Preserving the Value of American Citizenship for Future Generations

By Mike Halliwell

We must preserve the concept of "a decent day's pay for a good day's work" by keeping employers who adhere to this principle from being run out of business by unscrupulous competitors who hire illegal immigrants and pay so little that they are causing a "race to the bottom" for America's working class.

When the Simpson-Mazzoli bill legalizing the status of two million violators of our immigration laws was enacted in 1986, its proponents insisted that it was a one-time amnesty. Instead of halting or even slowing the influx of illegal immigrants, the Simpson-Mazzoli Law spurred millions more to pour across our borders in the hope that they too would be allowed to remain and become American citizens. The notion that illegal immigrants are needed to perform work that Americans refuse to do is bogus. Even before 1986, when illegals were mostly used to pick our crops, their jobs could easily have been filled legally -- it wages commensurate with the exhausting nature of the work were provided along with equipment to minimize its destructive effects on the human body. After 1986 the rising tide of illegal immigration inundated the meat packing industry, which had provided good paying union jobs with health care and other benefits. Decent employers who cared about the welfare of their workers were forced to compete with those who hired illegal immigrants willing to accept rock-bottom wages and hazardous working conditions. Soon meat packers were being used up and thrown away as farm laborers long have been. Until recently there was never a problem finding Americans willing to work in the construction industry, but the once-strong unions in this industry now find their backs against the wall because of a "race to the bottom" fueled by a seemingly unlimited supply of illegal cheap labor.

Like Lennie Skutnick who rescued a plane crash survivor from the icy Potomac River because "she needed help and she needed it now," I recognize that our brothers and sisters in private sector unions need help and they need it now. If the hopes and aspirations of America's working class are not to be drowned in the flood of illegal immigration that is at least six times worse than when amnesty was last put forward as a solution two decades ago, our Congress must stand firm behind the only effective solution: THE RULE OF LAW. I will take whatever steps my powers of office give me as a member of Congress to preserve the hopes of American citizens of minority ethnic extraction, who are most harmed by the stereotypes linked to illegal immigration (when many who look like them are engaged in thievery of what we cannot possibly give openly to everyone who wants it, the opportunity for a better future for AMERICAN children). Immigrants are more talented than our own population with disabilities, it is rather difficult to sneak into this country in a wheel chair, but we will never properly use the many talents which handicapped people have if we continually allow criminals (by definition those who break our laws) to cut ahead of them in the employment line. Until I can see that the most vulnerable among us are not being taken advantage of by conspiracies between illegal immigrants and unscrupulous employers, I WILL SUPPORT NOTHING LESS THAN STRICT APPLICATION OF THE LAW TO THOSE ILLEGALLY RESIDING IN THIS COUNTRY, AND NECESSARY INCREASES IN PENALTIES FOR THOSE WHO SEEM TO THINK THAT THEIR DETERMINATION TO INVADE THIS COUNTRY IS GREATER THAN OUR DETERMINATION TO DEFEND IT.

The reference to "our brothers and sisters in private sector unions" is based on Mike Halliwell's membership in a public sector union when he was a social worker and again as a college professor. The right to tenure, the privileges of seniority and the invitation to creativity secured by academic freedom (made politically viable by precedents set by and current efforts of private sector union members), allowed Mike Halliwell to make breast cancer the main focus of his research and a top teaching priority after his wife was diagnosed with this disease fifteen years ago. With this flexibility, Mike has been able to do a reasonable approximation in terms of breast cancer therapy, to what another determined relative did for his son in the film "Lorenzo's Oil." Unionism has taken root in the public sector, shielded as it is by the voters from unfair tactics by employers, while in the private sector union membership has declined to less than 10%. Mike Halliwell is reminded of a speech by Winston Churchill in the early years of World War II when he came to America (where British ideals of freedom and democracy have taken root) in which he expressed the hope that "the New World come to the aid of the Old (European)World" which was being threatened by Hitler. Employers whose appetite for slave labor seems to have survived the century and a half since the Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclaimation are not so bad as Hitler, but the threat that they and their co-conspirators, the Coyotes who smuggle illegal aliens into this country, is very real and requires a plain answer to the old union rallying cry "WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?"