Crackdown on immigrants empties a town and hardens views

[superconnected]

STILLMORE, GA. - As Department of Homeland Security agents in black SUVs tooled up and down the dirt avenues of Stillmore, Ga., hundreds of undocumented people scattered into the woods like "flushed quail," one witness said.

Many of those who weren't arrested fled, some to Kentucky. One family hid for two nights in a tree. As night sets now, a sprinkling of solitary lights glow from once-crowded trailer parks. Since the Labor Day raid, Stillmore, where the wishful sign at the city limit reads "A town that is still growing," has shrunk by at least a third after more than 120 people were arrested and perhaps as many as 300 others disappeared.

"It's a ghost town," says resident Bennett Byrd.

As federal, state, and local officials crack down on illegal immigrants across the country, attitudes continue to harden among those who want them to stay and those who want them to go. In places like Stillmore, Ga., Arkadelphia, Ark., and Charlotte, N.C., raids and crackdowns have uncorked a phenomenon for those left behind: a sense of moral confusion about mass roundups and midnight raids.

More...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20061003/ts_csm/aghosttown

[Xipe Totec]

1. Rename the town Stillborn, GA n/t

[superconnected]

2. What the ice agents are doing is terrifying.

Sure it's in their legal rights, but then so is torture.

I just think it could be handled better. It sounds more like terrorizing the hispanic community than "orderly" sorting out illegal immigrants - coming up through the floor boards/making a town flea for the woods/a family hide in a tree all night. And that world "orderly" does keep bothering me in that article. Lets not forget how systematic the nazis were at their "round ups" - the other word that bothers me here.

[acmejack]

8. ILLEGAL

Key word. They were enforcing the law. Give me a break. This isn't even close to torture, don't even put it on the same page. These people don't have rights they are here illegally taking our jobs! So please, of course they are running for the woods they are here illegally! How do you propose they be apprehended?

I would love to hear all about it! My response to you is 639,000 American jobs were lost last month through lay offs. Last month alone! I'm very sorry that it offends your sensibilities, but WE desperately need those jobs! American jobs for Americans! If we have a surplus of jobs, then fine. Until then, I must support these actions.

[treestar]

12. And those Americans are not going to move to Georgia to take

those exact jobs. It is not that simple.

If it were, it would be nice, but the economy does not run that way. It grows and there are more jobs or it shrinks and there are fewer jobs. If some working people leave, it could be not only their jobs that are lost.

[primavera]

22. That's it precisely

Many around here tend to focus on wages being a causal factor in US workers not taking jobs filled by undocumented aliens, but the reality is that, more often than not, those jobs pay as well or better than any other low- or semi-skilled job. US workers will take jobs at Mal Wart earning $7/hr but are not rushing to the fields to pick asparagus for $10/hr. It's therefore not a safe assumption that the issue here is purely about wages, if it were, then Mal Wart would be the employer having a hard time finding workers and, let's face facts, they're not.

In many instances, the difficulty in attracting US workers has more to do with the fact that the jobs may not be where the US workers happen to live. If you're a US worker born and raised in West Virginia, for instance, West Virginia is home, it's where all of your friends and family live, you may not want to leave all of that behind and move to, say, North Carolina, where the local economy is growing and there are more jobs available. For an immigrant, home is something they've already left behind, at which point one place is as good as any other as far as they're concerned, so they can and do go wherever the jobs happen to be.

Another factor affecting job desirability has to do with permanence. Many of the jobs in argiculture and construction and landscaping and such being filled by undocumeted labor are seasonal and/or temporary in nature. If you're a US worker, how attractive is a job which only guarantees you a paycheck for a few months, after which you're on your own again? So a lot of US workers will choose to go work at Mal Wart for $7/hr instead of making $10/hr picking vegetables, because the Mal Wart job is full-time and permanent. That's a valid reason, but you can't expect agricultural concerns, which are, by their very nature, seasonal, to keep everyone they need at harvest times on the payroll year round. For an immigrant already reconciled to a nomadic lifestyle, this condition doesn't impose as great a hardship as it would on many US workers. Is that the immigrant's fault?

