May 05, 2006

View From Lodi, CA: Boycott Bust In Central Valley

The May 1^st illegal alien "Great American Boycott" has come and gone without having any impact on American’s daily lives.

I don’t know anyone who was inconvenienced.

What was billed as a multi-city protest that would paralyze the U.S. economy, bring major urban areas to a standstill, disrupt traffic at our ports and airports, fell way short.

Here’s how it affected me: I had no Mexican students in my English as a second language classes. With 50 percent fewer students, my workday was much easier.

And for my attending Muslim and Asian students, the class was more productive since I was able to dedicate more individual time to them.

Most of the Mexican stores in the Lodi Adult School’s neighborhood were closed. That posed no problem either. Plenty of other stores were open. I’m not sure how a Mom and Pop grocery makes up one day of lost receipts but that isn’t my concern.

What influence the rallies may have on Congress remains to be seen. But if the mainstream media has its way, the amnesty is a shoo-in.

The coverage is mind-numbingly unprofessional and disgraceful. Consider all the stories you have read about the economic clout of illegal immigrants. But aren’t these the same people who work the low-wage jobs Americans supposedly won’t do? In other words, they don’t have much disposable income and therefore very little buying power.

And as for the recent headline that one million "immigrants," as the media stubbornly insists on calling them, walked off their jobs, no reporter pointed out that one million workers is less than one percent of America’s 135 million-person workforce.

The remaining 134 million workers…the majority of them Americans and legal immigrants…went about their business normally

What the protesters, exercising a form of emotional intimidation ("We want justice!") and financial blackmail, are saying is: "Give in to our demands or else."

But…or else what?

Are you going to quit your job? Be my guest. Waiting to take your place are plenty of unemployed Lodians hoping for an opportunity.

Will you return to your countries? That doesn’t seem very likely either. So many of demonstrators have made the point that "there is no future" in their native land.

Every aspect of the guest worker/amnesty proposal that the Senate is so determined to shove down America’s throat is a bad idea.

We don’t need to import unskilled workers. We can’t provide a social service net for them when they aren’t working. We can’t educate their children and we can’t afford to allow more children to be born into inescapable poverty.

But let’s say that I am wrong. Assume that we do need workers and that providing for them will not be an additional taxpayer burden.

How does it appear to our enemies, al-Queda, Iran and North Korea, when they see that the U.S. can be pushed around by a relatively small group of people illegally residing and working here?

What patsies we must look like. What spineless softies we are. Where is the courage that was once synonymous with American?

Look back to Ronald Reagan.

A Norwegian Internet blogger, Fjordman, noted that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union saw how Reagan handled the illegal air traffic controllers’ strike and was impressed. Firing the federal employees showed strength.

But where is that muscle now? We’re cowed by a small group of illegal aliens. If we can’t handle the illegal alien crisis, how can realistically expect to outwit resourceful and well-funded radical Islamic forces?

Fjordman, calling the U.S. the "indispensable nation" in the war on terror whose credibility as a superpower is at stake, says that building a border fence would not only secure America against aliens but also against what the Border Patrol calls "other than Mexicans" who may have terror on their minds.

In the longer run, Fjordman adds, how America—the indispensable nation in the war on terror—handles the illegal alien debate may even insure our survival as a coherent nation state.

The tragedy is that this analysis comes from Norway and not the White House.

Joe Guzzardi [email him], an instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It currently appears in the Lodi News-Sentinel.