Immigration's Chicken or Egg Theory

Which came first, the slave master
or the slave?

Recently, President Obama announced a new policy position on immigration.  His administration will no longer deport undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children by their parents, as long as they don’t get in trouble with the law.

Critics are saying Obama’s policy is likely to become an enormous magnet that attracts even more undocumented workers.

But who do you blame for all of these "illegals" as Fox News likes to call them?

Do we blame the immigrants for wanting a better life, or do we blame the cheap-skate employers who hire them illegally?

Which is worse, the illegal immigrant, or the illegal hiring of these workers by the cheap-bastards who exploit them?

We might try asking conservatives exactly who is illegally hiring all of these people at depressed wages. There’s the magnet, and a prime example of being against working Americans. But don't expect an answer, because as we all know, conservatives will just place the blame on the victims rather than the perpetrators, they will say they can't get Americans to fill those slave wage jobs that come with no benefits.


But it’s the sheer availability of illegals immigrants that enables these employers. The classic example is the meatpacking industry, which about 30 years ago consolidated and used illegal immigrants that the industry bused up from Mexico and Central America to help break the unions. Thus they turned what were good, clean, safe middle-class jobs with decent wages and benefits and turned them into some of the most dangerous and pitifully compensated jobs in the country.

The employers are primarily to blame, no doubt, as they use illegal immigrants to bludgeon and beat down American workers. That’s the dynamic, and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have twitched one political muscle for decades to do anything about it.

At this point it’s a chicken-or-egg scenario. If there’s hope of getting wages even at the risk of deportation, people will keep coming here. It’s only if they know there is ZERO chance of them getting a better life here without going through naturalization that the flow will slow, and that ain't gonna happen because the royalty class will always need cheap labor to tend to their needs like cleaning their mansions, trimming their expansive grounds, and caring for their dressage horses. And don't forget about all of those corporations and farmers who say it's too cumbersome to go through the process to hire undocumented workers legally.

Do people still really believe that undocumented workers are to be blamed for the all too apparent American facts of stagnant wages for 40 years, the death of the middle class and the end of class mobility, declining health care and educational options, the end of vacations, benefits and pensions in the workplace, the decline in family net worth, that there are 5 job seekers for each job opening in the US, that the government itself reports (U6) that unemployment is 15 percent ?

Sadly the answer is yes, that is if you are a consumer of the propaganda on conservative radio and gulp up the Fox News BS where you are encouraged to never use that (now atrophied) brain god gave you.

Chances are most Fox viewers have never even heard of the chicken-or-egg-theory. Such a complex question would make their heads explode.

So here it is folks, just in case you don't know;

The chicken or the egg causality dilemma is commonly stated as "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" To ancient philosophers, the question about the first chicken or egg also evoked the questions of how life and the universe in general began.

And you thought it had something to do with Egg McMuffins and Chicken McNuggets.

It's good to learn new things.


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