The bottom line is, if US workers, for whatever reason, aren't interested in taking certain types of jobs, how can you claim that immigrant have "stolen" them from US workers?

[Xithras]

44. According to the article, they ARE.

Not moving to Georgia specifically, but according to the article the plant raised their pay by a buck an hour to attract legal workers instead. They are getting those workers.

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. Oh, so YOU have lost your job to a foreigner who doesn't even

speak the language?

Or are you just worried about all those OTHER native born who are so incompetant that they lose THEIR jobs to foreigners who don't speak the language?

The 'losing jobs' canard is bullshit.

What is losing us jobs is factories being sent to the Philippines, not Mexicans crossing the border to try to make enough money to survive on. If we had a reasonable immigration policy, and a liberal border control most of the undocumented workers would not be coming here to stay. If they could come and go across the border, every time they went home for a visit they would be tempted to stay. Because that cannot come and go, instead they pay to have their family smuggled over which removes any incentive for them to leave again.

And BTW, they DO have rights. The constitution protects 'persons'. Not 'citizens'. Read it sometime.

[pampango]

21. In one sense we "lose jobs" whether a new factory is located

in the US and staffed by immigrants from Mexico or located in Mexico and staffed by Mexicans, if the alternative was a factory in the US staffed by Americans.

If the new factory is in the US, rather than Mexico, then our economy would benefit from the wages spent in the local economy. If the factory is built in Mexico, it benefits the Mexican economy and its development more, again because the wages are spent in the local economy.

I am in favor of increased immigration, for humanitarian as well as economic reasons, but I realize that there is a downside to many things in life. The downside to an increased supply of low-skilled workers, from any source, is that is puts downward pressure on the wage levels that employers are willing to pay for low-skilled workers (supply & demand, you know).

[primavera]

25. Excellent point

Whether protectionist economic policies represent a strength or a weakness is a separate debate upon which reasonable people can differ, but for better or for worse, the reality is that our economy is heavily oriented around the free flow of goods and capital internationally. As long as that remains the case, outsourcing will be an attractive alternative for US businesses. And comparing the economic impact of immigration to outsourcing, immigration is by far the lesser evil. Immigration may or may not have an adverse impact on jobs and wages in the US, but it's NOTHING compared to the catastrophic consequences of outsourcing. And, as things stand right now, Congress gives US companies hefty tax breaks to fire US workers and move their operations offshore. Your taxpayer dollars at work. By all rights, heads should be rolling over that bit of corporate welfare, but unfortunately, that's the reality in this plutocratic country of ours. And that's the alternative corporations weigh against immigration when trying to meet their needs for labor; cutting their personal profit and upping wages to attract more US workers doesn't even appear on their list of options.

[Xipe Totec]

45. I've often tried to make the same point

but never as eloquently or dispassionately as you.

Good work! :thumbsup:

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[anotherdrew]

27. if we had reasonable farm labor practices, americans would pick

but reasonable practices and standards can't develop in a "free-market" distorted by the illegal hiring and exploitation of undocumented foreign workers.

[acmejack]

36. My response to you was deleted.

Suffice it to say I have read the Constitution.

[mainegreen]

19. I agree completely.

I have a family member who is trying to get residency from Nederland. He's rich, retired and is going throught the process legally! Six years later his number is finally coming up. These people are line jumpers.

[primavera]

28. So what, you've never jaywalked in your life?

C'mon, this notion that breaking a law, no matter how badly written, automatically strips one of any right to sympathy is absurd. Every person here has at some point in their life broken some law or other and appropriately so. If I'm all alone out on the middle of the wilderness, 100 miles from the nearest human being, how seriously do I really need to take the sign that tells me I can't let my dog off the leash? Within that context, it's a stupid law and only a braindead idiot would feel compelled to obey it under those circumstances.

