs at every entrance to the plant that say, “Stop! You must be at least 18 years of age to enter and work in this building.” (NBCNews) See link below.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/child-labor-tennessee-kids-young-14-lawn-mower-tuff-torq-john-deere-rcna144938
Migrant Children Risk Lives as Roofers
December 14, 2023
Hannah Dreier, Brent McDonald, Nicole Salazar, Annie Correal and Carson Kessler, New York Times, Dec. 14, 2023
"... Children working on construction sites are six times as likely to be killed as minors doing other work, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Roofing is particularly risky; it is the most dangerous job for minors other than agricultural work, studies show. Labor organizers and social workers say they are seeing more migrant children suffer serious injuries on roofing crews in recent years. A 16-year-old fell off a roof in Arkansas and shattered his back. A 15-year-old in Florida was burned all over after he slipped from a roof and onto a vat of hot tar. A child in Illinois stepped through a skylight and fractured his spine. ..."
TAGS:
CHILDREN
UNACCOMPANIED MINOR
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
OSHA
'How child migrants are put to work in unsafe and illegal conditions'
Jan 1, 2024 6:40 PM EDT (PBSNEWSHOUR)
'Migrant children in the U.S. are working some of the most dangerous jobs in the country and private auditors assigned to root out unlawful labor practices often overlook child labor. The most common job for migrant children is also one of the most hazardous, roofing and construction, despite laws prohibiting anyone under 18 from doing so. Laura Barrón-López discussed more with Hannah Dreier.' (PBS) See link below.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-child-migrants-are-put-to-work-in-unsafe-and-illegal-conditions
'Immigrant child laborers are being killed in US factories. Companies are walking away with fines' (TheGuardian by Gloria Oladipo in New York, Mon 12 Feb 2024 07.00 EST)
'Sawmills and slaughterhouses collect citations amid landscape of ‘underfunded and under-resourced’ regulators'
'Duvan Thomas Pérez was just 16 when he was fatally injured while cleaning machinery at a Mississippi slaughterhouse. The penalty for the Mar-Jac Poultry processing plant was just $212,646 in federal fines and 17 safety citations, despite the incident being one in a series.'
“Mar-Jac Poultry is aware of how dangerous the machinery they use can be when safety standards are not in place to prevent serious injury and death. The company’s inaction has directly led to this terrible tragedy, which has left so many to mourn this child’s preventable death,” the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) regional administrator, Kurt Petermeyer, said in a statement last month.'
'But it was not the first time the factory had had a workplace death or faced citations for safety procedure violations in recent years. Despite previous incidents, and as the Mississippi factory became notorious, Mar-Jac continued to receive only fines.'
'Now experts, outraged at the latest death, are demanding stronger consequences for companies that violate safety procedures – and use child labor. Experts are also arguing that Pérez’s death highlights how immigrant minors may be more vulnerable to dangerous working conditions.'
“The fines imposed by Osha on this particular poultry plant are not sufficient to deter massive exploitation of child migrants, especially undocumented child migrants,” 'Elora Mukherjee, a professor of law at Columbia Law School in New York, said.' (The Guardian) See link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/12/immigrant-child-laborers-killed-factories-osha
Frances Perkins must be turning over in her grave. :(
My main purpose in writing the lines that follow was not to add to or comment on the criminal exploitation of children but to draw attention to a positive reality: existing programs to help integrate immigrant families into American society and those who have undertaken the challenging but essential work of teaching their children English and so enabling them to join the educational mainstream.
*
Led by the criminal who, as all informed New Yorkers I have ever met well know, systematically and for decades stiffed all “the little people”—workers and subcontractors regardless of origin—and got away with it, the hijacked GOP, now his very own thing, will turn the US into a larger version of Guatemala or Honduras. Complete with peones, death squads and, almost certainly, far worse even than those evils.
Unless he and his army of crime are stopped.
These people represent all the country’s corporate exploiters and their gangland subcontractors.
Meanwhile, throughout the land, federal and other programs are helping integrate immigrants and their children, and many Americans are hard at work doing their damnedest to perform that difficult and absolutely necessary task. Especially when it comes to the essential business of teaching children uprooted from their birth environment the English language and making them feel welcome and warmly accepted in America.
Should we not all celebrate these efforts and, if given the chance, help with them?
