Politics USA: Mexican border : Standing with Bush on a sane just Guestworker program, without amnesty, without security risk

Some Republicans in Congress are lambasting Bush for not adopting their negative labour-policy approach to immigration, an immigration wave that they correctly point out is now flooding illegally over the US border with Mexico, creating an emergency situation where at present most immigration is illegal, and a wave of illegality that is detrimental to those who apply for an orderly entry to the land, jurisdiction, and employment of America. At best the illegals are line-jumpers. At the same time as some Republicans jingoistically decry a sane, safe, and orderly compassion toward newcomers seeking work at the lowest level of income; most Democrats in Congress seem aligned with their leadership to filibuster and otherwise work to defeat any proposed new law that doesn't simply grant "amnesty" to 12 million illegals presently in the USA, indeed advocating an amnesty in advance to those who are continuing to flood in every day and nite. These line-jumping illegals will continue to do so until the border is effectively closed to them, so that orderly legal immigration can be restored and perhaps increased.

National Security and American Labor Policy

In a report by Charles Hurt and Stephen Dinan, "Bush seeks 'civil' immigration debate," Washington Time (Mar24,2k6), we get a glimpse into the shenanigans of Bush-opposing politicians on these issues:

...[T]he Senate debate is turning pointed, with Republicans warning Senate Democrats that they will pay a political price if they block efforts to pass immigration legislation this year.

"It's discouraging that before the debate has even begun in the full Senate, the Democrat leadership is threatening to filibuster any legislation that doesn't include amnesty," said Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican who has offered immigration legislation. "This is not the way to improve our national security and keep Americans safe."

Earlier this week, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid stood near the US-Mexico border and threatened to "use every procedural means at my disposal" – including a filibuster – to thwart the border security legislation Majority Leader Bill Frist plans to begin debating Monday.

Mr. Reid said he's opposed to the bill because Mr. Frist is introducing it directly to the full Senate, bypassing the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"What we're bringing to the floor is a border security bill to secure the borders and protect people," Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said. "To suggest that he would filibuster such a measure only weakens our position at a time when we're fighting a war on terror. It just fits into the Democrat strategy of delay and obstruct."

A pox on Reid, Clinton, and similarly-irresponsible Democrats who once again evidence their supineness regarding America's national security. Yet, the Frist bill, his proposed Securing America's Borders Act (SABA), is also unacceptable from the standpoint of a holistic public justice. Altho, were I in the American Senate, I would probably end up voting for it because of time and further political factors at the moment, in the situation where even worse "solutions" are in play and capable of obstructing any amelioration.

Nevertheless, Frist's SABA is so national-security monomaniacal that it does not factor in and achieve a balance between nat-securpol (national security policy or: nsp) and labor policy. Labor policy has several dimensions that should be incorporated into a comprehensive and balanced approach to nsp, so that the two are wedded: nsp/lp. But first, let's look at the present moment in the Senate, referring again to the WaTi article by Hurt and Dinan.

What the reporters tell us is that Frist has insisted on splitting the nat-securpolicy (borders, illegals, expenses to states in health, education, etc.) from labor policy (labor demand from American businesses, businesses that hire and exploit "the reserve army of cheap labour" (Marx) which in this case consists of illegals rather than legals. (America's present reserve "cheap labour" usually does not include poor Americans needing work but who often will not take jobs from the lowest-wage exploiters among marginal companies.) All of these labor-aspect considerations add up to a legislative choice basically between proposals for programs for Guestworkers, or Amnesty of all current illegals, or neither (which latter means > Drive the bastards out!). Such Republicans seem to want to de-globalize the labor market entirely, with the result that marginal companies will leave the country and the worst companies will go underground as in the prostitution industry and illegal sweat-shops in the garment industry. Farm labour is another industrial sector that attracts illegals. In starb but blessed comparison, the Guestworker program attempts to begin the process of bringing both illegal immigrants working illegallly and shady American businesses employing illegally at exploitive wages, often in unsafe conditions and lacking any provision of medical insurance for workers who may be injured on the job.

Why does Frist want to split nsp from labor policy in the present situation? Basically, because the labor/business aspect of the illegals/borders problem is tied up (for who-knows-how-long) in the Senate's Judiciary Committee where obstructionists like Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer palaver on and on, not least because they are beholden to extreme leftwing interests for campaign financing and ideologically-motivated campaign workers. So, the Judiciary Committee is going to be yapping much nonsense quite superfluously over a long time, before it exhausts itslf and reaches some decision or other, on the question of a Guestworker program–Yes or No?, the question of an Amnesty decree for the 12 million illegals in the nation (many of whom are in the workforce at the bottom rung)–Yes or No?, or the know-nothing question that wants the status quo to continue–Yes or No?. Frist simply decided that he can't force the issue that is key to a balanced approach, can't force it out of the Committee and onto the the floor of the full Senate for decision-making now. Yet, the borders, meanwhile, are dangerously insecure on a day by day, nite by nite basis; and the whole point of Homeland Security is compromised.

