Just following orders

Millions of marching migrants and the White House's refusal to wall off the border may outrage the working-class white Republicans responsible for all the GOP's political gains since the mid-1990s, but George W. Bush shouldn't be expected to listen to such people.

Like any powerful politician, Bush works for multinational corporations and their millionaire stockholders. And those people know the truth: The house of cards known as the American Economy would collapse overnight if illegal foreign workers were deported.

The elitist investment newsletter Kiplinger Business Forecasts spelled it out for its subscribers in an April report:

"Legal and illegal immigrants will account for almost all the growth of the labor force, which is aging rapidly. When baby boomers start to retire in big numbers after 2010, there won't be enough U.S. natives to step up and take the jobs they're leaving. Immigrants tend to be younger and more willing to tackle jobs that too few Americans want, especially in agriculture, construction and the hospitality industries."

And what if illegal workers suddenly vanish?

"Without the growth from immigration, the U.S. risks a stagnant economy."

Kiplinger's reminds its wealthy and powerful readers that the United States faces the same grim future as shrinking nations such as Germany and Japan.

"With far fewer immigrants seeking jobs there, the median age of their workforces is already soaring. In the coming decades, the situation will only get worse, straining government budgets for social services and choking off growth."

Constant growth is the one goal of the global corporate overlords, just like cancer.

The intentional confusion over illegal Latino migration to the United States tends to confuse the facts. "Liberal" voters want to be nice to the economic refugees by letting them stay, while "conservatives" want the borders closed because they don't like people sneaking across the border and speaking Spanish.

That may be just the sort of impotent confusion that international corporations require to keep a "slave pipeline" running to U.S. industry and agriculture.

"Rob Sanchez" wrote the following to USA Today after that corporate newspaper published articles that were sympathetic to illegal workers:

"I wish to applaud James Fulford's rebuttal of the offensive article 'USA just wouldn't work without immigrant labor.' Articles of this kind are nothing but cheap propaganda by greedy corporations that hope to convince the public that Americans can't handle hard work. They use this to justify the importation of foreign workers to bust unions, lower salaries, and destroy workplace standards."

And that's where traditional liberal values such as unionized labor, minimum wages and workplace safety collide with liberal support for the human rights of economic refugees from Latin America. The globalized corporations abhor the former and require the latter.