Nation of Immigrants Employs Nation of Immigrants

The Seattle Times today ran a story about a widespread fear among Seattle's immigrant community of a rumored crackdown by the Department of Homeland Security resulting in an increased deportation of illegal residents. It's interesting that since September 11th, the enforcement of laws on illegal immigration has been taken under the helm of an agency concerned with protecting our nation from malicious attacks. 

A benign threat to national security at best, the majority of illegal immigrants are here in America working in poorly paid jobs so that Americans can get their goods and services cheaply. I happen to work in an industry that employs a large majority of foreign born workers. They do their jobs, they work hard, and if they're capable enough they have the opportunity of advancing into positions of authority and responsibility not readily accessible to immigrants in other lines of work. Though the company I work for follows all applicable laws in employing only people who legally have the right to work in the U.S., anytime a vote comes up for unionization, it fails miserably largely in part to foreign born workers in the company. Now if they are all legally employed by this company why would they disproportionately vote down a proposal that would give them unprecedented guarantees of job security and benefits?

There is no smoking gun to answer that question, but it does seem to imply that the people who often do the least desirable, most dangerous and worst paid jobs are somewhat concerned with their employer calling in Federal officials to do their union busting for them. [Unions in most industries are seen as being a Black Death for business, I know from a good source that the company I work for regularly has meetings with management on ways to prevent unionization, and these meetings definitely don't consist of brainstorming sessions on how to create better benefit plans or increase worker job satisfaction.]

Thus is the persistent quandary among industrial nations: What do we hate more, foreigners or high prices? Seattle tends to lean toward the latter, but with the Department of Homeland Security keeping our city safe from terrorism as well as immigrants, area residents may have little choice in the matter.