16-Ft. Fences, 17-Ft. Ladders, And 88,633 Miles of Tidal Shorelines

Actually, the only way to stop illegal immigration is to figure out how many of the estimated 12 million immigrants have or are presently working for WalMart and enforce our present laws. This would mean fining and jailing Sam Walton’s four kids for six months each and fine them $11,000 (that’s the maximum fine) for each illegal hired by WalMart. That’s the law. WalMart currently employs about one million workers in this country. Almost 30 percent of the construction workers in North Carolina are illegals, so let’s assume for example that WalMart has employed at least 25 percent illegals out of their workforce of one million. So the four Waltons, who incidently are worth about $20 billion each and make up the richest family in the world, should pay a total of $2.75 billion in fines or a piddling $687.5 million each because they have broken the law—and have made their billions off this cheap labor. They can easily afford it.

The government should put one Walton in jail at a time so there would be a maximum exposure period of two years for their felonies. Do you think that restaurant owners, ordinary CEOs, business managers of smaller businesses, and homeowners would continue to hire illegals if they saw the richest people in the world serving hard time for breaking the immigration laws? One-half of the people who work for the Marriot hotel chain in the United States are foreign born! Do you think there are a few illegals among the maids, cooks, janitors, and maintenance crews? We know the Waltons have broken the law thousands of times. Over 20 percent of the janitors in this country are Hispanic, many of them illegal. Who do you think has cleaned over 4,000 WalMart stores in this country?

It’s estimated that about 45 percent of the illegals hired for day jobs in this country are hired by homeowners. They should be put in jail right next to a Walton and fined $275 (that’s the minimum) for each illegal hired. Corky and I have watched some of the millions of illegals waiting on thousands of street corners all over the country for locals to pick them up and pay them ten bucks a day for scut work and other dirty jobs. Whether it is Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, San Diego, Los Angeles, St. Paul, or Atlanta, everybody knows the street corner addresses.

Why Pick On Alice, Rob, Jim And John Walton?

In the first place, the incarceration of Sam’s kids would be hugely symbolic in solving the problem of our 12 million illegals and our porous borders. Illegals climb fences, cross deadly deserts, crawl through tunnels, hide and die in cars, trucks, and semi-trailers, swim rivers and oceans, pay smugglers and guides big money, and dash through guarded gates and traffic knowing they can get lower than minimum-wage jobs in the U.S.

Why pick on Alice, Rob, Jim and John Walton? Let’s remember that the Walton family has more money than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined. The Waltons represent the richest family in the world. WalMart takes in $250 billion in annual sales and from this total the family averages $880 million in annual dividends! That’s more than the IBM take in annual sales! The Walton family fortune is equal to the annual Gross Domestic Product of Singapore. If you were a small business owner with a bunch of illegals on your payroll, would you be willing to hire more of them if you knew you might end up next to a member of the richest family in the world for breaking the same law? I think such enforcement would shut down the hiring of illegals instantly. Fines don’t matter. Hard time does. We presently have draft boards all over the U.S. doing nothing. Give them the job of registering the 12 million illegals in the country to get them on the road to citizenship within a six-month period. We don’t have the 230,000 buses it would take to get them back to Latin America anyway!

We all know that thousands of American companies, including WalMart and the thousands of contracting companies serving the Walton family, have been actively recruiting cheap labor in Mexico and Latin American countries for years, contrary to U.S. law. I pick on the Waltons because they employ over a million workers in this country alone and are the dominant influential force in setting “rules” for our economy and society. The Waltons decimated small businesses in thousands of cities and small towns across America, sometimes utilizing unfair labor and pricing practices. They were instrumental in turning many small business owners into WalMart greeters and clerks—oh, I mean “associates.”

California agricultural growers alone employ 450,000 laborers and pickers, with about 70 percent of them illegals. Several hundred illegals died when the twin towers of the World Trade Center went down, many of them working for the biggest public agencies and private companies in the U.S.

The meat-growing and meatpacking industry would most likely collapse if they were “cleansed” of illegals.

Remember That Old Song “Sixteen Tons And Deeper In Debt?”

While spending winter in sunny Florida we have watched the tomato pickers labor in the fields. Most of them are illegals. Two years ago the pickers were paid 45 cents for each 20 lb. box picked. They would have to pick 11.5 crates per hour in order to make slightly over $40 per day. That’s 1,840 pounds per day.

Florida growers usually employ contractors to provide labor. They have a sweet deal going. This way they use illegals to pick their crops and avoid any liability for employing them. According to the U.S.Department of Labor, now dominated by Bushites and lobbyists, over the last four years Florida labor contractors were cited 916 times for failure to pay wages when due, thus turning the workers into slaves. They were cited 442 times for cheating workers out of wages, 464 times for failure to supply safe transport to fields, and 431 times for interfering with federal investigations. Of the 6,605 violations over the past four years, only 869 drew fines—and the average penalty was less than $300! We should be ashamed of ourselves—but we aren’t because of our national policy of cheap labor any way we can get it. Over 800,000 underage children of illegals work next to their parents as pickers and laborers in various occupations.

By the way, there is so much money in smuggling people across the border that when the debt is paid, they get rid of the smuggled workers so they can earn more smuggling fees.

If we don’t get tough in keeping illegals out we will rapidly become a third-world country instead of a second-world country. A survey conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center indicates that 46 percent of Mexicans would emigrate to the U.S. if given the opportunity, with over 20 percent willing to do it illegally. About 35 percent of Mexican college graduates would emigrate if they had the chance—and 13 percent would be willing to do it illegally. A Pew Center reporter wrote: “A nation that cannot feed its young with dreams but cuts its milk with memory and sand is going to starve the future; it is going to die.” (Should we help Mexico build a good labor-producing society instead of pouring money down the rathole of Baghdad?)

How Did We Get Into This Mess?

We got into this mess because the Republican-Bush-Corporate-Club for Growth-Chamber of Commerce lobbyists and politicians sent numerous messages that importing cheap labor from Latin America—without penalty—was the new way of doing business. We just have to look at a few stats. During the last year of Slick Willie’s administration 182 employers were prosecuted for hiring illegals. By 2003 only four were prosecuted. During the last year of Clinton, fines were initiated against 417 companies for violating employment laws. During “Lurch” in 2003, the government issued “fine” notices to three companies. During the first years of the Bush administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service scaled back work-site labor enforcement operations 95 percent. That’s why we are in this mess. If the Bushies don’t like a law that might interfere with getting rich regardless of what it does to our society, they just ignore it.

They made it possible for 250,000 illegal janitors, 350,000 illegal maids and housekeepers, and 300,000 illegal groundskeepers to destroy many unionized jobs in this country. About 12 percent of chefs and cooks are illegals.

Some politicians who wish to preserve the source of cheap labor have come up with silly and ludicrous ideas that won’t work, including such things as 16-ft double fences and electronic spy towers. Evidently some of them have stock or friends who own ladder companies. Illegals have already been seen carrying light flexible ladders as they probe fences for weak spots. Others have used human pyramids like gymnasts and cheerleaders to leap over fences. Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano scoffs at the idea of fences: “Show me a 50 ft. wall, and I’ll show you a 51 ft. ladder.”

One joker suggested we could solve the problems of illegal immigration, hurricane, Katrina, and excess Florida alligators in one swoop: (1) Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border, (2) Use the dirt to raise the levees in New Orleans, (3) Catch the alligators and put them in the moat to eat illegals. I bet the illegals would catch the gators, barbecue them, and use the skins to make kayaks to cross the river.