Caution: Repealing the 14th Amendment May be Hazardous to Your Health

[McCamy Taylor]

"If you think about that for a hot minute, you can figure out that it is a recipe for a large, unhappy, marginalized population," he said. "Imagine if we didn't have birthright citizenship and we had perhaps second-generation, maybe even third-generation, immigrants who are in some kind of limbo, just hanging out there."

http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/08/21/2417310_p3/birthright-citizenship-debate.html#ixzz0xN5Fu9tN

Intro. Divide and Conquer

Once again, the GOP is attempting to divide and conquer working class voters. This time their message is simple. You do not have a job or home or health insurance because some stinking wet back stole it from you. Their proposed solution? Increase the number of non-citizen workers in this country---

Yes, I know that this makes no sense. When did election year political messages ever make sense?

In this OP, I will try to talk sensibly about an issue which affects us all----the public health implications of having “second-generation, maybe even third-generation immigrants who are in some kind of limbo, just hanging out there.”

Before you get started, please read the excellent Fort Worth Star Telegram article by Alex Branch linked above.

I. What Does Salmonella Have to Do With Undocumented Workers?

Three-fifths of the contaminated eggs in the recent Salmonella outbreak have been linked to the DeCoster family egg empire. As Alec MaCGillis writes in today’s Washington Post, the DeCoster family has been fined and cited over the years for numerous safety violations. They also have a history of hiring (and abusing) undocumented workers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/21/AR2010082102822.html

In 1996, DeCoster was fined $3.6 million for health and safety violations at the family's Turner egg farm, which then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich termed "as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop we have seen." Regulators found that workers had been forced to handle manure and dead chickens with their bare hands and to live in filthy trailers.
snip
Also in 2001, DeCoster Farms of Iowa settled, for $1.5 million, a complaint brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the company had subjected 11 undocumented female workers from Mexico to a "sexually hostile work environment," including sexual assault and rape by supervisors
-- In 2002, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the family's Maine Contract Farming branch $345,810 for an array of violations. The same year, DeCoster Egg Farms of Maine paid $3.2 million to settle a lawsuit filed in 1998 by Mexican workers alleging discrimination in housing and working conditions.
-- In 2003, Jack DeCoster paid the federal government $2.1 million as part of a plea agreement after federal agents found more than 100 undocumented workers at his Iowa egg farms. It was the largest penalty ever against an Iowa employer. Three years later, agents found 30 workers suspected of being illegal immigrants at a DeCoster farm in Iowa. And in 2007, raids at other DeCoster Iowa farms uncovered 51 more suspected undocumented workers.

What does that have to do with salmonella? If you hire cheap, undocumented workers and force them to work in brutal conditions without adequate sanitation facilities, rest or even protection from rape, they are not going to do top quality work. Even if their cheap ass employer gives a damn about public health---which is unlikely---the workers who can not wash their hands after handling shit are going to be in no position to keep our egg supply clean. If they see health and safety violations that put the public at risk, they are not going to make anonymous phone calls to the FDA. That would get them deported. They are not going to file whistleblower lawsuits---that would really get them deported. They are going to keep their mouths shut so that they can continue to draw a paycheck.

How do you encourage poultry workers to speak up when they see safety violations? How do you get them to report unsafe work practices? You give them the same protections that citizen workers have.

How do you make it easier for DeCoster family to sell (salmonella contaminated) eggs for high profits? You create a “second-generation, maybe even third-generation immigrants who are in some kind of limbo, just hanging out there”, born in the USA but uneducated non-citizen workers who will not have another country to go back to when they are raped, overworked and forced to handle chicken shit with their bare hands.

II. But...But…If They Can Not Have “Anchor Babies” They Will Not Come!

Bullshit. Undocumented workers come to this country to work. When work becomes hard to get, they go home. If we really, truly wanted to encourage them to cross back over the border, we would make it impossible for them to find jobs---

But then who would the DeCoster family rape and brutalize?