In the immigration context, we as a country tell prospective immigrants that we will make visas available to them if they meet certain criteria, but then we only make an infinitessimally small number of visas available to the people who match those criteria, forcing them to wait decades to get a visa even though they qualify under the very laws we wrote. Meanwhile, our own companies are out there actively recruiting these people to come here, in some instances even hiring the smugglers to bring them here, and against this backdrop, we're going to be outraged because some aliens choose to accept that invitation and disregard the law? Okay, so it doesn't qualify them for sainthood, but it hardly makes them hardened criminals either.

[mainegreen]

30. Sure I've jaywalked. But I've never smuggled.

There are levels to crimes. And they do have my sympathies, but does that mean I think they should get to stay? No. If they get away with it, well then good for them. But it's still against the law.

If I actually was ticketed for jaywalking I would pay the fine. Why? Because I was jaywalking, I broke the law. The fact that only some people are getting punished for breaking the law does not mean that no one should get punished. Should the companies that import the workers get punished? Yes. What if there not punished, should the illegal immigrants get to stay if found? No. They knew what they were doing in coming here was illegal. I'm not advocating making them pay a fine, or go to jail. Heck, if they want to apply for residency after being deported, then great!

Our economic mixed signals do not mean they get to break the law.

[pampango]

33. I am in favor of increased immigration, even "amnesty."

I think the former is good for the economy. The latter is a necessary precursor to actually passing good immigration legislation and enforcing it. I don't know of any country that has no controls over who moves there and who works there. I suppose that would be an interesting experiment, if we decide to get rid of the notion of the nation-state.

I realize that in the real world, there will always be some selective enforcement of laws. I know enough police officers to know that they don't spend their whole day handing our citations to jaywalkers and litters. In any crackdown on immigrants or their employers there will always be questions of why this group of immigrants and why that employer not the other?

Sometimes you have to enforce a stupid law in order to generate the will to change it. Imagine if thousands of jaywalkers were suddenly arrested. Think that might generate some movement towards modifying the stupid jaywalking laws? I realize that for many of us leaving the immigrants in legal limbo, but here and working, is good for humanitarian reasons. Many employers like the immigrants to be in legal limbo, so there is less pressure to raise wages or improve working conditions.

It seems like the humanitarians and the shady employers have arrived at an unspoken compromise to leave things the way they are. Each side would like to see changes that would benefit them, but are afraid to rock the boat for fear of losing what they have.

What would happen if there was a massive crackdown on illegal immigrants and their employers, resulting in much economic damage and many humanitarian catastrophes? Could we possibly then change immigration laws and actually enforce the resulting legislation like a rational country would do?

[primavera]

39. Good way of putting it

I was a participant recently in a tasforce on US comprehensive immigration reform and I think you're quite right that there's sort of an uneasy compromise to go with the status quo because the politically viable alternatives would only make things worse for everyeone - for US workers, for the immigrants, for US businesses, for national security, for everyone. There are ideas out there for better policies, but with all of the jingoism and shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitudes dominating politics at the moment, none of them have any chance of getting anywhere, so what are you going to do? Sitting put becomes the lesser evil...

[dmallind]

34. But...

If he wasn't rich and from an industrialized western nation his wait would have been far longer than 6 years and probably never. Potential immigrants are scored after all, and the wait for a Mexican manual worker is essentially life, not six years.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

32. They took your job?

You're a migrant farmer? Better get back to work then.

[mitchtv]

41. yeah there's oodles of Americans fighting

for the stoop labor agriculture jobs here in Coachella Valley.Waiting desperately to make minimum wage cutting Grapes and melons in 110 degree sun. -not. Americans WILL NOT DO this type of labor, they'll sell crack first.

[EnviroBat]

43. Thank You 100% correct...

Now lets make sure they don't come for us after the fallout...

[GiveUsHope]

46. So were they when they were beating up disobedient blacks

Something to remember.

[annabanana]

3. heh. . "round up all the illegals"

"I didn't mean OUR illegals, you....you . . . FEDS, you!"

(stupid is as stupid does)

[Warpy]

4. This is an old story, and the fallout from the raid was instructive

Not only did they empty out a town, they caused the only industry in that town to raise their damn wages above minimum wage to attract US workers. And it did.

