Illegal Immigrants = Scabs
May 04
So it was a beautiful, sunny spring day here in Los Angeles, and I was walking back from MacDonald’s, having been served by what must be some of the most efficient workers in the history of the fast food chain - I’m talking like 20 seconds from order to receipt of food - when my mind began to wander.
I began to reflects on the workers, most of them likely here illegally and receiving wages far below what could be considered a “living wage”. They are certainly hard working, fast, and reliable - quite a bargain for $7.50 an hour in this day and age. Yet I couldn’t help but feel a lingering sense of resentment towards them. I can understand why many are prone to empathize with these people. They come from an environment of extreme poverty, and they want simply to make money to are for their families - a noble goal, to be sure. Yet at the same time, there is little or no sympathy for the very workers they displace, workers who are unwilling and/or unable to work for such absurdly low wages.
As I pondered this scenario, it struck me that a perfect analogy exists for the situation with illegal immigrants: scabbing during a labor dispute. Scab workers, like illegal aliens, quite often are in desperate need of money - so desperate that they are willing to cross picket lines, facing extreme consternation, and even bodily harm. Yet despite their often desperate situations, scabs receive little sympathy. Why? Because, in seeking financial betterment for themselves, they are causing untold damage to the careers of others, undermining the balance of power between labor and management, and ultimately worsening conditions for all workers, themselves included. Sound familiar?
So why then do illegal aliens continue to receive so much sympathy from the very liberal establishment that is so inclined to vilify scab labor? Why is it seen as somehow indecent or mean-spirited amongst these same liberal circles to even criticise illegal workers ?
The answer is a bit complex, to be sure, for many politicians and labor leaders are prone to pander to the illegal immigrant community due to that group’s burgeoning demographic significance. But to a large degree, the situation has arisen out of deference to that specter that haunts every member of the mainstream Caucasian elite - the fear of being labelled racist.
There is no underestimating the brute power wielded by those community spokespersons deemed worthy of divining who amongst the majority is deserving of this label. There is simply no other word in the modern lexicon (other than perhaps “molester”) so capable of destroying entire reputations, careers, and lives than the “R” word. The “R” word has risen to the pantheon of labels capable of such destruction: Heretic. Witch. Communist. Racist.
In environments of extreme fear, logic rarely sees the light of day. Such is the case with the immigration issue. Yet due to simmering resentment amongst an increasing affected populace, politicians have been forced to pay lip service to the issue, even though most clearly would rather continue look the other way.
So we are left, inundated by wave after wave scab workers who have been granted “victim” status by the terrified caucasian elite. We face a presidential election in which the Republican candidate sponsored a stealth amnesty bill, and the likely Democratic candidate considers displaced American workers to be simply “bitter”.
Yet we shouldn’t lose hope. History teaches us that words eventually lose their potency, as do those endowed with the power to label others. Eventually, the Sharptons and Jacksons will go the way of McCarthy and Ferdinand of Aragon. We can all do our part, clinging to ration, resorting not to petty name calling and emotional outbursts but reasoned argument and logic as debate over immigration progresses.
Like scab workers, illegal immigrants can be wonderful, exceptionally hard working people. That does not mean that our ability to empathize should overwhelm our sense of fairness and legality. Like the people that hire them, illegal aliens are in the wrong and are harming those they displace. This undeniable reality must drive policy from here on out.