I believe that the recent push to repeal the 14th Amendment is being propelled by business interests which are alarmed that so many undocumented workers are leaving the country because of the recession/depression. Their worst nightmare is a bunch of citizen workers lining up to take the jobs formerly held by illegals. They would have to pay minimum wage and overtime. They would have to install sinks and provide protective gear. They would be forced to abide by OSHA and FDA rules all the time, not just once every three or four years.

I believe that the DeCosters of this country are just like the slave plantation owners of the old South. They want compliant workers who can not leave their jobs for fear of being turned over to INS and deported back to a country they have never known. Or, worse yet, being incarcerated in a federal detention facility indefinitely where their labor will be exploited for pennies on the dollar.

Anyone who thinks that business interests in this country would not jump at the chance to hire—and exploit—non-citizen born in the USA serfs has not been paying attention.

III. Limbo Babies and the US Military

Here is a real life raised in the USA non-citizen story. Read about how an Oregon teenager who was adopted as an infant by citizens can not get a driver’s license or a Social Security card or even fly in an airplane with the rest of her family for a vacation. Read about how she will have to go “back” to Mexico---a country whose language she can not speak---and live there 10 years before she can become a citizen of her parents’ country---unless she can qualify for a special Visa because her birth mother abused her. Blanca can not attend college because tuitions are higher and financial aid is nonexistent for “international” students. She can not join the military---


http://abcnews.go.com/US/TheLaw/adopted-teen-stuck-immigration-limbo/story?id=11358243

You know, I am surprised the Pentagon does not have something to say about repealing the 14th Amendment. Unless, maybe they plan to coerce born in the USA non citizens to join the military by threatening to deport them if they will not enlist. How is that for a voluntary Army? Feel safer?

In case you think I am making this up, here is a Rasmussen Poll, in which people were asked if born in the USA non citizens should be offered citizenship if they enlist. A whopping 64% say “yes”. This number has been rising. Someone must be out their encouraging the public to think If we just make all the kids of immigrants enlist then my darling will not have to go

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/immigration/most_oppose_citizenship_for_children_of_illegal_immigrants

Just think of it. Our own mercenary army made up of folks who are not good enough to attend our colleges but whom we trust to die protecting some other kids right to a higher education. Sounds like something out of the 1960s and Vietnam, when African-Americans, who faced segregation in schools and the workforce were shipped overseas to fight for Brown & Roots profits and South China Sea oil. And we all know how that turned out.

In case you still are not convinced, here is Truth Out on how the US military is already recruiting noncitizen kids by promising them green cards for themselves and their families:

How many of these young Latino recruits are illegal immigrants? "Nobody knows," says Flavia Jimenez, an immigration policy analyst at the National Council of La Raza. "But what we do know is that recruiters may not be up to speed on everybody's legal status. ... We also know that a significant number of have died in Iraq." The recruitment of illegal immigrants is particularly intense in Los Angeles, where 75 percent of the high school students are Latino. "A lot of our students are undocumented," says Arlene Inouye, a teacher at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, "and it's common knowledge that recruiters offer green cards." Inouye is the coordinator and founder of the Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools (CAMS), a counter-recruitment organization that educates teenagers about deceptive recruiting practices. "The practice is pretty widespread all over the nation," she says, "especially in California and Texas. ... The recruiters tell them, 'you'll be helping your family.' "

Inouye referred me to Salvador Garcia, a student whose father had been deported, and who had been approached by a recruiter when he was a freshman at Garfield (He is now a senior). Garcia says the recruiter told him: "If you need papers, come and fight for us and we can get you some, and then you'll never have to mess with immigration." When he told the recruiter that he was born in this country, the recruiter responded, "Do you have anybody in your family that needs a green card, needs papers?" Salvador told him that his father, who had entered the country illegally from Mexico, had recently been deported. "If you join the military you can get your father back," the recruiter said. "It's not a problem, we can get him his papers and nobody will ever bother him again." Salvador almost signed the enlistment form right then, but says he was stopped by the realization of "how it's all connected-the war and Mexico and immigration." He is now active in the counter-recruitment movement.

http://www.truth-out.org/article/illegal-immigrants-uncle-sam-wants-you

Note from the above article that the US military recruiters who promise citizenship are lying---the Pentagon does not have the power to grant citizenship. And also note that a noncitizen soldier has less ability than a citizen soldier to object to illegal or immoral orders---like orders to torture---because failure to comply and a dishonorable discharge will permanantly bar him from obtaining US citizenship. This removes one of the checks and balances which keeps the military from abusing its authority.

