Free In Idaho!

Let’s take a minute away from politics for a few minutes, and check out another fun thing to do in Idaho.  If you have no fear of heights, love adrenaline, a day off, and a spare $99, look what you can do up at Tamarack Resort

That looks like a hoot.

So, the Bush-Kennedy Amnesty Bill has been defeated… today.  But it isn’t over.  The current administration isn’t doing any more enforcement of immigration laws than the last administration did.  Our borders are still a sieve, the fence is just another line on your Senator’s resume, and too many employers are looking the other way and hiring illegal workers, while the rest of us pay for their services.  No, this isn’t over.

Did you bother to go read Senator Larry Craig’s website over the last few days of the immigration bill battle?  He must have gotten hammered pretty hard because of his stubborn pro-bill stance… he even started his own mini immigration blog (although he called it a journal).  He stands up for the need in Idaho for cheap labor for the ag industry.  I’m all for helping our farmers too, and the construction industry, and the landscape industry, and the beef industry, and the…

But the answer is NOT a blanket amnesty and a reward for breaking the law.  Come on Senator Craig, this isn’t that hard to understand.  Let the marketplace work, but let it work LEGALLY.  If farmers can’t get enough help, then let them try raising their pay rates, the same as any other business in America.  Idaho, and the Treasure Valley, have notoriously low wages, and always have.  This state has exported its young people to other states for literally thirty years or more, because they couldn’t find employment at attractive wages.  Now, in the midst of serious growth, those low wages are beginning to pinch, and it isn’t just farmers and ranchers having a difficult time finding good emloyees at the “usual rates” here in the Valley.  One of the biggest shocks people relocating to Idaho have is the low wage structure here.  But with an unemployment rate below 3%, there will be increasing pressure on businesses to raise wages in order to attract the best help.  And that is a GOOD thing.  It is the way markets work.

Why should the ag industry get a free pass with what amounts to sanctioned slavery, by crafting a special bill to allow it a source of below market rate labor?  That is a serious question.  I read on a leftist blog the other day about how depressing life is for an illegal family in America, and how it is up to us to fix it.  Let me see, living in a foreign country, can’t speak the language, doing menial labor for slave wages, living in substandard housing with a high crime rate… yeah, that is depressing.  But I don’t understand the jump in thinking that says it is our fault and we should reward them with food stamps, free medical care, and higher education at rates lower than our own citizens have to pay.

Here is John Hawkins writing over at Townhall.  He says it well

Those of us in the conservative movement have always been friendly to the business community. We believe in low taxes, a light touch on regulation, and we’re stalwart champions of the free market…

That’s why it was so disappointing that none of that seemed to mean anything to the “Chamber of Commerce” crowd when it comes to the illegal immigration issue. Their attitude, right from the beginning to the bitter end of the bill in the Senate yesterday was, “We want to bring in as much cheap labor as humanly possible now, next year, and forever more to fatten our wallets and we want everyone else to pick up the tab for it. If it puts American workers out of a job, we don’t care. If it drives their wages down, so much the better, because that means we make more money. If we have to leave the borders open and risk another 9/11, that’s fine with us. If we have to get the bill through by demonizing as racists the very people who have staunchly defended us on issue after issue, it doesn’t both us a bit. Long story short, if anyone doesn’t like what we want to do, tough, because we bought these senators with our campaign contributions, we own them, and it’s our way or the highway.” In other words, for a lot of these companies that knowingly hire illegals, this is all about raw, unbridled greed.

Bullseye!  Those who sneak into the country are here illegally.  And those who hire them are breaking the law as well.  There are laws already on the books about both.  Simple deal, just enforce what we have.  It isn’t good enough to say that we killed this one, so we’re safe from an amnesty bill until after the 2008 election.  We need to keep the pressure on to enforce what’s already on the books.  Build the fence.  Senator Craig, you voted for that, and you touted that vote as proof you’re looking out for our best interests.  If you ok’d work done on your personal home, wouldn’t you check back to make sure the work was being done?  So, uh, why not check up on that fence thing for us?  How’s that coming along?

The people won one this time.  Let’s use that and keep up the pressure on Congress and the President to enforce what we have.  And Senator Craig, you know how we feel on this issue.  Let’s see what you’ve got.  What are YOU going to do in the next year to reassure us that you really are looking out for the rest of us, and not just another Senator in the pocket of a special interest group?