The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[scaeagles]

Are you willing to keep exploiting people who will work for less than minimum wage off the books? Same sort of rhetoical question that is meaningless. Ever hear of Cesar Chavaz, a champion of hispanic labor? He wanted those working here legally to report those who were here illegally because he understood that the illegal population was pushing wages down. It's funny that the same people who think Walmart is despicable (I'm not saying that's you, DP) also think it's OK to exploit illegal labor pushing wages down so they can have cheap food. And no, I don't want to pay $10 for a head of lettuce (as you wrote in an earlier post), but that is, of course, a ridiculous and extreme example. Even paying legal labor 3 times what an illegal laborer makes would do no more than triple the cost, but probably far less because labor is only one portion of the cost of produce.

From this story -

With 6.6 million residents, Arizona's illegal-immigrant population is estimated to be half a million people.

So approximately 1 in every 13 people in AZ is here illegally. CA has a population of 37 million people, so the same ratio would put just shy of 3 million illegals in CA. The info I find on estimates of the CA illegal population averages out to about 2.8 million, so it's the same. It doesn't seem CA has a higher concentration of illegals.

And as far as polls and anger, reading this very recent polling data would seem to suggest that there isn't as much outright anger as you might believe.

When asked if the Obama administration should try to stop the new Arizona immigration law, or if the administration should wait and see how the law works, Republicans and Independents by large margins want the law left alone.

Interestingly, so do Democrats. And it's not a squeaker either. By a two to one margin (52-26), Democrats said the law should be left alone to "see how it works."

I don't know what to say about the anger out there. The numbers don't seem to support that there is widespread anger. I think those that are mad are just exceptionally vocal about it. Which is fine.