[Today, in my copy of The Economist, an article, “A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS”, subhead: “Britain has a larger share of foreign-born inhabitants than America. They are thriving”. So… something is working in my poor country, despite an imploding government, which at least has the virtue of being led by a Prime Minister of Indian descent…]
See https://www.migrationpolicy.org/topics/immigrant-integration, https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/61601/410227-The-Integration-of-Immigrant-Families-in-the-United-States.PDF and much other documentation.
*
In Scotland, I lived near and often visited Robert Owen’s great social project, New Lanark: https://www.newlanark.org/introducing-robert-owen. From the start of the 19th century, Owen worked there to overcome and avoid evils which America is still facing 224 years later…
It astounds me that this is happening in the 21st century rather than the 19th. The fines that these companies are required to pay are a mere slap on the wrist. There should be greater consequences for using child labor.
'10 Organizations Working to End Child Labor'
'1 Global March Against Child Labor'
'The Global March Against Child Labor (Global March) is a wide network of civil society organizations, trade unions and teachers, who work together to eliminate and prevent all forms of child labor, slavery and trafficking and that all children have access to free and quality public education.'
'The organization works to ensure that all children enjoy their rights, including free education, and that they are protected from being forced into labor, which hinders their development. The network mobilizes actors from across the world, to promote and protect rights of all children, especially the right to be free from economic exploitation and performing any type of labor that might hinder their mental, physical, spiritual, social and moral development. The network works to increase awareness about child labor and encourages countries to adopt and ratify conventions related to child labor. It also publicly engages to fight prejudices that contribute to child labor and works on eradication of the most oppressive forms of child labor.' (humanrightscareers) See link below.
https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/organizations-end-child-labor/#:~:text=The%20Global%20March%20Against%20Child,free%20and%20quality%20public%20education.
'Child labor laws are under attack in states across the country'
'Amid increasing child labor violations, lawmakers must act to strengthen standards
Report • By Jennifer Sherer and Nina Mast • March 14, 2023'
'Updated December 21, 2023'
Open link below to view updated 50-state maps showing legislation to roll back or strengthen child labor protections.
'What this report finds: States across the country are attempting to weaken child labor protections, just as violations of these standards are rising. This report identifies bills weakening child labor standards in 10 states that have been introduced or passed in the past two years alone. It provides background on child labor standards and the coordinated push to weaken them, discusses the context in which these laws are being changed, and explains the connection between child labor and the United States’ broken immigration system. It also provides data showing that declines in labor force participation among young adults reflect decisions to obtain more education in order to increase their long-term employability and earnings, and that nearly all youth currently seeking work report being able to find it.'
'Why it matters: Federal laws providing minimum protections for child labor were enacted nearly a century ago, leading many to assume that children working in grueling and/or dangerous jobs was a thing of the past. In fact, violations of child labor laws are on the rise, as are attempts by state lawmakers to weaken the standards that protect children in the workplace.'
'What lawmakers can do about it: This report provides policy recommendations for lawmakers at both the federal and state levels. At the federal level, Congress should heed calls to increase penalties for child labor violations and address chronic underfunding of agencies that enforce labor standards, eliminate occupational carve-outs that allow for weaker standards in agricultural employment, pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, and implement immigration reforms that curb the exploitation of unauthorized immigrants and unaccompanied migrant youth. At the state level, lawmakers should eliminate subminimum wages for youth and raise the minimum wage, eliminate the two-tiered system that fails to protect children from hazardous or excessive work in agriculture, strengthen labor standards enforcement, and empower young people to build and strengthen unions.' (EconomicPolicyInstitute) See link below.
https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/
'35-Plus Groups Fighting To Reduce Child Labor In The U.S. And Abroad…'
'160 million, The number of children trapped in child labor globally.'
'Stop Child Labor – The Child Labor Coalition – the Website of ...'
The Child Labor Coalition
Washington, DC – The Child Labor Coalition (CLC), a group of 34 organizations dedicated to fighting exploitative child labor, ...'
https://stopchildlabor.org/
As always, thank you Fern.
Tamera Willigham Craige, your attention, concern and engagement strengthens our democracy. Thank you.
Compounding this problem is the increasingly common practice of using outside companies to find and hire workers. This is very common in the healthcare industry, and can result in unqualified, improperly vetted people being hired. Quite often, unaccompanied immigrant children are sent to a 'relatives' home in the US, which actually turns out to be run by people funneling them into dangerous low paying jobs. Outside HR companies offer a way for companies to claim they did not know they are hiring children or undocumented people in general.
