I had to share my discovery in the “Comments” section of a Tennessean article. The piece was about the recall of Peter Pan peanut butter due to salmonella. “MominTN” had this great insight (and I don’t think she was kidding):

It’s because Georgia is full of illegal immigrants and that’s who the company is obviously using. Why do you think you get sick when you go to Mexico?

After several readers responded and let “MominTN” know how ridiculous she is, our valiant expert on the ties between illegal border crossings and tainted peanut butter shared this:

You are all a bunch of idiots. Do you think employers who hire illegal immigrants are going to check if the food has bacteria in it or not? Or that everyone washes their hands after going to the bathroom? Or that sick people stay at home until they are well? Corporations are just like people; One crime leads to another. As long as they make more money, they don’t give a crap.

So, those dirty illegals come to our country with diseases on their fingertips and then dip those fingers into the evil vat of corporate peanut butter. They got us again. Curses.

Personally, I think that companies who hire illegal immigrants will do their best to avoid having dangerous levels of bacteria in their food … why would they want to draw attention to themselves?

I also don’t think there is a correlation between entering the country illegally and failing to wash your hands after going to the bathroom. But, hey, if you want to insist that the “Employees — please remember to wash your hands” signs are in English only, then you’re just asking for the problem to continue.

I usually put Catherine to sleep by singing along to whatever dedicated songs happen to be selected that evening by Delilah, the leading mistress of nighttime love songs (on 92.9 FM). This is largely out of necessity, since I only know the words to two lullabies. I go through “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” every night, but that only gets you so far. And, I refuse to sing a lullaby that ends with a baby falling out of a tree along with her cradle. (For the record, the 3:00am feeding is accompained by the gentle voices on Fox Sports Radio and no singing … we have a system and it works for us.)

I was forced to switch the dial away from Delilah this evening because she started playing something by Cher. Seeking talk radio as my alternative, I caught some of the “Demagnetization Rally” hosted by Phil Valentine and broadcast on 99.7 FM today. I am wondering if the contradiction between the following statements was caught:

Statement One: “These people need to learn English if they expect to live in our country!”

Statement Two: “Metro schools paid $12 million last year in ESOL classes” (followed by loud boos and hisses)

Ummm … if we want immigrants to learn English, then shouldn’t ESOL courses be an important part of the curriculum for the schools in which such instruction is needed. I am sorry that the parents didn’t deem it necessary, or were unable, to teach English to their children. However, doesn’t it benefit the assimilation process and the cries for “English only” to make sure the children learn to speak good ol’ American?

The Washington Post has an article on the two different immigration approaches of the House and Senate today. The House doesn’t get it

A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that unauthorized immigrants make up nearly 5 percent of the labor force. In the Washington region, they make up nearly 10 percent of the 3.1 million-strong workforce, providing mainly unskilled labor.

The federal government has a work visa — known as H-2B — that aims to help unskilled migrants enter the country legally. But the government issues only about 66,000 new H-2B visas each year. The guest workers, who generally take jobs in businesses such as restaurants, amusement parks, cleaning companies and landscaping firms, are allowed to stay for 10 months.

The House bill as passed would end the H-2b visa program. To have a society where our collective work ethic is slipping closer and closer to outright laziness, we ought to be welcoming hard working immigrants, and ought to be welcoming more than 66,000 per year. Then there are problems in the Senate, where the proposal extends the guest worker program and lengthens the application of the visa to 3 years, but the onus for enforcement is placed squarely on businesses, with substantial penalties for hiring an undocumented worker.

The whole article is worth reading, and demonstrates well the real effects of the “send ‘em home now” crowd’s rhetoric and the wages paid and businesses reliant on immigrant labor. We are at or near full employment levels. You can’t just cut out 5% of the work force and not send ripples through the entire economy. If these workers are forced out, there simply are not enough citizen workers to take the jobs.

UPDATE Mark Rose notes the public opinion behind controlling illegal immigration. To which I respond - Yeah, but the end-game is bad….really bad. Not just politically, but for the country. We have representative government to stand against bad policy, despite any popular support otherwise. This is a case where we need to do just that. Senator Specter, who I seldom respect, is on the right track. I just wish he’d go further with the concept of Americanization.

The protests in Los Angeles, among others, are not to be taken lightly. Especially so in LA, where it seems no one predicted the size of the protests (500,000 at last count). The people protesting will, for the most part, be dismissed as lawless advocates by many on my side of the political spectrum. It’s time for conservative pundits to can the xenophobic soundbites. Those on the left…who knows. The social dynamic in southern California, New Mexico and Arizona is something we should look more closely into. Let’s start with some reality.

We cannot seal the southern border. It is too long, too porous, and would require too much manpower. We would do better to use those resources to scan every cargo container that enters the country (also, almost an impossible task). Mexicans did not attack us on 9/11 - if national security is the real concern, we shouldn’t overlook our much longer and less monitored neighbor to the North. If it’s not national security concerning us, I think we need to ask some tough questions of ourselves.

Though it’s a popular thing to propose, it is physically impossible to block off the Mexican border, and the Hispanic vote in enough districts has become sufficiently powerful to scare many congressman away from any such idea altogether to where it is also nearly politically impossible. The alternative then, if we cannot stop the flow of northward bound immigration, is to monitor it. A guest worker program with some method of American indoctrination would do that. Some acts are malum in se (where the act itself is clearly bad, like murder). Immigration to America, which has infected so many millions throughout history, does not fall into that category. We’re talking about a set of immigration rules that have outlived any modicum of usefulness. The desire of the world to come here is a net positive. We have established a set of laws we cannot enforce, with dubious policy goals in light of the volume we must now handle and the national security concerns post-9/11. If the system isn’t accomplishing its stated goals, we have to change it.

Besides, illegal immigrants aren’t the real problem. A zero tolerance policy toward those who are here will result in the eventual de-Americanization of the southwest region of our country. If a Mexican national comes here, illegally or not, we need to assimilate them or risk an expansion in influence of the Mexican government in our affairs that we cannot afford. After the next generation of Mexican immigrants becomes newly minted citizens, border of Mexico will de facto expand into the southern border of United States. To avoid this, we need a program of Americanization, not the continued call for enforcement of unenforceable laws. Treating illegal immigrants as some scourge accomplishes nothing. They aren’t going anywhere, and by most estimates add much more to the economy than they may receive in government assistance. Let’s make the desire to reach America at any cost work for America. We can absorb more.

A guest worker program, or something similar, with a goal toward Americanization should be put into place. Mandatory English classes along with weekly American history classes would go a long way to this end. The goal should be to de-Mexicanize the immigrating Mexican worker, not foster an underground culture unassimilated into American society.

(note, a new category has been added, starting with this post, under “Immigration”).

UPDATE Harry Monroe has more here.

FURTHER UPDATE And of course, there are those who are angry and want more unrest, for no other reason than the complete destruction of American society.

FURTHER FURTHER UPDATE My point made here. As Harry Monroe said in the comments, we can’t be accused of being knee-jerk. This, however, is just that.

UPDATE AD INFINITUM Virginia Postrel notes

Anti-immigration forces have made great strides politically by cynically conflating terrorists and criminals with dishwashers and construction workers. Any real plan to “secure the borders” should make it easier, not harder, to separate the two. Workers, especially those who want to settle and become citizens (or have their children become citizens), are not threats. They’re contributors to American society.

Bingo.