IMMIGRATION DEBATE: Back of the Line

The Back of the Line

To hear some Presidential candidates tell it, Americans’ problems will be solved if we just send the lowest paid workers in this country home and make them, “get to the back of the line.” Yes, to those who clean our nations toilets, break their backs in our fields, stand in a frozen puddle of blood processing our nation’s meat, change the diapers of our nation’s children: we not only refuse you citizenship, we not only call you names, but we act as though you are criminals, we arrest you and deport you and tell you to get in the back of the line.

Lets call this what it is: scape-goating. It happens every time things get worse for the majority of us in the vast and diverse middle. We look for someone to blame.

And things are defiantly getting worse for those of us living on $20-100 thousand. Some of us must sell that second home, some of us are cutting back on everything else to pay that mortgage, some of us are facing foreclosure and some of us are looking for a place to rent that we can afford. We all feel the squeeze of rising healthcare, rent, mortgage, food and gas prices. We are seeing our real wages decline.

We are looking for someone to blame.

Instead of looking in front of us to those mortgage, health insurance, pharmaceutical, and utilities corporations, making a killing off our hard times, we turn around and glare at the back of line, to those who feed families and relatives in other nations on salaries of $12,000; those who live without drivers licenses and health care access, those who face discrimination in housing and education. We look back and say “get to the back of the line”!

Immigrants are already at the back of the line. They share that growing backspace with Iraq War veterans, homeless citizens, inner city kids, small farmers and a growing number of people losing their livelihoods as factories cross borders seeking cheaper wages. Let’s show those corporate hogs who say we have money for war, but not housing and education and veteran health care, that we know who is to blame.

It’s not immigrants.

Anne Winkler-Morey has three college degrees, works four jobs, makes $20,000 and would have no health insurance if not for the husband’s union job. She is trying to figure out how to pay her daughter’s college tuition.