Death of an Immigrant

Recently Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez fainted on farm east of Stockton, CA and died a few days later. This incident is disturbing on many levels. She was working in a field, where the temperature was above 95 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a ten minute walk from where she was working to a water cooler. She became dehydrated and eventually passed out due to heat exhaustion. Delays in getting her proper medical attention eventually lead to her death.

Her finance, who was working side by side with her, claimed that the foreman wouldn't give them a long enough break to go to the water cooler and get water. Since they were both in the country illegally, they feared losing their employment and possibly being reported to immigration if they didn't do exactly as the foreman said.

That is the first tragedy. Our immigration laws do little to keep immigrant out of the country. What they do is make it possible for employers to exploit labor. Employers can under pay labor, or even break their (oral) contracts with the laborers by not paying them after the laborer has performed the work. Since they are illegal, the laborers don't have much recourse in this situation.

When my Grandparent arrived in the United States, less than 100 years ago, there were few immigration restrictions. Basically, if you were healthy and were not a known criminal, you were let into our country and could work any job you could get. This helped build our country. Many of these immigrants started out as street vendors or working in poor conditions. They lifted themselves out of these conditions by entrepreneurial spirit and organization of labor unions. Eventually, the labor unions found that they could turn the tables on employers by getting the government to pass labor laws that tied the hands of employers.

Getting rid of labor laws which restrict who can work and getting rid of immigration laws which restrict who can come into the country could have prevented this tragedy.

But that is not the only way that this tragedy could have been prevented. Would productivity really dropped that much if the foreman let people move the water cooler closer to where the laborers were working?

Is any job worth dying for? To make matters worse, Maria was two months pregnant. Is any job worth killing your unborn child for? Why didn't she disobey the foreman and go get water? Is fear of immigration that great? If it is, it only goes to reinforce the need to dismantle our current immigration restrictions and enforcement policies.

The President’s 2008 budget, provides $13 billion for border security and immigration enforcement, including $1 billion to construct fences. Can't this money be better spent, or returned to the taxpayers? Think about it, taxpayers are spending several billion dollars to allow business owners to exploit their workers by creating an unlevel playing field.

Is this really the American dream? Always remember the Declaration of Independence says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That is all men, not just the people who happened to enter our country before a certain date.