This story is about a scumbag employer who was trying to get something for nothing, a hardworking bunch of people for less than it takes to live on. If that raid had resulted in fines according to the laws on the books, it would have sent a much more chilling message to the dirt buckets who hire illegals at starvation wages rather than make their jobs attractive to people in the US.

It's an old story, but the media have consistently missed the real story. There are no jobs Americans won't do, and Americans will do a good job. There are only dirtball employers who refuse to pay living wages for them.

[bleedingheart]

6. Where oh where are the folks to fill the shoes of Upton Sinclair

and from whence will they emerge...

The Jungle was about labor conditions and not food safety...

It was about a race to see what immigrant group would work themselves to death for less money...
As each group wised up to the practice...yet another foreign country was tapped to bring in fresh immigrants to perform the tasks.

The Mexican government is nothing more than a supplier of cheap labor.. I almost think that they do nothing to improve the living conditions of poor Mexicans because to do so would end the crop of poor labor that is shipped north and American industry can't bring the poor over in droves with boats anymore through Ellis Island like centers because it would be far too expensive....otherwise we would be seeing them sending their corporate slavers to Africa to bring in poor Africans to compete in the race for the lowest per hour pay rate ever....

I keep saying over and over again...we are in the Neo Gilded Age....we keep repeating history because we refuse to learn it or learn from it...

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. From Mexico's perspective, the current situation works well

Those with meager skills go north and get work which they are unlikely to find at home, then send the money home to their families. It brings in money and reduces the need for public assistance.

[aquart]

13. Actually, people learned a lot from the Gilded Age.

In 1877, this country erupted from sea to shining sea. You never hear about that in school. All kinds of handy legislation resulted from it.

But BushCo is attempting to undo all of that. The laws are still, many of them, on the books. Every one of these bastards needs to be prosecuted. If we're real busy prosecuting, maybe we'll be too busy to invade countries that haven't attacked us.

[DBoon]

14. And there was a second eruption in the 1890's

The rural populist party scared the daylights out of the ruling class.

The 1890's were also the time of the first real effort at nationwide industrial unionism. Eugene Debs was jailed for his role in the railroad strike

I think our rulers know their history, and are busy putting in place social controls along with their "wild west" capitalism.

[0007]

5. Safe in Texico -

Listen to this truer than life song......

http://www.texasreddirtmusic.com/slthm.html

[superconnected]

7. I just checked. Yes, Stillmore was raided a month ago. This story

came up today on the front of yahoo.

Interestingly my check didn't agree with whats printed in the story.

On this site:

http://www.workers.org/2006/us/immigrants-0928/

It says ICE agents are now picking up 1000 immigrants per week.

Some additional comments on Stillmore from the 2nd site:

“This reminds me of what I read about Nazi Germany, the Gestapo coming in and yanking people up,” said Stillmore mayor Marilyn Slater.

"David Robinson, the owner of a trailer park where the Mexican immigrants lived, said, “These people might not have American rights, but they’ve damn sure got human rights. There ain’t no reason to treat them like animals.” "

“Taking fugitive aliens off our streets is a top ICE priority,” said Douglas Maurer, head of ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations in Denver. (Rocky Mountain News, Sept. 13)

[acmejack]

9. David Robinson was undoubtedly running a profitable little slum.

I would love to see the conditions at his "trailer park". Anyone near Stillmore? These people were all profitting off these "Guest workers", sure they hate to see them go! They were exploiting them to the max...

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. The wrong people are being arrested. nt

[primavera]

29. And you're not?

Bought any produce recently? Did you pay extra for the locally-grown organic produce or did you buy the cheaper stuff picked by migrant farmworkers? Ever purchased anything at Mal Wart? Did you know that they pay their Ceylonese textile workers a whopping 18 cents an hour? Are you acquainted with the concentration camp conditions in which their Chinese laborers are forced to live and work?

