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Mar 17, 2021Liked by Thom Hartmann

A partial solution is to issue work visa's and make it legal. We had the Bracero Program in the 40's and 50's. We need their labor. Let's make it legal and regulated. My Congressman (Ken Buck R-CO) speaks against illegal immigration all of the time. Then he lives in Greeley CO the meat packing center of Colorado and illegal workers. Let's quit hiding it and make it legal. Visa's would track workers and limit stay times. Driver licenses could be issued for Foreign Nationals with Visa's. Insurance required etc. We need them and they need us.

All of this is over population. The Catholic church preached against Birth Control in these predominantly Catholic Countries and now they do not have enough jobs to go around. In that situation gangs take over and it becomes dangerous to live there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_program#:~:text=The%20Bracero%20program%20(from%20the,Farm%20Labor%20Agreement%20with%20Mexico.

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Happy St Patrick's Day!

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UN-resolvable. That being said, I do believe we can make things better. I have to believe that, because we have been so capable at making things worse.

The gig economy didn't start outside a home improvement store, but it certainly accelerated there. We are paying for taking advantage of cheap labor in so many ways. I want to blame it all on the Republicans, but little by little the benefits have become too entwined in everyday life. A well meaning lefty would have a hard time boycotting it all. If individuals hire them, we cannot stop that. If corporations hire them, we can legislate and enforce. Time to get on with that.

I have mixed emotions about the people who come here "outside" our crappy immigration system for strictly financial opportunities. I am not talking about asylum seekers or those starving. Having lived in a foreign country, I never felt I had a right to pack-up and move there forever. Many Americans would love to emigrate to Canada or Australia. If they try, they better have a very fat wallet.

There are 11 million people caught-up in this situation and 11 million stories. This fact is not going to resonate with Republicans. They like to view the world in black and white, and this is the mother of all gray areas. This administration is going to get pushed by both sides of the aisle. I am hoping I can support what they try to do on this issue.

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...another big problem created by another Republican big lie to enrich the already rich. Perhaps as the demographics change, the face of America will change. The promise of a "more perfect union" is that the natural compassion of normal human beings who outnumber the liars, thieves, and killers at the top of the white-man plutocratic pyramid scheme will someday, the sooner the better, take a jackhammer to the foundation upon which they exploit low-paid workers. In the "land of the free," union membership is currently at roughly six percent in the private sector; it should be 100 percent.

In the nooks and crannies of the daily news cycle, there is hope in certain anecdotal stories that might indicate a larger undercurrent of attitudinal changes in young people, who are the hope, as always, of a new world. Here's one of those stories: https://www.newsweek.com/california-teacher-77-who-lives-car-given-27000-former-student-1575700

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