Thank you, Steve, for pointing to this common practice.
'What Is a Shell Corporation?' (Investopedia)
'A shell corporation is a corporation without active business operations or significant assets. These types of corporations are not all necessarily illegal, but they are sometimes used illegitimately, such as to disguise business ownership from law enforcement or the public. Legitimate reasons for a shell corporation include such things as a startup using the business entity as a vehicle to raise, funds, conduct a hostile takeover or to go public.'
'Understanding Shell Corporation'
'Shell corporations are used by large well-known public companies, shady business dealers and private individuals alike. For example, in addition to the legal reasons above, shell corporations act as tax avoidance vehicles for legitimate businesses, as is the case with Apple's corporate entities based in the United Kingdom. They are also used to obtain different forms of financing.'
'However, tax avoidance is sometimes seen as a loophole to tax evasion, as these corporations have been known to be used in black or gray market activities. It's natural to be suspicious of a shell corporation and it's important to understand the various scenarios in which they arise.'
More information, including 'Ways That People Abuse Shell Companies' can be found by opening the link below. I believe other good and more detailed sources to be found concerning the use of 'shells'.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shellcorporation.asp
It seems that a bunch of GQP infested states are gutting child labor laws to undermine enforcement in the name of “parental rights”.
Truly despicable.
Arkansas notably. The Huckabees are religious evil from the git go.
Fern, as always, thank you for these amazing contributions to today's Letter.
As always, it is so good to see you, Ally.
Many of us have moments, hours, days, weeks, months and years during which we feel the depth of harm DJT has caused to life, trust, liberty, health, education, Democracy... It is as weighing DJT's and his gang's crimes against humanity.
"Crimes against humanity"... so flippin' true!
I was just going to write this too, Fern and Ally! Thank you for these amazing contributions! Like having a personal librarian!
Thank you Heather, this could not be more timely. I was reading this morning a book by Teilhard de Chardin the Jesuit Priest, paleontologist and Philosopher where he compares the beautiful diversification of nature must also apply to society to thrive and be resilient. Your essay speaks to the need, incredible opportunity and necessity that immigration has served us in the past and is an essential path to our future. We don’t need a wall, we need an intelligent gate.
I am so grateful for these letters Heather! Thank you so much for your dedication. You are a brilliant light in all of this darkness.
What a stirring tribute by Will Bunch - “they died as Americans!” What are we so damned afraid of? How did such a large swath of us become such little, ugly people? Have we no capability to share our bounty? To put a hand out to those who have come after our own immigrant ancestors came here? The frigid waters of the Patapsco didn’t care whether they had papers or not. Neither should we. I remember the words of John Adams from “1776” when he was questioned as to whether he really meant that slaves were citizens. “They’re here and they’re people. I don’t know of any other requirement.” Whether he really said those words or not, the concept remains. They were here and they were people. That should be enough.
Thank you. Simple, isn’t it! So pathetic how the idiot momentum has overtaken our humanity. Shocking to my bones
Another excellent letter today, on a difficult topic.
Yes. Thank you. Your letter is much needed today.
A most important refrain- we are blessed to be a nation of immigrants. Women and Native Americans also face hateful discrimination. We are still striving to become a more perfect union. Events provide opportunities.
Another important Letter. Will you help us on this journey?
It's CAN DO, WILL DO! vs. Can't Do, Won't Do.
Plus keeping the handbrake jammed on for added sabotage.
Brilliant powerful letter Taking the trafic current event to a strong defense of our immigrants And wrapping it into a fascinating history lesson on immigration Again wish all in this country of immigrants would read this to create an understanding of what made and continues to make this a living nation dedicated to to all people
Thanks and Bravo Heather
Thank you Heather for a moving accounting of those 6 brave souls who perished while working on the bridge that collapsed. I hope this situation will also focus on how Biden’s infrastructure plan is a key component to rebuilding our nation and moving it forward. Blessings for your hard work. It can’t be easy but it is a noble gesture toward saving our nation from senseless harm 🇺🇸🗽🗳️🕯️🥁
MSNBC said the 7th worker couldn't swim but he escaped from his vehicle and made it to shore. He was still hospitalized as of this morning they said.
“The workers who died in the bridge collapse on Tuesday “were not ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’” Will Bunch wrote, quoting Trump; “they were replenishing it…. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as .Americans.”
Thanks for this, Rowshan. I appreciate your voice.