For President Trump, one of the first positive things he can do is to get away from wall building rhetoric, and instead focus on building a bridge to our Hispanic communities. One way is to revisit our guest worker program—clearly, the H2A visa program is not working. The US needs a more flexible program that allows legal immigrants to work on farms year-round, changing the renewal process to allow workers and companies to have more consistency.
The current H2A program has serious issues. A new investigation has found that the Department of Labor rarely removes employers out of the program, leaving thousands of workers each year exposed to mistreatment, injury, and even death. The report also states that employers have stolen guest workers’ pay, forced them to live in overcrowded or dangerous housing, held them at gunpoint, or even been sent to prison for immigration fraud. Despite all this, companies have been allowed to continue receiving hundreds or even thousands of H-2 visas.
For the agriculture community, it is critical that we have a permanent guest worker program so farms of all sizes can find and maintain labor, not just season by season, but well into the future. To be more efficient, these visas should be for three to five years, so workers will not have to continually go back and forth, running the same corrupt gauntlet to get back into the US.
This is not a new concept, President GW Bush in 2004 suggested creating a guest-worker program that would “offer legal status, as temporary workers, to the millions of undocumented men and women now employed in the United States . . . .”
The US government, thus far has taken an enforcement only position on legislation. With an estimated 75 percent of workers in the agriculture sector having weak, even fraudulent documentation, blanket enforcement puts the industry at serious risk.
There must be provisions for guest workers to come, stay and live here.
Citizenship or amnesty is not the answer either. However, for folks currently already working here, there has to be away for those workers who have not broken any laws other than their illegal presence in the US to be able to adjust their status and remain here to work. Whether these workers have to pay a fine and taxes, it is critical that they be allowed to come out without fear of deportation so they can continue to harvest the crops.
In rural areas like the Eastern Shore, where agriculture plays such a big role, we must push for more protections, and a permanent guest worker program for immigrant labor. In reality, they are already part of our community, and their hard work, work that is vital to a successful Northampton County, needs to be recognized and given priority treatment. As a country, we need to address the unauthorized immigration issue by bringing undocumented immigrants “out of the shadows.”
An efficient and fair permanent guest worker program would benefit both guest workers and American workers by making legal employees more available and giving employers less incentive to hire undocumented workers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a national organization of business owners, has cited a shortage of American workers in hospitals, restaurants, hotels, and construction. As President Bush stated in 2004, “Decent, hard-working people will now be protected by labor laws with the right to change jobs, earn fair wages, and enjoy the same working conditions that the law requires for American workers.”
Sorry friends, I can’t buy into this idea:
“Citizenship or amnesty is not the answer either. However, for folks currently already working here, there has to be away for those workers who have not broken any laws other than their illegal presence in the US to be able to adjust their status and remain here to work.”
The American people should be the ones who determine who comes here and for how long. Every illegal worker has been involved in identity theft of some sort or other – as an illegal you can’t have an employment SS# and they use someone else’s in order to be able to work. They use benefits intended for US citizens and legal immigrants give rise to huge healthcare costs.
The answer is a seasonal work program for workers only (no family) and robust enforcement of return provisions at the end of the season. I am willing to pay more for produce to ensure that our laws are followed and that we are the ones who determine who can come into our country.
A quick history lesson:
North America was settled by Anglo/Celts and has enjoyed prosperity, peace and freedom unparalleled in human history.
Central and South America were settled by Hispanics, and have had revolutions, generalissimos, poverty,disease and strife forever. Now our betters want to bring that Eden of “diversity” here.
NO.
Hey Stuart Bell, another revisionist history lesson for the masses? Sleep much during U.S. History class in high school? Or maybe the fishing was good that year? North America was already settled when your beloved Celts/Anglo-Saxon European marauders came to these shores. What followed in the next four hundred years were (try to keep up) Africans, Portuguese, Hollanders, Spanish, Germans, French, Irish, Italians, Orientals, Greeks, Poles, Norwegians, Swedes, Turks, Algerians, Russians, Czechs, Austrians, Australians, Jordanians, Syrians, Iranians and Afghans. Feeling the heat from that melting pot? Feel woozy yet?
Do you know what your beloved firsts colonists of Virginia did during the winter of 1609-1610? Those sainted Anglo-Saxon white early leaders of the free world were so desperate to live, they fed on the dead bodies of their fellow colonist. Pretty ominous start for prosperity, peace and freedom, huh?
Someone had to settle this wild land so that those others would have a place to immigrate to. As to those Indians you refer to having already settled that wild land; they were not able to protect their loved ones or their homes, so it was taken from them. The Coolies and Krauts would have loved to have taken it from us in the 40’s. Contrary to liberal belief, a strong bully will always win in that type of conflict, just ask the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As to the fishing, they were large and abundant.