III. Communicable Diseases and the Threat of Illiteracy

The Right likes to talk about how immigrants are filthy and carry disease. Their fear mongering could become fact if children born in this country no longer have access to the same health and education services that citizen children have. Stripped of Medicaid, SCHIPs and private insurance, born in the US non citizen children will only get their necessary childhood immunizations if their parents can come up with $600 the first year and an additional $500 in later years in pay for shots---and that is not counting pediatric office visits.

http://www.costhelper.com/cost/child/baby-immunization.html

If born in the US non citizen children are not eligible for a free public education, they will not be required to get their immunizations. What is that, you say? There is no way that could happen. The courts have ruled that immigrant children can not be denied an education? That ruling was based upon the 14th Amendment. Read about how the Right wants to deny immigrant children an education---presumably so that they will not be overeducated for the chicken plucking jobs.

Children of immigrants in the country illegally should not be allowed to attend public schools in Iowa, so the court decision that made that the law of the land should be overturned, Republican candidate for governor Terry Branstad said Tuesday in a radio interview.

While speaking with WHO-AM’s Jan Mickelson, Branstad was asked about the U.S. Supreme Court case of Plyer v. Doe, a 1982 decision that struck down a Texas statute denying funding for education to children who were illegal immigrants. The court found that the policy was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, as immigrant children are people “in any ordinary sense of the term,” and therefore had protection from discrimination unless a substantial state interest could be shown to justify it.

http://iowaindependent.com/40073/branstad-illegal-immigrant-children-should-be-denied-public-educaion

Say candidate Branstad gets his way and the 14th Amendment is abolished and all the little bitty "illegal aliens" have to stay home from school. If they are lucky, the Catholic Church will fill the gap. If they are unlucky, they will receive a minimal education and no childhood vaccines. They will catch---and spread---measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, whooping cough, diptheria. Since they will be minimally literate, they will be unable to read up about their own health problems. They may not even be able to make out the instructions on their prescription bottles. Having no access to birth control and no sex education, they will get pregnant early and create that third generation of "immigrants who are in some kind of limbo, just hanging out there."


P.S. A few words about “fear”

The last line of the Star Telegram article linked above:

Burnam, the Fort Worth Democrat, said there's little doubt that immigration will be a hot issue in the 2011 session. Some conservatives are simply "manipulating the emotions of the public through fear," he said.

Please note that it is the Republicans who are doing the fear mongering, not me. I have noticed a trend in recent weeks, folks calling any criticism of GOP policy and plans “fear mongering”, this by those who seek to convince us that the GOP is just the same as the Democratic Party and therefore we should all stay home from the polls this fall in order to make our voices heard.

[Demeter]

1. The Unreaoning Mob would Rather Starve Than Share

and so they will.

By the 'hoarding' of their 'rights', denying those rights to people just as qualified as they, the bigots and fools will end the American dream in its entirety for all people for all time.

Instead of working to expand the country and its economy and its protections for all people, instead of creating and sustaining a government of, by and for the People, these bigots and selfish, cruel beasts will see this country shrink into a wasteland ready for the next conqueror to overrun.

By reducing some to "criminals", these inhuman monsters will reduce us all to slaves.

[demigoddess]

2. I figure that appealing the 14th amendment over immigrants

is just the first step. Eventually they will say that you cannot be a citizen if you are non-white, muslim, or not rich enough. I see this as a first step to 'take back the country' to the mythological all white middle class american that the republicans think used to exist and is being 'ruined' by immigrants. Remember that the jews that the nazis wanted to throw out of germany were citizens of several generations. They just reached the time when they were demonized and blamed for the poverty and loss of status germany suffered after WWI.

[D-Lee]

3. Thank you - great post! "They" do want peons only ..

the education "reform" is reaching for that goal also IMHO.