http://www.bobgruen.com/files/johnlenno ... 20CARD.jpg
John and Yoko showing immigration card
Immigration Situation
for release 03-28-06
Washington D.C.
Let's consider the Roman Empire. When Rome conquered a nation or a tribe, part of the booty was slaves. They marched them back to Rome in legions. Captured slaves were to Rome much like illegal immigrants are to America. They did the shit work that the Roman citizens didn't want to do. You know, they stomped the grapes and tended the fields and the children and emptied the chamber pots. It was cheap labor. Slaves were part of the wealth of conquest and empire.
Every empire in human history has been based on two things, military might and slave labor. The American Empire is no different. Only our slaves come voluntarily, not at the point of a sword. (Or perhaps it's an economic sword.) These people are not the Mongol Horde, they are just looking for work and a better life.
Here is where the problem arises: If you are a businessman and you want cheap labor, you are more than happy to see an illegal alien who is willing to work for peanuts and is not likely to quibble about unions and benefits and working conditions lest he come to the attention of " La Immigracion."
On the other hand, if you are a working-class Joe who is competing for a job with Jose' from South of the border, the picture looks a little different. It looks like the price of your major resource, your labor, is being driven down in the marketplace by the presence of illegal immigrants.
This is the pimple on the butt of our border policies and it is about to come to a head. We had the largest demonstrations on the streets of our major cities this weekend since the Vietnam War protests and the civil rights marches. A pimple forms when a foreign object gets imbedded in the sebaceous oil that oozes from the pores of our skin. In this case the illegal workers are the oil (cheap labor), but they are also the foreign objects.
I've pondered this subject long and long as I have watched the sustained, growing public outcry to 'fix the border problem.'
There are several ways to deal with the immigration situation:
The Draconian Approach: (aka the Sensenbrenner plan, HR 4437)
The plan goes something like this. Build a wall around the whole fucking country and deport the 12 million illegals that are already here and let the retirees in Arizona and Florida mow their own damned lawns. Fine or jail any employer that knowingly or unknowingly hires an illegal. I'm sure that we could stop most, if not all illegal immigration. It would be relatively simple. We just deploy sharpshooters and armed unmanned drone aircraft to cover every inch of the border and summarily execute every alien or jack-rabbit or armadillo who dares to breach the boundary. And we leave their bodies to stink in the sun and be eaten by buzzards and coyotes. It would take about two weeks for the word to spread. The Poet's Eye can see it now, we open dude ranches where gun-happy rich white guys like Cheney and Sensenbrenner can go for a week-end and bag a few illegals. It would make the Iron Curtain look like a theme park.
The Good Samaritan Approach:
Institute an expanded guest-worker program with a path to citizenship. This is one of the few policy positions that George Bush maintains that I could actually support. But it neatly dove-tails into the next approach.
The Business As Usual Approach:
Claim that we already have the necessary laws on the books, all we have to do is enforce them. Then you continue not to enforce them. That way you can pay lip-service to border enforcement while still enjoying the benefits of a cheap, plentiful, compliant labor pool. I predict that this will be the outcome of the current political brouhaha.
The Open Border Approach:
Do Away with the US-Mexican border and the Canada-US border. Grant amnesty and citizenship to all current illegal residents and open the doors to whomever wants to come and live and work and pay taxes in this country. Hey, I love Mexican food. I'm happy to see the Latino culture flourish inside our borders.
Jobs and people can migrate in any direction. Rather than endure the cost of living around Washington D.C., I could rent a villa in San Jose' and sit in the plaza with a wireless laptop and do my work from there. Plus I could probably hire a cook, a housekeeper and a yard-man. I'm not sure if I would be hiring Mexicans who would then have no need to migrate North or maybe I would hire unemployed American manufacturing workers who have waded across the Rio Grande in search of their vanished jobs.
If this globalization thing is really going to work, we have to walk the walk as well as simply talking the talk. What would this mean? It would mean opening all borders. It would mean establishing a world-wide standard currency which would provide the basis for a universal minimum wage. No more tariffs or sanctions or other trade barriers. Let the free market rule. This would mean that Bolivian cocaine, Afghani heroin and Mexican or Canadian pot would be available over the counter. And aluminum tubes suitable for enriching uranium? How many do you want? We'll throw in some yellow-cake as a bonus.
No, if we are going to do globalization, let's do it right. We could import our prostitutes from Holland and Thailand and market corn-fed midwest girls to sultans in Dubai or Bahrain. We could outsource our abortions to Brazil; gay marriages could be performed in Denmark or Sweden. We could export sin and import Salvation. The Christians will love it.
There are four major factors in our new global economy. There are resources, there is technology, there is capital and there is labor. The first three are owned or controlled by about 10% of the world's population. The only way the rest of us have to participate in the global economy is by selling the only thing we own--our labor. The only way to insure the value of that resource, is for workers to organize on a global basis. I hate to sound like a Marxist, I know it's so passe, but "Workers of the World, Unite!"
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
--John Lennon
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I have printed it out and I am going to break it down line by line. I am constantly deleting posts before any onc can reply, i have stopped deleting posts that have been replied to
