Thoughts on Illegal Immigration

Howling on my CD player is the Voice of Bob Dylan singing "When you gonna wake up? When you gonna wake up? When you gonna wake up, strengthen the things that remain?" Indeed, yes.

I think slowly about the eleven to twenty million Illegal aliens here in the USA. Yes. You read that correctly. No one is sure, but it's someplace between eleven and twenty million people here illegally.

I know, some of my leftie friends find the phrase "Illegal Alien" to be so harsh. They like "Undocumented person" so much better. First of all because it's a much longer phrase, secondly because it's so hard to say fast, and third because they think its a kinder moniker. The thing is I've met illegal Aliens, and many of them have full on documents, more documentation than you have. Birth certificate, drivers license, all kinds of nice I.D., sometimes with more than one identity. These documents are sold more or less in the open. Last time I visited McArthur Park in Los Angeles, false documents were on sale on the sidewalk in the open.

Generally, when one thinks of a person with false identity papers, one thinks either of spies or criminals. How can people be selling false identity papers on the sidewalk of a public street?

Friends this is a outward sign of government wide corruption. The police look the other way, because the City Councils, State Assemblies and Senates and the Governors have told them to look away from this obvious criminal activity. Why would these politicians do that? Why have the police look away as forged documents are sold to people? Why have the police ignore the fact that documents are forged when people are arrested? Why does the D.A. not prosecute? It's because of the Big Campaign Donor, the Corporate Campaign Donor, The Oligarch and would be Oligarch and of course their friend and employee, the money bundling, money laundering, glad handing fixer former office holder, always on hand with a bundle of ill gotten gains. To make it plain, the Oligarchs have paid the politicians to order the police to ignore the illegal aliens with the obviously forged documents and the people forging those documents. Why would the people running a country do that?

Because to them America is not a Country. Not the way you or I think of it as a beloved geography inhabited by people who have thrown their lot in together adhering together to a sacred set of ideas like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and perhaps the writing of Tom Jefferson, John Adams and Tom Paine. No, to these Oligarchs America is nothing more or less than a opportunity for personal profit. They look at the American People not as one nation made of the peoples of the whole earth, they look upon us as interest and identity groups to pit against each other.

These Oligarchs love Illegal Aliens. Afterall, an Illegal Alien has no recourse to the law or the courts. The law demands breaks every few hours? Overtime? Safe workplace conditions? Just try to get that enforced on your bus ride back to Mexico or your boat trip to China. These are folks who are exploitable because they can not sue. SO these workers themselves are subject to what amounts to if not De Jure Slavery, De Facto Slavery.

In a recent case, in the midwest, the Police pulled over a van for a traffic violation. The van was carrying 13 men, all from Mexico, who volunteered to the police that they were not legally in the Country. These men were working for a international company that did work on maintaining commercial and industrial heating and air conditioning equipment. The Company were paying these illegal aliens $7.00 an hour, no overtime, one dollar a hour less than minimum wage. The men were working typical work weeks of fifty hours a week for $350.00 a week. Thirty years ago, when I was a construction worker, the trade to get into was Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC)maintenance. Way back in those days the HVAC jobs with big companies were considered secure, had regular hours and paid a whopping $35.00 an hour, PLUS full benefits. So lets add up what the company was saving by hiring Illegal Aliens today, as opposed to Citizen Workers, thirty years ago:

Costs @ 50 man hours a week:

$35 an hour for the first forty hours = $1400.00
$52.50 an hour for ten hours of overtime $ 525.00
Overhead, benefits & taxes $ 650.00
Cost per person for 50 hour week $2575.00

SO for each man for each week the multinational corporation was saving $2225 ($2575 - $350 = $2225) Each and every week, this multinational was saving on those thirteen Illegal Aliens $28,925.00. Twenty nine thousand dollars a week in unjust profits made on the backs of virtual slaves and taken from the American people. In a year of fifty weeks (assuming laughably that the Illegal Aliens got two weeks off) the multinational company saved $1,446,250.00. That's one point four million dollars in wages lost in the American economy. Its hundreds of cars , homes , bass boats, vacations, levis, movie tickets, dinners out, engagement rings, dresses and so on never sold. Its taxes not paid. That money is not multiplying in the national economy. That money is a small teensie sliver of the money being illegally taken from the American People every day by our corporate masters. It's BILLIONS of dollars of just wages sliding into the pockets of the Oligarchs and out of the pockets of the workers, and the local, state and federal governments. This is a destruction of the commons of the nation.

