I KNOW americans who will pick lettuce, clean toilets or do any job.

[Porcupine]

I know Americans who pick lettuce. College educated Americans who picked lettuce yesterday in the rain for my table. I talked to them this morning at the farmers market in my little town. I talked to Americans who picked lettuce, oranges, apples, raised cows and baked bread from a wood fired oven.

I know Mike who will come snake your drain line at 9 pm on a Sunday night if your toilet is backed up. I know Jim who will drive the honey truck out and pump your septic tank in the pouring rain. I know John who will go into a house where the walls move with roaches and spray pesticides. I know another John who will climb into mud under your house where there is surely black widow spiders and fix your pipes. I know Ron who will cut the tree that fell on your house off in a storm. I know dozens of these guys. I am one myself.

There is no job too ugly that Americans will not do it. There is no job that has to be done that is beneath a working American. Americans work the most dangerous jobs in the world, crab fishing, oil rig diving, crop dusting and mining. These are jobs where if you do not die yourself you will surely shake hands with a fellow worker who will.

But Americans expect to be paid fairly for the work they do. They expect to be able to feed and clothe their families and have them live somewhere near their working parents. They expect to get a little health care and maybe the hope of an honest retirement after a lifes work.

What the Bush administration wants to push on us is a permanent lower class. What they want is a set of people without rights that they can use to lower your wages. They want somebody who is so desperate that they will accept minimum wages or less for jobs that kill or cripple workers. What they really want is a slave class.

We cannot give it to them. We must fight any immigration law, any trade law that allows a slave class to exist. We must fight it or accept that we will be threatened with slavery ourselves.