Back in the 1600’s, Chas Cornweller, while prosperity certainly entered into the equation, I doubt very much from my own careful readings of American history that it had anything whatsoever to do with either peace or freedom that any of those Europeans were coming over here.
Take, for example, the Roanoke Colony, also known as the Lost Colony, which was established on Roanoke Island in what is today’s Dare County, North Carolina, which was a late 16th-century attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent English settlement here in what later in history became the 13 “united” States of America.
On March 25, 1584, as you will recall from elementary school history courses, Chas Cornweller, Queen Elizabeth I granted Sir Walter Raleigh a charter for the colonization of the area of North America.
That charter specified that Raleigh needed to establish a colony in North America, or lose his right to colonization.
The Queen and Raleigh intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World.
The queen said to “discover, search, find out, and view such remote heathen and barbarous Lands, Countries, and territories … to have, hold, occupy, and enjoy.”
According to WIKIPEDIA, it was also to establish a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain to tell Spain that England was ready for war, so that the original charter basically told Raleigh to establish a military base to counteract Spaniards.
So much for peace or freedom, eh?
With respect to revisionist history, which seems to be running rampant in this country today, in the “Remarks of President Barack Obama as Delivered” in his Weekly Address on November 24, 2016, President of the United States of America Barack Hussein Obama stated as follows with respect to those people:
We remember the determined patriots who landed at the edge of the world in search of freedom.
end quotes
“Determined patriots?”
The Pilgrims?
Not hardly.
But as president, of course, Barack Obama is as free to revise our history as is any other American, so we will just have to accept that characterization of the Pilgrims as determined patriots, so we are not seen as being disloyal to our present leader of the free world.
And up here where I am, Chas Cornweller, it was the Dutch, not Stuart Bell’s beloved Celts/Anglo-Saxon European marauders, who were the original settlers, that after Henry Hudson, in 1609 explored the region around modern New York metropolitan area while looking for a western route to Asia while in the employment of the Dutch East India Company, and further explored the Hudson River which is named after him, and laid thereby the foundation for Dutch colonization of the region.
And yes, Chas Cornweller, just as you say, North America was already settled when Stuart Bell’s beloved Celts/Anglo-Saxon European marauders came to these shores in whatever year that might have been.
In mid-July in 1609, Henry Hudson made landfall near what is now LaHave, Nova Scotia where he encountered some Native Americans who were already accustomed to trading with the French.
From there, Hudson actually sailed down your way, to the mouth of Chesapeake Bay before turning back north.
On 6 September 1609 John Colman of Henry Hudson’s crew was killed by Indians with an arrow to his neck, which serves as pretty good proof to me that this land was already occupied before Stuart Bell’s beloved Celts/Anglo-Saxon European marauders got here.
Further proof of the land already being occupied at that time can be found in the JOURNAL OF THE ESOPUS WAR 1663, which was a war fought between the Dutch and the Esopus Indians living along the Hudson River to the south of me in that year.
And according to that journal, which schoolchildren up this way used to be required to know about, there is mention of negros, as African Americans were then called, being in this country and in this state at that same time.
So, everything you say above is true, Chas Cornweller.
When Jemmy Madison was writing the Federalist Papers in 1788, he estimated at that time some three million souls in the then-United States of America, and now it is over 300 million, so yes, a lot of people have come here from elsewhere over the years.
In one area of Queens, New York alone, there are said to be something like a 100 different nationalities all living in close proximity to each other.
So, Chas Cornweller, to get back on topic, given all of what you have just said, should we have an efficient and fair permanent guest worker program in this country that would benefit both guest workers and American workers by making legal employees more available and giving employers less incentive to hire undocumented workers?
Is that something that makes sense?
Or is that something that needs maybe another ten or twenty years of congressional debate before a coherent policy can arise from the discussions and negotiations?
And don’t leave out the Palatine Germans, Chas Cornweller, who were sent here from England in 1710.
Here in NY, those Palatines were expected to work for the British authorities, producing naval stores [tar and pitch] for the navy in return for their passage to NY and they were also expected to act as a buffer between the French and Natives on the northern frontier and the English colonies to the south and east.
They essentially were little better than slaves, which is a pretty ominous start for prosperity, peace and freedom, I would say.
What about you?
Yes, we need farm workers and the migrants for the most part are good hard working people who are a benefit BUT the whole thing must be done legally. Many illegals are doing other than farm labor and are taking jobs from Americans who are now unemployed & draining the treasury through welfare & other payment while not doing their “fair share”.
We absolutely must have a way to close our borders to all except those entering legally and that includes commerce as well. We absolutely must shut down all the drug trafficing.
We must not tolerate outright willful disregard of being ordered to leave & stay out of this country (deportation) and for my money the penalty should be death and in very short order. I hold the same view with felons who are not permitted to possess firearms and who continue to pack heat.
