In the Right Direction

I feel like I say this so rarely, it's more important to state it when it happens, but I think President Bush is taking at least a tiny step in the right direction regarding registration of non-US workers. It's a vast over-simplification to call this a great step, but at least it's a step. For once, Mr. Bush is going against his conservative base in even offering this fledgling program.

The Right loves to jump on this issue, talking about people crossing from Mexico to take our jobs. But the truth is far more complicated than this: a) most of the jobs they take are jobs that are far less attractive to US workers and b) a lot of American employers have used them for years, with a passing nod from the Immigration Department.

Non-US workers in this country, doing our work, paying our taxes, and trying to lead decent lives in which they hope one day to become citizens or to be able to return home with enough to support their families seem to represent no danger to us.

Even up here in rural Vermont, you see immigrant workers arrive to work on farms in the fall. Maybe we're just unusually fortunate up here, but invariably, the people I see working here in these circumstances are a pleasant, hard-working crew who don't cause police problems, are very friendly, and when they talk, they talk of sending the larger American dollars back home to support their elderly parents, their kids, to buy a tiny piece of land back home, or to send a child to college.

The farmers they work for don't operate with a big profit margin (we tend to shun large-scale agri-business in a state where smaller, more organic and cooperative concerns are encouraged), and most of these farmers - the ones I've talked to anyway - say it's very tough for them to find local labor willing to fulfill their harvest needs.