Illegals, not gays, new GOP whipping boy

Has everybody in the GOP noise machine gotten the new memo?  It looks like it.  The Oregon GOP certainly is on board, although Kevin Mannix must have had his memo under a pile of papers since he was the last one of the GOP gube candidates to join in on the chorus.  And what is this all so important memo about?  Illegal immigrants and how they're robbing our state treasury.  Forget gays, they're so passe, so 2004.  It's illegals now. 

Yup, they're taking over.  They're picking our onions, milking our cows, building our houses, cleaning our tables at our favorite restaurants... Wait a minute!  Did the Oregon GOP get their memo cleared with the Oregon Restaurant Association, Oregon Home Builders Association and large farms like the Threemile Canyon Farms dairy?  Are they biting the hands that feed them?  Or is the whole illegal immigrant talk just another ploy to get righties all worked up so that they'll be motivated to send their ballots in rather than putting them through the shredder in an election year where Republicans aren't nearly as popular as they were in '02?

But then again do the business members of the above mentioned associations care if the illegals whom they've hired get cut off from any public services?  Do they care if Pablo's little girl doesn't have access to English as a Second Language classes in her school?  Probably not.  Who cares if Angelina doesn't learn English... goddammit, those people won't even learn to speak our language!  So, it's a win-win for Republican candidates and the above mentioned associations:  The GOP gets their base out on an "Us vs. Them" issue and home builders get their tax cuts while keeping their illegals who've just been pushed down one more rung on the ladder, and of course this pulls down the rest of Oregon's legal manual workforce with them.  It's a real win-win for those at the top.

Comments

[Karl]

I would personally like to see a big crackdown on those who hire illegals. They are a huge downward pressure on wages. I'm sick of hearing the lie that they are doing the work that "Americans" won't do. That's true only because the pay for that kind of work is a fraction of what it used to be. For example, in the late '60s and early '70s my family could easily live out the winter on what we made picking apples in the fall. Those people picking apples now arn't making much more in real dollars than we were then.

[Sid]

Good point. A month or so ago, NOW on PBS did a story on reconstruction contracts in the Gulf Coast and how companies were actively recruiting illegals. They actually were going to Mexico and other Central American countries to recruit. Once they get them up here, the workers have zero rights exactly because they're illegals, and that's what the contractors want. They're easier to exploit.