So, Frist split the subject matter to hive off the labor aspect which is under seemingly-interminable discussion in the Senate Committee and left it to that Committee's internal devices, while calling onto the floor of the full Senate the subject matter of a separate security law, arguing the emergency priority of nat-securpolicy, and thus to consider a proposed new law on that subject which he himself has sponsored – namely, the Securing America's Borders Act (SABA). It is not out of utter lack of compassion for immigrants (or even illegals) that Frist proceeds with SABA to the howls of Democrats. Take Clinton for example.

...[T]his week, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton promised to block any legislation that would make being in the U.S. illegally a felony, rather than the current civil offense. Such a move would be "mean-spirited," she said, and not in keeping with Republicans' professed belief in religious values.

"It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures, because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself," she told a crowd in New York on Wednesday.

So, like the Devil, Clinton can quote Scripture; but she does so speciously not compassionately, drawing on a leftwing fundamentalist interpreation that is as one-sided as any rightwing fundamentalist approach would be. She does not want to be a Christian politician who must integrally balance all the legitmate interests at stake around these questions and thereby reach policy-decisions on the basis of integral Christian political philosophy where the law-writing must be all-sidedly accountablility on the full range of relevant issues (simultaneity of norm realization, Bernard Zylstra). The idea that Christian politics simply wants to make things easier for the person in difficulty (in this case, the illegal immigrant) is specious, based on poor hermeneutics [approach to interpretation of Scripture, in this case that of Sen. Clinton (D, NY), where she follows the script put out by the evangelical leftwing's Jim Wallis' and his Sojourners; Wallis' defective political vision was critiqued recently by Gordon College political-studies professor Timothy Sherrat (Mar6,2k6)]. Senator Clinton, like Jim Wallis, has split the Gospel into parts and selectively put the interests of illegals before border security, before legal immigrants, before an orderly program of welcoming non-citizens to work at low wages in marginal US businesses that could move their operations abroad and decrease their expenses and taxes further, and most importantly, thereby avoid unionization by legitmated Guestworkers where business and labor both pay into medical and safety insurance programs.

Contrary to Clinton and Wallis and Kennedy and Boxer, the Bush solution is the most balanced and fair, over the long term, by providing a Guestworkers program where businesses are forced to improve conditions and come to terms with the possiblity of unionization. But "unionization" can be and is a deceptively abstract term, if we don't note that such an option also needs reform. Guestworkers taking low-wage jobs that Americans won't accept, need the minimal protections at least of a union not serving the interests of Big Labour, but instead struggling on behalf of those Guestworkers who choose them, a union struggling for Guestworkers in their special situation and predicament which involves hard labour for the low wages paid, replete with on-the-job safety issues, and accompanied by an acute need for medical insurance – partly at least paid for by the low-wage employer. I think that the new kind of compassionate unionism of the small Christian labour movement in the USA and Canada is part of the solution. And that the unbalanced approaches of millionairess Clinton and company are not.

The Bush solution of No Amnesty for illegals, a new Guestworker program with safety and medical features, and also the effective option of unionization, including unionization open to the Christian-labor option working to meet the special needs of workers in a still-difficult Guestworker situation – this would be a holistic approach that the Clinton and Wallis myopic splintering of issues cannot solve, but only obstruct in a quite subChristian way (C.S.Lewis). If Wallis is so bent on solutions, why isn't he working for a Christian unionization among the poor hardworking people who would come to America as Guestworkers. This is what has taken place to some small extent already in Canada. What is wrong with evangelicalism's leftwing in the States that it can't do anything but look for entirely government-socialistic solutions? Thru the World Confederation of Labour, CLAC-USA can work to ameliorate the lot of Guestworkers in cooperation with Christian and related unions around the world, including the many such unions active among workers in Hispanic countries. Such faith-based unionization is not unfamiliar to people from the originating cultures out of which most Guestworkers would come to take the lower-income hard-labour jobs Americans won't take. Thus, these Guestworkers would help keep marginal USA businesses in the country, legal, safe, and medically-conscious on behalf of their workers from other lands. It wouldn't be utopia; but, amelioratingly, it would be good for all in this segment of the economy, and would strengthen national security integral to a better labor policy. - Politcarp