The Taboo Subject at the Heart of the Immigration Debate by David Sirota

[Douglas Carpenter]

The Taboo Subject at the Heart of the Immigration Debate

by David Sirota

Amid all the buzzword phrases like "border security," "guest
workers," and "amnesty" being thrown around in the superheated
immigration debate, one buzzword phrase has barely been mentioned:
"free trade." It's not that border security and guest worker status
discussions aren't important. But, as I discuss more fully in my
upcoming book Hostile Takeover, America's free trade policies get
almost no attention, no matter how central their role is in the major
challenges facing our country. How, you ask, does "free trade" fit
into immigration? It's pretty simple: had America actually had a
trade policy that lifted up the economic conditions for ordinary
workers both at home and in other countries, there would likely be
far less demand by desperate workers for illegal entry into our
country.

To see the full post, go to http://www.workingforchange.com/blog

[norml]

1. I'm going to use this on my show.

Next week's topic and poll question is "Slave labor, can we live without it?"

http://www.kzum.org/

[applegrove]

2. Mexico has an immigration problem of its own from the South. Also

too - the distribution of wealth in Mexico is abysmal. Did you know that with a population of 80 Million Mexico has many more upper middle class people than Canada? Roughly one third of their populace is living high off the hog.

So Mexico has issues of its own.

Canada's immigration issue is in fact that we need an extra 10 Million people in a decade. That would be a 25% increase in our population. Because if we do not then we have to support rising transportation costs (oil) between small cities strung out across 5000 miles. All of then at least 2 hours apart.. Many of them 9 hours apart. We don't need guest workers.. we need your ten million people. And we need them fast!!