Myth: a shortage of farm workers caused fruits and vegetables to rot in the sun, and Congress should approve a visa program to import labor, mostly from Mexico, to make sure that consumers continued to enjoy low prices.
Fact: the program replaced thousands of American farm workers (many Latino Americans, African Americans, and women), with foreign workers who received half the salary, lived in substandard housing, were not allowed to join Cesar Chavez+óGé¼Gäó United Farm Workers, and received no benefits.
The most prominent lobbyist for agribusiness was Immigration Services Associates, a firm owned by none other than Harris Miller. His biggest client was the National Council of Agricultural Employers, located in Washington, D.C. Miller had learned his craft as the Director of Government Relations (i.e. chief lobbyist) for Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP, a firm that specialized in immigration (i.e. foreign worker visas).
Rene Lopez, a twenty one year old Mexican worker at Sikkema Dairy in Fresno, CA, was a union organizer who was shot to death immediately after he voted in the United Farm Workers' elections in September of 1983.
Myth: a shortage of IT workers and the failure of the American education system caused the U.S. to miss out on global opportunities (read: corporate profits) and Congress should approve a visa program to import labor, mostly from Asia, to make sure that consumers continued to enjoy low prices.
Fact: the program replaced hundreds of thousands of American middle class workers (including Latino Americans, African Americans, women, and older Americans) with foreign workers who worked for half the salary, lived in substandard housing, were not allowed to join unions, and received no benefits.
In recent years, Miller found an additional way to help erode the middle class: exporting American jobs.
Kevin Flanagan, a forty one year old American IT worker at Bank of America in Concord, CA, shot himself to death after he lost his job to a foreign worker in April of 2003.
This Miller liar-lobbyist style "immigration" is done to undercut the wage scale of Americans -- to replace higher paying Americans wherever possible with lower cost replacements. Miller has indeed been "shortage shouting" for years -- to create the illusion of an inadequate supply of Americans willing and able to work in various jobs from farm work to software engineering. By bringing in foreign workers, Miller's business allies circumvent the U.S. labor market, and evade American workplace laws. They undermine the idea of a society based on a wide and expanding American middle class and redirect wealth to an ever narrowing fiew.
I believe that Jim Webb has taken note of situations similar to this and has called for reform -- a break with the corrupt practices of the past. It is not without reason that Jim Webb has noted that American society is becoming ever more stratified with the wealthy never having done so well as they do now while all the rest of us in the middle and working classes face deteriorating economic circumstances.
The practices which Harris Miller has supported have no place in a democratic middle class society. Miller's worker replacement programs injure Americans across the middle and working classes. Miller has supported the policies and business practices driving America into a Third World nation and undermining the ideal of a broad, prosperous middle class society. I find these business and political policies anti-democratic and evidence of Harris Miller's complicity in a deliberate, methodical, and ruthless class war.
I come to the table scarred from living through the information technology worker replacement battles. Kevin Flanagan's death and the suffering I have witnessed first-hand are not merely "a new way of doing business" or just "globalisation". They are part of a wider pattern which I think deserves the name "conspiracy".
Sharply reducing the wages, working conditions, job security of middle and working class Americans through political manipulation of trade and "business visa" is indeed a situation which I consider "corrupt" -- a corruption of democracy and a betrayal of democratic ideals.
Can anyone claim that years spent advancing the interests of the wealthy few at the expense of all the rest of us is a clear example of how a "good Democrat" behaves?
Protecting and supporting the American worker is the bedrock of the Democratic Party. You can be a Democrat and not agree with other democrats on choice, or gun control, or a host of other issues. But you CANNOT be a Democrat and support outsourcing and the hiring of cheap and unprotected foreign labor to take the jobs of Americans. It is simply not possible.
Jim Webb speaks frequently and eloquently of the Republicans building a permanent underclass. Harris Miller has done his best to help them. He should be ashamed.