How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying: Hire Illegals

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

Curiouser and curiouser. How do Latino laborers four thousand miles away from Oakes, North Dakota—who speak no English—find out that an onion farmer who speaks no Spanish needs 32 stoop laborers to plant onion bulbs? How do pipefitters and welders from India over nine thousand miles away –- who speak only three or four East Indian dialects—learn that an unfinished ethanol plant near Casselton, North Dakota needs 23 skilled metal workers to complete the plant? How do eight undocumented laborers from Latin America -– who speak only Spanish—discover that a supervisor of maintenance at a power plant in Bismarck –- who speaks only English—needs some maintenance workers to clean the place up?

How do thousands of Latinos find out that there are thousands of jobs available in food processing plants scattered throughout the United States from coast to coast? Actually, labor contractors called coyotes –- who speak the language of greed everyone understands—serve as job service representatives throughout Latin America and the United States. The Oakes onion farmer said he hired the 32 workers through a “person” in Oregon. He thought they were all citizens!
You betcha. That “person” is a coyote. I remember when the Bismarck power plant hired its eight cleaners through a coyote in Wyoming. The “Cass 23” were evidently hired by and through a whole pack of coyotes roaming through Gulf of Mexico cities.

How To Cover 2,000 Miles Of Border With 1,200 Guards

The Mexico-U.S. border is over two thousand miles long and currently has 698 miles of fences of one kind or another. But the U.S. has 12,383 miles of coastline with 88,633 miles of tidal shorelines. So when you hear politicians yell “We must secure our borders first!” they only deserve a sarcastic laugh. I see President Barack Obama is sending another 1,200 Guardsmen to guard the border. If they all work eight-hour days that means we can put another guard every five miles. That will be mighty lonely work among the drug runners and four-legged and two-legged coyotes who control the area.

“Coyotaje” is a Mexican-Spanish colloquial term which refers to the smuggling of people across the border. So coyotes are smugglers of who feed the cheap labor policies of U.S. corporations, growers, and Chambers of Commerce in every city. Coyotes working both sides of the border have been in operation since the 1880s, bringing cheap labor across the border through recessions, the Great Depression, and numerous economic bubbles. Illegals harvest our fruits and vegetables in practically every state in the union. They build our houses, landscape them, do the gardening, and also build the electric and water lines that serve them. They also build the sewers that carry off our waste and drive the trucks that pick up our garbage. They work in our meat-processing plants by the thousands.

Forty Million Current Citizens Have Not Been Born In This Country

In 2010 we have 50 million legal Latinos in the U.S. In a few years whites will be a minority in several southwestern states. Texas will shift brown first, perhaps next year. That’s why we hear the Texas Tea Partiers yelling “Take our country back!” We have an estimated 12 million illegals scattered in every state in this country. With all the screaming coming from Arizona, one would think they were all hiding in the Grand Canyon. Actually, with a population of 6.6 million, including two million legal Latinos, Arizona can claim to have only 500,000 illegals in the state. One must assume that all the illegal adults are employed by some corporation or business. Under federal law employers can be fined and/or jailed for hiring them.

Corky and I lived in Phoenix this past winter. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio of national fame -– notorious for using tent jails, dressing inmates in pink underwear,and feeding them baloney sandwiches—was completing a drive to apprehend Arizona employers who were hiring illegals. He found just one who had violated the law! He hasn’t been charged yet. Does that mean that one guy had employed 500,000 illegals? What’s that line about “You can’t be serious!”
Arizona Senator John McCain, who used to have a small measure of credibility until he picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate, is now wallowing in right-wing wacko stuff because he is being challenged by former Representative J.D. Hayworth, a loudmouth talkshow host who has clasped the Tea Party to his expansive bosom. McCain used to be opposed to spending billions of dollars to build a 2,000-mile fence to “close” the border. Now he says “Build the danged fence!”

Famous Fence Failures

NASA astronauts say they can see parts of the Great Wall of China from space. It stretches for over 5,000 miles through Northern China. Some historians say it did serve its purpose for a rather short period of time, keeping the Mongolians from overrunning the Chinese. It is now a curiosity. Tourists now visit short stretches of it, so it does bring in some cash. But its utility died a natural death centuries ago, most likely from a high cost-low benefit ratio.

The French built the Maginot Line after World War I to protect a 471-mile border with Germany, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Covered with fortifications and artillery, with tunnels and shuttles to quickly move troops between gun emplacements, with living quarters for thousands of men built underground, it is a marvel of engineering ingenuity and design. But generals always seem to be fighting the last war instead of the present one, so France lasted just six weeks against Hitler’s blitzkrieg. The Germans ignored most of the Maginot Line. It was called a “great military blunder” and a complete waste of resources. It ended up being just another steel and concrete fence that didn’t work.