Sorry, I'm not trying to single you out, I'm just trying to insert here that we as Americans collectively seem to feel that we have some devine right to ultra cheap goods and services, and to ensure that we continue to enjoy those low prices, we're pretty content to turn a blind eye to the practices businesses employ to provide us with low prices. It's therefore kind of an oversimplification to complain about opportunistic profiteers running sweatshops, since the ones buying the goods such sleazebags produce are ourselves - we're the ones creating the market and making these guys rich, not the immigrants.

[acmejack]

35. Right I should quit eating as a protest

I'm not renting a substandard housing at exorbitant prices so don't try that you people ar simply unbelievable here. I guess I'm just not upstanding enough to post on DU anymore! One must be pretty god damned pure to participate here!!

That is a ridiculous argument, I don't have a choice! I have to buy food, irregard less of who picks it. I have to wear clothes, no matter who makes them, I must have shelter, whether you build it for a $100 an hour or not. I have absolutely no control-NONE! Your argument rings hollow.

I hire no immigrant labor, I buy at farmers markets, I buy union made, I do what I can. You may blame me for these problems, so be it. Blame the stockholders of Monsanto, ADM & Conagra-the greedy bastards who destroyed the people's livelihoods in Mexico. Don't blame me! Blame the stockholders who demand ever increasing profit. How can you blame people without a dime in their savings account for this debacle? Blame the Forbes 400 BILLIONAIRES.

IO can only do so much with my limited means, I require no further castigation from my supposed allies here. Between people telling being smartasses & telling me to read the Constitution and others piling on the guilt-"It's all Our fault", why don't we try blaming the fuckers who actually are responsible for a change?

[primavera]

38. Good for you

That's great, I'm delighted to hear that you shop at farmers' markets and buy union-made goods, that's really commendable! Unhappily, not all Americans can say the same and that's part of the problem. Thank you for not contributing to that problem.

[mitchtv]

42. I can't wait till the start roundups in Calif

All the republicans using lawnmowers Ha. Wait til they start taking parents of American citizens.Oh well 90% of the country's veggies can grow somewhere else- Mexico > Spinach won't be the only problem

[treestar]

11. They are a part of the economy and the law should be changed to

reflect that.

[Acadia Blue]

17. Raise the wage and Americans will move to the town. Oh but

they don't want to pay evem a bit above the ;minimum.

[Acadia Blue]

18. After Katrina, McDonalds and other started paying 10.00 an hour

and found workers, some retired, willing to do the work that was left when half the city left.

[SoCalDem]

20. The bottom line is this..

They want immigrant MEN..strong men who will work long hours.. They wan these men to work for a pittance, then go "somewhere else" to sleep...after they have bought their food from the local merchants..

They really don;t even mind all that much if they never learn english.. These people are just beasts of burden and as long as they understand the work instructions, that's enoough.

They don't want these men to "socialize" and they most certainly don't want them to marry or cohabitate and reproduce..

They do not want ANY mingling with the "local girls"

they want.......slaves..

[Sequoia]

23. You mean the Nazi's are rounding up the Polish Jews again...at night?

It just amazes me how the towns on the border are against the WALL and these rednecks in the interior are so hateful.

[conscious evolution]

26. My dad is from Stillmore

He left to take a tour of the Pacific in 1944 and never returned.Rarely brings the place up in conversation.
Makes me wonder how bad things are there.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

31. Delete

wrong spot.

[sadiesworld]

37. The corporate press lamenting the loss of cheap labor, again...

it seems like I see this same story daily around here.

[pampango]

40. There are also a lot of us with a humanitarian perspective

who lament the loss of livelihood for poor brown immigrants who are here contributing to the economy and sending money back to the Third World. Is that an odd coincidence of laments? You betcha!

What's the answer? Crack down on the illegal immigrants and the employers who hire them, which will disrupt the economy (how much? who knows), force the hiring of Americans with higher wages and higher prices or the elimination/retrenchment of those industries in the US, because they can't compete internationally. Legalize the immigrants, but not the immigration, and perpetuate the current situation into the future. Change the immigration laws and then enforce the new legislation like a rational country would do.