From a paper I wrote in one of my classes...

As pretentious as possible:

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My rule of thumb is to not hate the immigrant, but to criticize the illegal immigration. Although I completely agree with the thrust of all the readings: that immigrants illegal or otherwise make important contributions to our society, are just as likely to be great people, and are not the chief obstacle to economic prosperity, illegal immigration does have its down side. Employers often use illegals to break unions and because illegals are afraid of being caught they rarely report acts of exploitation. Since the importation of Chinese workers in the mid-19^th century, employers have used exploited immigrants to drive down wages. The idea that “Mexicans are doing work that Americans just won't do,” is a myth. A basic understanding of economics will tell you that this is nonsense. Americans have all kinds of crappy jobs. The reason that some jobs (migrant agricultural labor, construction, and small business service work--like restaurants--especially) are dominated by illegal immigrants is not because they are intrinsically horrible jobs. They are only horrible because, for the amount of work, they pay very little. They pay little mostly because, yes this is a circle, they have so many illegal immigrants employed in those sectors. If wages for these jobs were raised, "Americans" would be willing to do them. So, the question is, why are so many illegals in these sectors? The answer is quite simple: these sectors are almost impossible to regulate and where they could be regulated, there hasn't been much pressure to do so because labor unions in these sectors are weak (because it is so easy to find "strikebreakers," unions have no clout). Thus, despite what news anchors who don't know what they're talking about say, if we were to cut off immigration completely, we could still find people to do all sorts of dirty work. The only difference would be that wages would rise to attract more people into these sectors.

Of course, there are several solutions to these problems, ranging from complete open borders to complete closed borders. Actually, I think these are both band-aid solutions. A real answer must be larger: the real problem here is poverty and outrageous wealth inequality. Immigrants will come to this wealthier country because they are so much poorer in their own country. There are several ways to combat poverty, but I’ll suggest two that would have immediate and dramatic impact and could be done by American alone:

Eliminate hunger: Hunger is not a production problem, it is a economic distribution problem. According to the United Nations Development Program, it would take about $13 billion dollars to feed all of the hungry people in the world (about 850 million people). Just to make some comparisons: the United States spends about $41 billion on pet food every year and the War in Iraq costs about $12 billion every month and a half. Ted Turner alone has offered $8 billion to this cause if an organization can solve the distribution issues and come up with the remaining $5 billion dollars.

Enact a Worker’s Bill of Rights: If the United States declared that it would not trade with anyone who did not provide its workers with basic rights( minimum wage, working conditions, collective bargaining, etc.), it would immediately halt the exploitative practices of multinational corporations across the globe. Of course, there would be some hardships: a decline in production and investment in poorer countries, more expensive consumer goods here, for example. Yet, the benefits would be far better: eventually, developing economies would be able to produce for themselves and cannibalize their wealth rather than shipping it out to Wal-Mart. This is not to mention the benefits of no longer having workers exploited across the world. In this way, the benefits of trade could be enjoyed by everyone, not just the wealthy corporations.

Excuse the digression. Regardless of our failure to follow through on basic common sense proposals, as a teacher (especially in the Bay Area) I will be interacting with immigrants, illegal and legal, on a daily basis. I look forward to this. My father was an immigrant and my mother was the daughter of an immigrant whose father was from Spain and mother was from Mexico. I have a lot of respect for immigrants and attending an inner-city school in San Jose exposed me to the hardships of immigrants from Mexico, in particular. Unfortunately, too much of our politics (especially in this state) center around paranoid xenophobia disguised as an attempt to institute law and order. Immigrants have amazing stories, captivating experiences, and I would be thrilled to have as many of them as possible in my classroom. My task should be to make them feel safe, secure, part of a community, and, if they are comfortable doing so, allow them to bring their experiences into the classroom."

Another kudos to TMQ

From this week's TMQ, Greg Easterbrook:

"Those Hollywood Searchlights Around Gore's Home Sure Eat Power: Gore wasn't the first quack to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and history suggests he will not be the last. Gore spent eight years in the White House, and in that time took no meaningful action regarding greenhouse gases. The Clinton-Gore administration did not raise fuel economy standards for cars and trucks or propose domestic carbon trading. Though Clinton and Gore made a great show of praising the Kyoto Protocol, they refused even to submit the treaty to the Senate for consideration, let alone push for ratification. During his 2000 run for the presidency, Gore said little about climate change or binding global-warming reforms. In the White House and during his presidential campaign, Gore advocated no consequential action regarding greenhouse gases; then, there was a political cost attached. Once Gore was out of power and global-warming proposals no longer carried a political cost -- indeed, could be used for self-promotion -- suddenly Gore discovered his intense desire to demand that other leaders do what he had not! It is a triumph of postmodernism that Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for no specific accomplishment other than making a movie of self-praise. Gore caused no peace nor led any reconciliation of belligerent parties nor performed any service to the dispossessed, the achievements the Peace Prize was created to honor. All Gore did was promote himself from Hollywood, and for this, he gets a Nobel. Very postmodern.

An annoying complication of Gore's Nobel is that few realize the award was given jointly to him and to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization well worthy of distinction. The IPCC is a group of scientists who have spent two decades studying climate change in obscurity, and in many cases without pay. The IPCC's efforts have been selfless, motivated only by concern for society. Had the Nobel Peace Prize gone solely to the IPCC, it would have been a great day.

An astonishing measure of how out-of-touch the Norwegian Nobel Committee seems is that it gave a prize to Gore for hectoring others about energy consumption in the same year it was revealed that Gore, at his home, uses 20 times the national power average. Gore's extraordinary power waste equates to about 377,000 pounds of greenhouse gases annually, or about 20 Hummer Years worth of global warming pollution. (A Hummer Year, TMQ's metric of environmental hypocrisy, is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in a typical year of driving a Hummer.) When his utility bill made the news -- though apparently not in Oslo -- Gore responded by saying he buys carbon offsets. That takes you back to the offset problem: All offsets do is prevent greenhouse gas accumulation from increasing. If you really believe there will be a global calamity unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced 80 percent, as Gore told the Live Earth crowd, you would buy offsets and cut your own energy use. Instead, Gore flies around in fossil-fuel-intensive jet aircraft telling others: Do as I say, not as I do!

After news of Gore's personal energy consumption broke, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider told The Associated Press the utility bill was justified because "Al and Tipper both work out of their home." This raises the question -- what kind of work are they doing? Perhaps reanimating Frankenstein; in Frankenstein movies, there is always a lot of electricity crackling wastefully about. Here are other possible reasons the Gores' home requires so much energy:

• Gore is building a time machine to return to Palm Beach, Fla., in October 2000.

• The former vice president is doing everything he personally can to cause global warming, so he can claim is predictions came true.

• Gore is growing marijuana in his basement. [Note from the corporate legal department: This is strictly a joke, ESPN is not accusing Al Gore of growing marijuana. We stand by our allegation that he is a sinister kingpin of international rare-bird smuggling.]

• Members of Gore's species require high power levels to maintain human form.

• Al and Tipper don't just leave the lights on when they make out, they leave the lights on all over the house."