Obama to establish Cesar Chavez National Monument in California

[happyslug]

15. Yes, but he had his "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" in 1986

and afterward illegal immigration INCREASED. Any many people who supported that reform now see the reform not only as a failure, but a plan from day one to undermined reform. The Sanctions against employers was removed within two years, the reason most people supported it was the Sanctions and the quick repeal showed that the "Reform" was not a "Reform" except to encourage more illegal immigration. Due to what happened in the late 1980s, a lot of people believe the proposes "Reform" will be the same, a "Reform" in name only but in reality a continuation of what has occurred since the 1970s. Thus before a lot of people, including myself, would agree to a Reform any where like the one in 1986, we want to see employer sanctions first and that such sanctions are enforced for several years before we talk about any other Reform.

Please note, in many aspects immigration from Mexico and Central American is under severe change as we speak. The big push to immigrant was NAFTA, which permitted US Corn to be dumped in Mexico and Central America (Through this is NOT talked about in the various articles that mention this decline). This undermined the ability of rural peasants to survive, for the price of corn fell below their cost to produce it. Thus to have revenue for the home, such rural peasants migrated to the US. The rise in the price of corn over the last two years has reversed this push. Rural Peasants in Mexico and Central America are now able to make income harvesting and selling their own corn. This has lead to a DROP in illegal immigrants coming into the US.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/us/mexican-immigration-to-united-states-slows.html

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/26/opinion/passel-cohn-mexican-immigration/index.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/15/world/la-fg-mexico-migration-20111115

You must understand immigration to understand what is going on. To have immigration you need two things, a place that people can migrant to and a place people want to migrant from. In the 1600s, people migrated from England to the US (and then imported in Slaves from Africa). In the 1700s, this migration slowed down, but then replaced by immigrants from Scotland, Germany and Ireland (Protestant Irish with a handful of Catholic Irish). The English still went to New England and the American South (and then from Southern England, the booming area of Birmingham did not see much immigration to the Americans), the Germans went to Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland, the Scots (mostly highland Scots) and Irish (Mostly Scot-Irish, or Protestant Irish) went to the frontier from New York to Georgia. The reason for the change was England basically went into an economic boom, while Ireland, Germany and Scotland went into depression (and in the case of Scotland, dispossession of the Highland Clans of the clan's peasants, to be replaced by sheep, and Ireland as the Presbyterian Scots found themselves barely better treated then the Catholic Irish by their English Overloads.

Notice the key was not only the draw of American, but the push from bad economic situations in Germany, Scotland, Southern England and Ireland. A lot of this was driven by the enclosure acts of the time period, the taking of previous "Common Lands" to be sold to a single person, even as that taking forced every rural peasant in the area to lose access to that Common Area for their horses, cows, pigs and other animals. This happened in Southern England, Ireland and Scotland as all three areas went from farming areas to sheep raising areas. Various economists have used the "Tragedy of the Commons" to justify these enclosures, but then ignore that such excess use can be prevented by a third party having the power to restrict the unrestricted use of such common areas. i.e. if excessive grazing is occurring, the holder of that power, generally the parish priest, could restrict the excess use. This is what seems to be happening, but it interfered with the conversion of these areas from Cow grazing and farming areas to much more profitable to the gentry, sheep raising. Thus the enclosures occurred and the peasants had to migrant.

The US had no real immigration from 1774 to 1820, due to the American Revolution and then the Wars of the French Revolutions. Scots continue to migrant in this period, mostly due to it was the last area where the enclosure acts were passed. Scot-Irish immigration seems to have stopped about 1774, as the Presbyterian population of Ireland dropped and retreated from sharing the northern half of Ireland with the Catholics, to Dublin and what is now called Northern Ireland. Southern England received a boost as defense against any possible French attack meant spending along the coast, but like the Highlands population continue to migrant due to the switch to sheep.

In the 1820s the Scots lead a mass immigration to the US, but little notice for most ended up with Relatives who had moved to the US prior to 1774. In the 1830s Ireland suffered a famine, which lead to a massive migration if Irish to the US. In 1848, a revolt in Germany lead to another massive German Migration to the US (This continued till WWI). After 1848 you had the wars of German unification AND then the economic consequences of that unification (which causes a lot of rural Germans to migrant to the US). In Italy you had a similar situation, but the net migration from Italy (due to Italian problems due to unification) was greater due to greater stress on the peasants. In Poland, Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe you had similar rural disruptions and migrations. These disruptions did not end till about 1950, as Russia took control over half of Europe and the US, did all it can to build up the other half so it would support the US against Russia. Thus the push for European migration ended till the Soviet Union Collapsed in 1989 which has lead to a massive migration from Eastern Europe to Western Europe.

I went into the above, to show, that while the US had a draw till the 1924 law restricting immigration, to fill that draw you needed an area to PULL from (In 1912, The Balkans decided to start WWI early, and due to that fighting the Countries of Eastern Europe started to forbid people leaving. This spread to Germany, France and England in 1914 and Italy in 1915. This lead to massive shortage of cheap workers to undercut wages in the US, thus the period from 1912-1920 became a period of extremely high wages in the US. The resumption of immigrants in 1919 permitted various industries to cut labor costs by cutting wages, leading to massive steel and coal strikes between 1919-1921. By 1924 wages had stabilized but the West Virginia Coal War of 1921 and other acts of violence related to the suppression of Unions had scared a lot of people and along with the 1917 Communist takeover in Russia and the near take over in Germany in 1919, immigration from these two places had to be stopped. The Italians appear to be an after thought, but with several Italians involved in what people called Communist front organizations, a quick afterthought. The crisis of the Great Depression and WWII restricted more migration and the entrenchment of the Warsaw Pact and NATO permitted both areas to boom so that migration slowed to a trickle (I know Eastern Europe fell behind NATO countries, but that is more the result of the 1960s, 70s and 80s then the 1950s).

Thus to have migration you need both a pull (i.e. the US pays high wages) and a push (Mexico and Central American Corn prices dropped after NAFTA). What has happened is the both have dropped, the Pull of US wages is less then what it had been, due to the decline in wages due to excessive migration AND the recession AND the push has stopped for the price of corn is up due to its use as fuel. Thus the best way to reduce illegal immigration may be to require even more fuel to be from Corn, thus keeping the price high and the push to migrant low.

On the other end of the situation is Egypt and the Middle East. The Chief reason for the revolt that lead to the overthrow of the Egyptian Military was the increase in the price of grain in Egypt due to the world wide increase in the price of grain. The peasants of Egypt could no longer afford to buy food and thus had nothing to lose when they hit the streets against the Egyptian Government (i.e. die from starvation or bullets? Given the choice most people will choose bullets for it means someone had to do something i.e. open fire, as oppose to doing nothing a dying of starvation). A severe increase in the price of food preceded the French Revolution, the Revolution of 1848, the Russian Revolution of 1917, the German Revolution of 1919, the Polish revolts of the 1970s (and various other unrests of the 1970s including the overthrow of the Shah of Iran) and the recent Arab Spring. Food prices have NOT come down thus the world is on edge. Thus what is good to stop illegal immigration into the US, good for Mexican and Central American Peasants, may be bad for the middle east and the price of oil.

Just an observation that immigration is tied in with a lot of other factors, including the price of oil.