The Berlin Wall kept people in for years, although it did become rather porous when people decided they could not tolerate living conditions in East Germany. These are just three examples of how walls and fences fail when people are driven by the laws of economics.

About 80 miles west of El Paso is an experimental mile and one-half stretch of fence made up of 15-foot cement-filled steel poles planted at least three feet into the ground. Cameras have caught illegals using massive steel ladders to go over the fence, completing the adage that if you build 15-foot fences 16-foot ladders on sale will soon conquer them. Plasma and acetylene torches have been used to cut holes in these solid metal fences. Can you imagine coyotes humping plasma torches out to cut a path through a steel fence to the U.S.? These guys are serious. Worn out hacksaw blades litter areas. Ladders are left propped against fences while bungee cords are used to drop to the other side of the fence. The Border Patrol has found no evidence of tunnels being used yet. This section is dramatic evidence that fences, no matter how high and how well-built, will not withstand the forces of people looking for a better life.

The History Of Coyote-ing

In the early 1900’s The U.S. passed various immigration laws that required foreign individuals desiring to immigrate to take literacy tests, physicals, and pay head taxes and visa fees. Some politicians are advocating the same requirements in 2010. They didn’t work a hundred years ago and they won’t work now.
In the early days workers could not afford the tests or the fees so they swam the Rio Grande and immediately got work when they dried off. Soon coyotes made all the arrangements for about $100. Soon Mexican cheap labor became so valuable that U.S. coyotes kidnaped workers from other coyotes and delivered them to competing farms and businesses. Cotton farmers in Texas alone needed about 400,000 farm workers each season, with two–thirds of them supplied by Mexican coyotes. Open trucks carrying as many as sixty workers were often seen crisscrossing the cotton fields.

By 1950 the Border Patrol had about 1,000 police patrolling the border. Crossing the Rio Grande was still the first choice of coyotes, and the term “wetback” was often applied to their customers. A study by the Border Patrol indicated that very few illegals crossed without the aid of coyotes. By 1980 some coyote organizations were moving up to 10,000 illegals per year across the border. Semi-trucks and trailers with hidden compartments were used to cross the border.
Nearly one million Latinos, 270,000 vehicles, and 57,000 cargo containers cross the border into the U.S. every 24 hours. Over half of the Mexican fruits and vegetables entering the U.S. come across the border at Nogales. That’s a load.

The Modern Coyote

Since 9/11 the Border Patrol’s mission for the Mexican border includes the following statement: “An ever-present threat exists from the potential of terrorists to employ the same smuggling and transportation networks, infrastructure, drop houses, and other support and then use these masses of illegal aliens as cover for cross-border penetration.” Crossing fees now range from $1,500 to $2,500. Immigration experts estimate that coyotes working the border now gross about $5 billion a year. Some coyotes have corporate-like business structures and can move as many as 500 people a day into the U.S. That’s a cool $1,000,000 per day. “Mom and pop” coyote operations can make $500,000 a year easy. With this kind of money the coyotes laugh at fences. Big coyote operations have now merged with drug cartels to double their money. A few more Guardsmen on the border will not stop the exodus.

The Justice Department has estimated that to locate, process, and deport the 12 million illegals in this country would require an expenditure of $285 billion. We don’t have that kind of money, particularly when our economy just lost $17 trillion in value over the Wall Street dotcom and housing bubbles in the last two years.

The Law Of Supply And Demand

Let’s cut to the quick. The Mexican border has never been controlled by anyone since Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna won at the Alamo. It never will be. American business from ExxonMobil to “mom and pop” grocery stores and restaurants do not want to stop the constant flow of cheap and very exploitable labor. Politicians in both parties, colorfully wrapped in Old Glory, scream about patriotism and how their opponents are screwing up the beloved “Homeland”—while pocketing heaps of cash from business and corporate interests. Fact: the immutable laws of supply and demand will never be repealed. We will always want cheap labor and potent cocaine and marijuana.

A Possible Solution That Will Never Reach The Courts

There is no question that the Walton family has become the wealthiest family in the world because they hired millions of illegals to staff WalMarts across the country. Enforce the laws of the land regarding the employment of illegals by putting a Walton family member in jail every six months until we run out of Waltons and fine each of them $10,000 for each illegal they hired. Only that action would discourage other employers from hiring illegals. At least it would get their undivided attention about the law of the “Homeland.” Wow! A Walton in jail! They mean business!

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