The Allied Construction Trades Foundation runs a TV commercial that says illegal aliens are taking jobs from West Virginians. It's apparent to the viewer that illegals are working for less to the advantage of those who employ them.
The Allied Construction Trades Foundation runs a TV commercial that says illegal aliens are taking jobs from West Virginians. It's apparent to the viewer that illegals are working for less to the advantage of those who employ them.
Curiously, this commercial complaint - featuring a bricklayer - and similar complaints come after the Legislature passed a new immigration bill last year with the aim to fix the problem.
It threatens bricklayers and other craftsmen, the warning goes. It intensifies concern about unskilled illegals crowding the labor market in the country, their families overtaxing community services and their children overrunning the schools.
Nonetheless, West Virginia and other central Appalachian states have had no influx of undocumented workers like California or Florida. But the problem, real and fancied, has a national impact.
Truth to tell, there are those who say that most hotels and restaurants between Nevada and New York, as the case in these two states, would collapse were the estimated 12 million undocumented workers shipped back to Mexico.
Still, some lawmakers and commentators insist that there's no need for these workers. True, there are dishwashing machines and rollaway beds, but they require human hands and heads to be of service. Robots are not here yet to replace them. They are closer to replacing coal miners.
For another matter, the immigration problem is unlikely to be fixed by a fence or wall separating the borders. In fact, the idea smacks of the Berlin Wall and similar past barriers reeking more of political ideology than of a practical fix for a practical problem.
Admittedly, borders should be secure against terrorists and drug trafficking. But fences and walls are no substitute for laws and personnel with resources to enforce them.
The Allied Construction Trades Foundation runs a TV commercial that says illegal aliens are taking jobs from West Virginians. It's apparent to the viewer that illegals are working for less to the advantage of those who employ them.
Curiously, this commercial complaint - featuring a bricklayer - and similar complaints come after the Legislature passed a new immigration bill last year with the aim to fix the problem.
It threatens bricklayers and other craftsmen, the warning goes. It intensifies concern about unskilled illegals crowding the labor market in the country, their families overtaxing community services and their children overrunning the schools.
Nonetheless, West Virginia and other central Appalachian states have had no influx of undocumented workers like California or Florida. But the problem, real and fancied, has a national impact.
Truth to tell, there are those who say that most hotels and restaurants between Nevada and New York, as the case in these two states, would collapse were the estimated 12 million undocumented workers shipped back to Mexico.
Still, some lawmakers and commentators insist that there's no need for these workers. True, there are dishwashing machines and rollaway beds, but they require human hands and heads to be of service. Robots are not here yet to replace them. They are closer to replacing coal miners.
For another matter, the immigration problem is unlikely to be fixed by a fence or wall separating the borders. In fact, the idea smacks of the Berlin Wall and similar past barriers reeking more of political ideology than of a practical fix for a practical problem.
Admittedly, borders should be secure against terrorists and drug trafficking. But fences and walls are no substitute for laws and personnel with resources to enforce them.
Wall advocates, in and out of Congress, say "first things first." But they say little or nothing about the projected astronomical cost and forbidding time it would take to build for at least a thousand miles.
A wall is no substitute for the reasonable goal to allow the true and the tried among the undocumented to earn citizenship papers and the right to belong in this country.
Naysayers oppose such a goal as "amnesty" for lawbreakers. "My foreparents entered this country legally," they say.
By comparison, mine were brought in chains. Both slaves and immigrants worked to build the country. Slaves built the nation's Capitol, according to distinguished African-American historian John Pope Franklin, retired Johns Hopkins professor, author of "From Slavery to Freedom."
It's common knowledge that documented Chinese immigrants laid the tracks for early railroads in this country, finally linking the Mountain State and Appalachia to other regions.
The new West Virginia law calls for fines against employers who hire illegal workers. For the first offense, fines range from $100 to $1,000 for each violation, and up to $10,000 and a year in jail for a third violation.
A ceaseless call urges labor unions, other groups and individual citizens to insist that immigration laws are enforced in Washington and the several states.
Peeks is a former business/labor editor of the Gazette.
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