Many deportees return time & again with some as many as 20 or more times. All it amounts to is a free trip home to visit friends for a few days and back to the city where they have found a second home. Felons with rap sheets as long as your arm & caught with a Glock several times. Laws must have TEETH & they must be enforced or like lines in the sand they are meaningless.
Because our government hasn’t done it’s duty we have this large number of illegals. Just like speed limits, if everyone is way over the limit, why am I poking along? Everyone is entering the U S and not being stopped, so why not Me? America is a wonderful place & how can you blame someone for wanting a better life? It’s up to us to see to it that they come legally or they keep out.
Wayne, don’t you mix metaphors in your essay, seeming to conflate “guest workers” with “immigrants?”
Is one really the other?
According to the dictionary, an “immigrant” is a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country, in this case, the United States of America.
So what is the difference here between an “immigrant,” legal or otherwise, and a “guest worker,” and how might that affect policy?
Unfortunately, we never hear answers to those questions from any of the rocket scientists in charge of everything down there in the Ten Miles Square of Washington, D.C.
And it isn’t like this is a new problem or new issue.
I can remember back to the 1950’s, when they seemed to be deporting Italians by the boatload for being involved with the Mafia or organized crime.
And they still deport the occasional Nazi, although most of them are long gone now.
In fact, concern over immigration policy goes right on back to the same “founding fathers” who gave us the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, along with the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
In his Notes on Virginia, under “Immigration Policy,” Virginia’s Tommy Jefferson had this to say on the subject:
“The first consideration in immigration is the welfare of the receiving nation.”
“In a new government based on principles unfamiliar to the rest of the world and resting on the sentiments of the people themselves, the influx of a large number of new immigrants unaccustomed to the government of a free society could be detrimental to that society.”
“Immigration, therefore, must be approached carefully and cautiously.”
end quotes
Is Tommy talking sense there, or is that just a lot of hoohah or psycho-babble?
Later, his 1st Annual Message in 1801, Thomas Jefferson had this to say on the subject:
“Shall we refuse the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land?”
“Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe?”
“The Constitution, indeed, has wisely provided that for admission to certain offices of important trust a residence shall be required sufficient to develop character and design.”
“But might not the general character and capabilities of a citizen be safely communicated to every one manifesting a bona fide purpose of embarking his life and fortunes permanently with us?”
end quotes
Hmmmmmm!
1801!
Let’s see, isn’t that like 215 years ago now?
So what is going on here in this country now with regard to “immigration,” where our supposed “leaders” seem to be permanently stuck with their heads in their derrieres?
On the question of rights of immigrants, in a writing from Thomas Jefferson to Hugh White in 1801, Tommy stated:
“Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules.”
“That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular.”
end quotes
Our laws acknowledge the right of those born elsewhere to join us in society, conforming to our established rules.
Doesn’t that mean abide by OUR laws, not flaunt them in our faces?
Going back to Tommy’s Notes on Virginia from 1782, he gave us the following thoughts on immigration in his times:
“[Is] rapid population [growth] by as great importations of foreigners as possible… founded in good policy?…”
“They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another.”
“It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.”
“These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children.”
“In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation.”
“They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass…”
“If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements.”
end quotes
When in 1782, Tommy Jefferson said these immigrants from other non-English speaking nations would bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, and these principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children and thereby infuse into our legislation their spirit, warping and biasing its direction, to render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass, was he using prescient vision to look forward in time to where we are today in the United States of America with respect to pretty much everything, including immigration policy?
Seems so to me, anyway.
With respect to the statement that as a country, we need to address the unauthorized immigration issue by bringing undocumented immigrants “out of the shadows,” which is a rational sentiment hard to argue with, unless one is way over on the side of immigration being an emotionally-charged issue that can never be discussed in a rational manner, in a National Review article entitled “Immigration and the Values of Our Founding Fathers,” by Michelle Malkin on December 11, 2015, she takes us back to the beginning days of this nation’s political history and the views of the so-called “founding fathers” on the subject, for what they are worth in this emotionally-charged debate on immigration in the United States of America today.
She begins by stating that President Obama claims that restricting immigration in order to protect national security is “offensive and contrary to American values,” as if Barack Obama, who calls the Pilgrims, a religiously-intolerant crowd who were the original zenophobes in this country, “determined patriots who landed at the edge of the world in search of freedom,” would even have a clue as to what American values actually are.
“America’s Founding Fathers,” she submits, “would vehemently disagree,” a point that I am in agreement with, having committed myself to a detailed study of their views on the subject, in contrast to those of Barack Obama.
As Malkin says, our founders asserted their concerns publicly and routinely about the effects of indiscriminate mass immigration, and they made it clear that the purpose of allowing foreigners into our fledgling nation was not to recruit millions of new voters or to secure permanent ruling majorities for their political parties.
