The Washington Post sees the Postville raid as more evidence that the government should stop picking on poor, hard-working undocumented workers.

Craig Nelsen of ProjectUSA, however, says there is much more to the story.

Ryan Kennedy’s article about working on the Alaskan slime lines sure struck home, even though I’m in sunny Arizona. Check out this job ad that appeared in the East Valley Tribune in March.

According to that ad, if you get hired by Icicle Seafoods Inc. they will pay for your trip from Seattle to Alaska—but you have to pay your fare from wherever you live to Seattle. Travel expenses will sure cut into your earnings since you will only get paid $7.15 an hour, but not to worry—you will eventually break even with expenses as you put in 18 hour days doing very tedious and disgusting work. They pay overtime after 40 hours and if that doesn’t entice you, they even provide a bunk bed on their fishing boat with 15 other workers, and meals are served buffet style in the galley for free. In case those 18 hour days of cutting out fish guts isn’t enough exercise for you they provide a work out room, and there is even a TV to watch videos.

Just make sure that you really want to do this kind of work though because this job is a charade for indentured labor: if you quit before your contract is up you get stuck with the travel fees to get back home.

Icicle’s website provided a graphic description of the working environment:

Most of the work that we have is called “sliming” or cleaning fish. This type of work involves removing the viscera (guts) and cutting off heads, fins, gills, or tail. That means there are lots of fish guts and fish blood in the work area. The environment can be wet, cold, and drafty. Due to moving machinery, it is noisy and hearing protection is required. All work gear, including eye and hearing protection, are provided for you.

Things could get worse though. Check out this disclaimer:

Many people have unrealistic expectations about the amount of money they can make working in Alaska. The fishing industry is extremely unpredictable. Even during a good season, the wages you earn in Alaska may be comparable to or less than what you can earn elsewhere. Also, because this is seasonal work, you cannot depend on it for steady income.
Remember: no fish, no work; lots of fish, lots of work!

There might even be worse places to work, that is if you believe Icicle’s website:

Finally, we hope you choose to work with Icicle Seafoods because we believe we have the best program to offer!

So, what sane person would work under such intolerable conditions? What kind of desperation could motivate somebody to take such a pitiful job? The website says they won’t hire illegal immigrants so, who will they hire?

The job ad gives some major clues for those of us who know the code words for “immigrants”. Look at that ad again and see if you can guess where the code is.

OK, I won’t hold you in suspense for too long. The job ad says you can mail your resume to addresses “@azdes.gov.” That’s the big giveaway because that’s the Arizona Department of Economic Security. The AZDES processes these ads so that employers can “prove” that no qualified Americans want the job. When the AZDES doesn’t receive resumes it is assumed that there aren’t any qualified Americans, so work visas are issued. In the case of the slimers, employers like Icicle will probably try to snatch some H-2B visas. This document shows how the AZDES rigs the game for employment based green cards

There is one other big clue about who they are hiring right on the Icicle website. They have an entire web page and separate application for students on J-1 visas.

Icicle is hiring foreign students who are going to our universities and who need summer jobs because the cost of rice is getting to high for them to eat.

If you want more information about why it’s so hard for American students to get summer jobs and internships, read my newly published article Thanks to feds, search for internships tougher, East Valley Tribune, April 27, 2008 .

The New York Times is known for standing strongly on the side of open borders and supporting nonexistent “rights” of foreigners residing here illegally. But the paper has certainly broken new ground with this interview of a one-time illegal Mexican farmworker who is now a Brain Surgeon (!), Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa. The article is thick with inferred praise for the man’s professional success, but has zero condemnation for his illegal acts.

The implication is that we better keep borders open because America wouldn’t want to miss out on a potential neurosurgeon lurking among the grade-school dropouts picking tomatoes: A Surgeon’s Path From Migrant Fields to Operating Room (March 13, 2008).

Q. WHERE DID YOU GROW UP?

A. Mexicali. My father had a small gas station. The family’s stability vanished when there was a devaluation of the Mexican peso in the 1980s. My father lost the gas station, and we had no money for food. For a while, I sold hot dogs on the corner to help.

