Local Economies

I am reading a fascinating investigative story, "The Snakehead" by Patrick Radden Keefe, on the Fujienese human smuggling and gang enterprises in Chinatown from the 1980's and 90's and just realized something.  We are known as a nation of immigrants and each person I have ever met in the states (except one Navajo student I had out in Utah years ago) can trace just a few generations back to ancestors from some distant land.  We expanded west.  We built the railroads.  We produced a myriad of products in factories throughout the country.  We cultivated our Great Plains.  All using the near limitless supply of cheap, immigrant labor.  We all know this.

We have such a vast country in terms of geography and ethnicity with some very lenient immigration laws, that people can come in, licitly or illicitly, and be absorbed and protected by their communities and the law. This may not be the case anymore.  There is a major shift in the last twenty to thirty years.  Many of the low paying factory jobs that abundantly hired the new arrivals have been closed down and outsourced. "Free Trade" economics is catching up to us.  Countries that have adopted the mantra are often de-stablized and atrocious working conditions force more people to leave.  Look at the Mexican border!  We do not know what to do with the extras.  Our incarceration rate and number has sky-rocketed.  Our health care system, via emergency room care (the defacto insurance plan of the poor), is an economic drain.

There are times in our history when we do not welcome immigrants all that much.  They are usually times of economic recession.  The echo chamber resonates, "if we do not have jobs, than why should someone else come to America and take them?"  One argument that I always used was to try to find a 17-year old, middle class suburbanite to work 12 hours a day doing dishes in the back of a restaurant.  Years ago, I lost a gas station job because the new owner got rid of all the high school kids and hired a group of Indian guys for half the wage and three times the hours.  Home run for the owner.  Right now, with a deep recession, we are not too fond of newcomers and kids still can not (and are not willing to) get those simple wage jobs.  They seem to say, it's alright, my mom will use her credit card with the terrible interest rate to buy me the new iphone.

The beacon light is still on.  People are still coming and I do not blame them.  Our world image is still showing that we are the place of opportunity.  This is still true, though statistically less and less a reality.  People see where their resources and goods are shipped to. If they are in a war torn region, it is better to be on the side of the bomber then be bombed.  They have communities here that can ease the transition.

We are in a bind.  The way I see it, we have some options.  We can continue with the Israeli approach, which is to build big fences along the Mexican border and continue  what we are doing and we all can buy cheap goods at the big box stores.  Or..we can create jobs here in the states and use our massive PR machine to convince people to buy local.  Communities can build out local economies.  It will not happen quickly and it may not be pleasant.  Big business will not be happy.  We depend too much on things from too far away.  The most interesting part of the tale of the Chinese community is how successful they have been at building a parallel economy right smack in the middle of New York City - legal and illegal.  How many have taken the Fung Wa bus to Washington DC?


In reference to the Israel comment, I read an interesting take on the Israel/Palestine conflict.  During the seventies and eighties, they had a lull in their conflict because the cheap labor that Palestine provided Israel, it gave a sense of normalcy.  Supply and demand.  When the Soviet Union collapsed,  there was huge influx of Russian Jews that entered Israel and took the low wage jobs.  Israel did not need the Palestine work force anymore, but did not know what to do with them.  The people from Gaza and the West Bank became restless because they lost their jobs and did not have the ability to look elsewhere.  Since then, Israel built huge walls around them and they continue to lob bombs in each direction.  The situation just worsens.  I say, "two states", so Palestine can create their own economy.