The Cost of Immigrant Labour

I haven't written on the immigration debate in a while, but it has been on my mind. I just ran across this piece in the LA times entitled The Southland's hidden Third World slums

Which truly underscores the problem of illegal immigration and exploitation of workers in general.

Out here — just a few miles from world-class golf resorts, private hunting clubs and polo fields — half-naked children toddle barefoot through mud and filth while packs of feral dogs prowl piles of garbage nearby.

Thick smoke from mountains of burning trash drifts through broken windows. People — sometimes 30 or more — are crammed into trailers with no heat, no air-conditioning, undrinkable water, flickering power and plumbing that breaks down for weeks or months at a time.

"I was speechless," said Haider Quintero, a Colombian training for the priesthood who recently visited the parks as part of his studies. "I never expected to see this in America."

"Before the parks, they were living in their cars, in the desert and bathing in the canals. Five guys would pay 50 bucks a month to share a camper shell," said Scott Lawson, a tribal member and co-owner of the Oasis park on the reservation. "Nobody cared when they lived like that, only when they moved into trailers. You can't expect the poorest to live like the wealthiest. They feel comfortable here; it's like being back in Mexico. They tell me that."

Lawson's 300-trailer park has been cited by the EPA for clean-water violations and was recently ordered to stop pumping raw sewage into the nearby Salton Sea.

"We had some citations about water but it's because we didn't know how to test it," he said. "I'm not ashamed of my place. There are a lot worse places than mine."

The tenants are almost entirely Latino farm or construction workers. Many are in the United States legally, but plenty are not. Their average income, according to county officials, is about $10,000 a year. Many parents rent out their children's rooms for extra money, leaving kids to sleep on floors or in sheds. Many families keep warm by burning grape stakes, which fill their trailers with toxic fumes.


The italicized portion is what should concern people. Understand that the companies are paying what I can barely say are "poverty" wages. and when these companies, who are largely breaking various laws, are allowed to get away with this blatant exploitation, it then creates an environment where the rest of us (citizens) are next in line. It is already being done and many of us have been discussing this before the immigration issue came to the forefront of the nation's conscience. So long as employers can hang the "there's someone out there who will accept x-wages" over the head of citizens for various work, then conditions like this will continue. Do we really think that the construction companies that hire these individuals give a damn how or where they are living? If you, the citizen were on the "pick up corner" with these folk, do you think they would give a damn how YOU were living? Toxic dump? Cold at night? Not the construction firm's problem or their client's problem either.