As the economic crisis deepened, there seemed no possibility for any future in Mexico. I had big dreams and I wanted more education. So in 1987, when I was 19, I went up to the border between Mexicali and the United States and hopped the fence.

Some years later, I was sitting at a lunch table with colleagues at Harvard Medical School. Someone asked how I’d come to Harvard. “I hopped the fence,” I said. Everyone laughed. They thought I was joking.

This illegal alien (who later became a citizen) occupied student slots at UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School that should have gone to law-abiding citizens, whose parents’ taxes pay for state schools like the University of California system. No mention of that by the Times, however; only a wrap-up question calling for a typical liberal response. Senor Doctor Hinojosa complies:

Q. WHEN YOU HEAR ANTI-IMMIGRANT EXPRESSIONS ON TALK RADIO AND CABLE TELEVISION, HOW DO YOU FEEL?

A. It bothers me. Because I know what it was that drove me to jump the fence. It was poverty and frustration with a system that would have never allowed me to be who I am today.

As long as there is poverty in the rest of the world and we export our culture through movies and television, people who are hungry are going to come here. There’s no way to stop it.

It’s the old “force of nature” argument, resoundingly disproved by the recent success of law enforcement in places like Arizona and Oklahoma. Perhaps Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa has not yet heard the good news that America as a nation of laws has not been completely obliterated. You can contact him at aquinon2@jhmi.edu.

LewRockwell.com doesn’t seem to have responded to Arthur Pendleton’s analysis of its sad regression from paleolibertarinism to the left-liberal mean, except to post this pathetic theoretical twaddle by Butler Shaffer, essentially arguing that immigration is OK because only private property owners can have the right to forbid trespass. See what we mean? There’s a reason why none of Ayn Rand’s protagonists had families: this entire non-atomistic dimension of the humanity experience is missing from modal libertarianism. It’s not missing from the writing of Illana Mercer, who combines libertarianism with an appreciation of the nation and the dangers of immigration in a recent WorldNetDaily column Israel: Role model for America. Paleolibertarianism exists, it just apparently needs a new home.

I just found a whole archive of late night comedian jokes on the subject of immigration from About.com. Jay Leno still seems to be the one guy who gets it, but even the average comedian can see that it’s funny. And a columninst on HispanicVista complained that the “the tragedy of millions was the comedy of America,” so that’s a plus.

“Even though [Mexican] President Fox has only been in the United States two days, today the INS said they have no way to find him.” –Jay Leno

“The Senate voted to make English the national language of the United States. The vote drew protests from several immigrant groups and one governor of California.” –Conan O’Brien

“Immigration is the big issue right now. Earlier today, the Senate voted to build a 370-mile fence along the Mexican border. … Experts say a 370-mile fence is the perfect way to protect a border that is 1,900 miles long.” –Conan O’Brien

“President Bush said we’ll have 6,000 troops on the border for one year, preferably an election year.” –Jay Leno

“President Bush said today he has nothing but respect for Mexico and its people and he will always speak the truth to them. Here’s my question: When can we get that deal?” –Jay Leno

“President Bush said, “You can’t take millions of people with deep roots in the country and send them across the border.” Really? Mexico did it.” –Jay Leno

“According to this new bill that’s tied up in the Senate, illegal immigrants who can prove they’ve been here for two years would be allowed to stay. So follow the logic here. If you can prove you broke the current law for two years, you’ve protected under the new law.” –Jay Leno

“They say there are something like 12 million illegal immigrants in the country right now, with another half a million coming every year. Remember in the last election when the Democrats claimed there was two Americas? Turns out one of them was Mexico.” –Jay Leno

“Proponents of this amnesty program for illegal immigrants say they are willing to take on jobs American are not willing to do. You know, like come up with an immigration policy.” –Jay Leno

Of course, Bill Maher, who’s more of stereotypical liberal than Jay Leno, takes a different tack:

“The liberals are saying that this guest worker program … is really just a way to depress wages and create a permanent underclass of exploited labor. To which the president said, ‘And the problem is?’” –Bill Maher