Learn the reality of Immigration
Immigration was last year, and will continue to be for a long while to come, one of the most discussed topics in the USA. Immigrants from Mexico and Latin American make up a significant proportion of our workforce; the debate on whether and how to legalize many of those crossing over without permits touches on many other hot topics: most significantly, on establishing fair wages for unskilled (or minimally skilled) laborers.
As Jews, those of us who are in position to speak to our communities should take whatever opportunities we have to be knowledgeable about what, exactly is at stake, and how it affects people on both sides of the border.
Jewish Funds for Justice together with Borderlinks is offering a new program for rabbis, cantors, and full-time Jewish educators. JFsJ and Borderlands are sponsoring a visit to the Arizona/Mexico border to learn about the experience of new immigrants crossing into the United States.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs writes:
This program will take place in Tucson, AZ from February 20-22, and will include visits with immigrants and service providers on both sides of the Arizona/Mexico border, as well as opportunities to speak with experts in immigration policy, the manager of a maquiladora (border factory), and others who can help us to understand the on-the-ground situation at the border.
Space for this program is extremely limited. Participants should be rabbis, cantors, or full-time Jewish educators who can commit to speaking about this experience to their congregations, students, or other community. Other Jewish communal professionals may be accepted if space permits.
The cost is $400 which includes program, food, and lodging for two nights. Participants must make their own travel arrangements to Tucson.
The application is available at:www.jewishjustice.org
Hmm, anyone want to take me up on the bet that this program will feature NO instructors taking the position that we should enforce our borders so that we keep illegal aliens out of the country and begin the mamouth job of booting out those already here (by amongst other things, ENFORCING the current laws against employers hiring illegal aliens). AE make it harder for the lower rungs of our society from finding jobs, and they reduce the overall standard of living; and the they clog up our health and welfare systems costing society billions of dollars. But a combination of Democratic search for votes and Republican search for cheap labor have gotten us into the current state, let’s do something about it now.
Well, at least your choice of pen name is spot on.
Why don’t I ever hear immigrant advocates state explicitly what they want? As in:
“We favor open borders that would allow anyone entering this country to be granted entry and a work permit, and a process for legalizing all those already in the country.” Legally open borders would eliminate the need to sneak in through the desert….
Answer: because then they would get no support.
A lot of jobs could be created if we built a nice wall. Union jobs even.
I’m sure there are a few advocates who favor an open border policy, but most do not. We did, at one time, have a policy of open borders; that how most of our Jewish grandparents and great grandparents got into this country. Once the quotas were imposed, Jews fleeing the Nazis (or, more recently, Russian Jews coming here from Israel), became terrible, lawbreaking “illegal aliens.”
Most advocates do think that we should have considerably higher immigration quotas, which would significantly reduce the numbers of undocumented immigrants and make it more difficult to exploit them. Creating a path to citizenship for those already here just makes sense; it would be both impossible and a huge waste of money to try to deport 12 million people (half of whom have simply overstayed their visas).
If you were to lead a trip to the border (perhaps with your ideological soulmates, the Minutemen?), how “fair and balanced” would your trip be?
Jews throw around the fact that our ancestors came here under an open borders policy, and this was a good thing. Says who? The alternative history of a Europe that included our forfathers is not the same as the one that occured. Perhaps a US with fewer people would have been less able to sustain empire building and genocide. We’ll never know – leading to the conclusion that all that talk of our grandparents is just so much pulling at the heart strings crap. A left wing use of wedge issue style politics….
The policy conducted by the ruling class of Mexico – to export it’s poverty problem – is not one our left should be abetting.