Rather, it was to preserve, protect, and enhance the republic they put their lives on the line to establish.
As she states, in a 1790 House debate on naturalization, Virginian James Madison opined that “It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours.”
“But why is this desirable?”
Not because “diversity” is our greatest value, and not because Big Business needed cheap labor, and as Madison asserted, “Not merely to swell the catalogue of people.”
“No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of.”
end quote
That, people, seems to me to be where this argument or discussion on immigration actually begins, with that premise of Jemmy Madison in 1790.
Madison argued plainly that America should welcome the immigrant who could assimilate, but exclude the immigrant who could not readily “incorporate himself into our society.”
Now, in our much more emotional and liberal day and age, does that still make sense?
Or doesn’t it?
It seems to me this emotional immigration argument will go on and on forever until that question is tackled head-on.
HIP-HOP star Alexander Hamilton wrote on the subject of immigration in 1802, as follows:
“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.”
end quotes
Is that tripe?
Then Hamilton further warned that “the United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others, it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils.”
“It has been often likely to compromise the interests of our own country in favor of another.”
end quotes
In addition to being a red-hot HIP-HOP star, Alexander Hamilton was definitely seeing far ahead in history to our times, where it seems we become more divided as a nation as each day goes by.
The survival of the American republic, said Hamilton, depends upon “the preservation of a national spirit and a national character,” and he further asserted: “To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens the moment they put foot in our country would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.”
end quotes
Is Hamilton’s statement that the survival of the American republic depends upon “the preservation of a national spirit and a national character,” still true?
Is it still relevant?
Can we solve this problem without deciding those questions in a rational manner?
Bringing things forward to our times, Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) pointed out in a speech that: “It is well settled that applicants don’t have the constitutional right or civil right to demand entry to the United States. . . .”
Further, “as leaders, we are to seek the advancement of the public interest.”
“While billions of immigrants may benefit by moving to this country, this nation-state has only one responsibility.”
“We must decide if such an admission complies with our law and serves our national interest.”
end quotes
Which brings us right on back to the emotional side of this debate that keeps this debate going seemingly forever.
Soooo.
Are unrestricted open borders are unwise, unsafe, and un-American?
And is it true that a country that doesn’t value its own citizens and sovereignty first won’t endure as a country for long?
Any thoughts, anyone?
BUILD THE WALL!
Note: Well, if you can get the Wall to self-identify as a Non-Wall, you may be able to get the Democrats behind it.
Democrats behind walls; what a great idea!
Wayne you need to learn to play that game better………..the Wall has to self identify as a GATE for the left to support it.
Criss-crosss, ya know?
😉
The Democrats don’t want just a gate.
They want a flood gate that opens into this country from the rest of the world.
Their latest rising star, Congressperson New Yorker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and open the borders to everyone from every ****hole in the world who wants a piece of this country.
In an article in The Hill entitled “Ocasio-Cortez fires back at Conway: She has ‘engaged in a War on Facts since Inauguration Day'” by Tal Axelrod on 13 December 2018, we were informed of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s political goals as follows:
Ocasio-Cortez has not been one to shy away from a fight, and has repeatedly called out those on Twitter who she views as representing the establishment that she says she was elected to shake up.
end quotes
Just what we need in congress – another TWITTER idiot!
And is that why we elect people to congress in this country these days – to shake up the establishment?
That sounds just like what they do in those ****hole countries that makes them into ****hole countries in the first place.
This is the same Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who can be seen on YouTube in a video she made with the radical leftist group Justice Democrats urging her fellow socialists (she is a member of the Democratic Socialists for America) and radicals to begin working now for the 2020 election contests.
In that video, Ocasio-Cortez said that electoral success will not come easily, but we need to “make sure we take back all three chambers of Congress — rather all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate and the House in 2020, we can’t start working in 2020.”
Needless to say, and not surprisingly, and justifiably so, that has a lot of real Americans who were born here and educated here fuming about the sub-standard education about our government they got where they were taught we had three branches to our government, those being the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch.
How silly – they are not branches, they are chambers and there are only thee of them – the presidency, the Senate and the House.
And Ocasio-Cortez must know what she is talking about, because she is a 2011 cum laude grad from Boston University, and we are not, and that pretty much settles it, as far as I can see.
Reminds me of this line from FEDERALIST No. 53, The House of Representatives, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by either Alexander Hamilton or Jemmy Madison on Tuesday, February 12, 1788, as follows:
No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subjects on which he is to legislate.
end quote
How about no woman, either, starting with Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who wants to do away with our border control and lay us supine before the world.
But at least we won’t have to worry about guest worker visas, anymore, for there will no longer be a need for them when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democrats take over all three chambers of our federal government in 2020.
All hail the New World Order that she is the harbinger of.