In addition to the low wages paid the illegals themselves, Illegal Aliens act as a hammer against all other workers in the nation. The Oligarchs point to every worker who wants a raise, is seeking a safe job site, or wants such crazy things as overtime, and in effect, and often in actuality, say "Look you don't want to do this job for what I feel like paying today (and its always less than yesterday)I can replace you with a Mexican. They want your job, and they will take it for half your wages, shut up, don't complain, work faster." Those of you reading this who have never worked in a factory, on a construction site or in a diner, may not believe it, but those of us who once did work in such places, know the gut tearing sound of those words and the back breaking fiscally destroying impact and effect of them. Even those of you who work in white collar jobs are having your wages eroded.

As wages at the lower end of the scale drop, the Oligarch turns to you and tells you to be grateful for what you have and that you can not drop down in America's social and employment culture and still even survive. Your wages are dropping too. It's O.K though, corporate profits are up, in spite of a lack of national production stocks are up, the banks got bailed out, all on the street is well. All is well, unless you live on Main street and not Wall street.

There is one more oppression contained within the Illegal Immigration issue, particularly when thinking about people coming from Mexico. Mexico is a country run by Oligarchs. These Oligarchs went to Yale and Harvard with America's Oligarchs. They are friends and classmates. The Mexican oligarchs have kept their people in perpetual peonage for decades. They have used Catholicism and a rigid social structure combined with purposeful lack of opportunity to keep wages down. Naturally, the Mexican People look across the border and they see a nation with no more resources than Mexico possesses prospering. The Mexican People desire better for themselves and their children than what the Mexican Oligarchs desire to let them have, because every Peso the worker earns is one the Oligarch will not posess. The Oligarch, being Da Man, wants them all. So all of the people in Mexico who would push and pressurize Mexican Society towards either reform or revolution instead cross the border because our Oligarchs are ordering our police to look the other way.

Workers on both sides of the border are being cheated. national economies on both sides of the border are being harmed and Oligarchs on both sides of the border are being enriched and propped up by illegal immigration into the USA from Mexico.

What is the Answer? To begin, it is not to pass new laws. Illegal immigration is already illegal. It already demands forged documents, perjury when applying for employment , and knowingly hiring people who have no legitimate right to work here in this Country. Arizona recently passed a law demanding law enforcement pull over every person who they reasonably suspect are not legally in the country and demand they show their Birth Certificate, Social Security Card and Drivers License. Is "Your Papers Please" to become the new salutation upon entering any State? Is this not a reduction of the rights of all citizens? If it is to be evenhandedly and Constitutionally enforced, of course it is. The answer is not to demand papers while traveling, or resting at home.

The answer is to prosecute and jail those who knowingly hire illegals. Now I know they say its difficult, but do we think that the corporation hiring those thriteen guys at the start of this article didn' t know they were illegal? Really? They thought citizens would work at a highly technical and dangerous job for less than minimum wage and no overtime? Really? Maybe some D.A.'s need to grow some balls and try it a couple times with say a jury of American Citizens..

There are some from the Democratic Party who are chattering about some kind of "bipartisan Immigration Reform". This will be nothing at the end of the day but an effort to allow those twenty million illegals to stay and still by their presence lower wages, and force every American to carry a new national ID card full of biometrics and a tracking chip, just so we can be spied upon at every moment. One can not suspect that "BiPartisan Immigration Reform" will lead to the solving of the immigration problem. Why? Well who has been paying the politicians to ask the police to ignore the law in the first place? Oh yeah, the Multinational Corporations and the Oligarchs who presently benefit from the situation of Illegal Immigration. Why would they solve something that is a problem for the American People and a benefit to themselves? They won't.

election May 19

Elections elections everywhere and not a thing worthy of a vote..... The California State Assembly, Senate and Governor have all created a economic house of cards over many years, and now they want to shift the responsibility for this mess square onto the Shoulders of the People of California.

Yeah vote to ratify a total nonsense budget deal that will only delay and make worse the day of judgement, but if all goes well may put it off until the present officials are termed out of the offices they clearly do not deserve. That way they can say all was well until they left. How nice for their egos.

This deal is a mess robbing Peter to pay Peter, not even Paul. Its a crazy quilt of "What the heck why?" Whenever you have to ask a question like that about something a group of politicians are doing its because YOU the People are getting SCREWED.

Vote no on each and every measure Tuesday. Make the politicians deal with their mess, its the only way we can ever hope to get to a sane budget process in California.

School Board Election

Tuesday March 10, 2009 is the next PUSD School Board election. Nothing much worthy to report on. Again in violation of the policies they wrote to keep this reporter from endorsing people when he was a member, several Altadena Town Councilmembers have endorsed candidates and been identified, now with an "Asterick soley for identification purposes" as Town Council members, a clear (big shock) violation of the very rules they wrote. As always, in Altadena, the rules only apply to some, not to all. Like Dukes and Kings of old, the rules here never apply to those who wrote them. Big shock again.

Well who to vote for? Its not a good election in the main. In most of the races its Twiddle Lee Dumb , Twittle Lee Dumber and Twittle Lee Dumest are running unopposed, not a particularly inviting choice. There is one actual race where there is a clear choice.

The choice is between a candidate supported by all the people who have been supporting the candidates who have been winning and ruining the PUSD schools for thirty years, or another guy, not supported by any of those Nimrods. Guess who I support? If you instantly said "Charles Nelson", you, Dear Reader, are a super-informed voter. If you said "Miramontes," you are hopeless. If you shrugged, chances are you probably had no idea there is even an election going on.

I'd say "May the best man win", but the lesser man, as often happens in PUSD elections has all the endorsements and all the money. This is all your fault. You have let the schools rot to the state they are in by not getting involved, staying involved and voting for good candidates, no matter if the other side is endorsed by ACT, the Pasadena Democratic Club, the Minesterial Alliance, the PEF and all the other "nice " soft sell Dixiecrat racists who really in their pea pickin hearts don't think black men and latin women can really learn and must be forever dependent on the largess of the professional social worker class. Yes, I said that. It's sadly true. You owe it to the children and your community to not vote for the guy everyone keeps insisting is the only guy who can win and to vote for the better candidate, with the better ideas and fewer ties to lobbiests and special interests.

DO the right thing by your Community Tuesday, vote for Charles Nelson

Why We Will Never Have a AUSD

Some people are out trying to get signatures to start the process of getting a Altadena School District. Being a "Home Rule" kind of guy I'm generally for it, in spite of the hilarious misrepresentations and shenanigans of many of the folks "running" the effort today. While I'm for it, I predict it will N E V E R happen.

The signatures really are no problem and with a group of real activists would have been gathered by now. The will of the People of Altadena to vote for and run a school district isn't a problem either. What makes a Altadena School District an impossibility is all the God Damned not for profits roosting in Altadena, generally run by do gooder Board of Directors from Pasadena, San Marino and LaCanada who are dumping, oh let me be politically correct and polite: "placing" severely mentally, emotionally and physically retarded children, and children with various disabilities that make them prone to violence, in group living situations here in west Altadena. Nice of them ain't it...

Anyhow, under some very unjust and bizarre constructs of the California State Education Code, these kids education and treatments must be paid for by the school district wherein they reside. Presently the cost of providing services for the kids at Five Acres and Sycamores are costing the PUSD between $15,000 and $200,000 a year EACH. Paying for these kids is a major impediment already to the PUSD's ability to provide a quality education for the vast majority of the children in the district and even for other handicapped children who don't reside at these "not for profit" group homes.

These "Not for Profit" group homes are in the borders of the map that the present proponents accepted from LAFCO. this means that were there a Altadena Unified School District, the AUSD would have to pay for the education of all these "not for profit" group home kids. These kids are already a major strain on the PUSD budget and would simply break the back of a AUSD and make it so that a AUSD could never ever pass the fiscal study demanded under law before the issue can be voted on by Altadenans.

If you look around, you see that California School Districts without large group home facilities for emotionally, mentally and physically handicapped students have very high test scores and even lower "per pupil" costs than Districts that do. The districts that do have these facilities happen to have relatively low local land values and higher concentrations of minority and working class students. The under laying disparities in land values between rich and not rich communities tend to make for more of these kind of uses in less wealthy and minority communities. The California State law making the district where the "not for Profit" service providers are located pay the costs of the services is a supposedly innocent and fair law that structurally disadvantages huge numbers of minority and working class students. The State of California should pay directly for these kids, and until they do, educating minority and working class kids will be a cruel joke and never ending issue in California.

It will also mean that Altadenans will never control the education of their kids.