For every job "taken" by an illegal Mexican immigrant in the Southwestern U.S., how many manufacturing jobs have been lost from my Great Lakes region due to the transfer of American manufacturing to China? Ten times as many? One hundred times as many?
At least the Mexican immigrants count their wages using DOLLARS per hour and they spend some of their money in this country, unlike the teenage Chinese girls who make all the crap sold by Walmart and the rest of America's retailers. They only measure their wages in cents per hour. Their wage rates and work schedules would get their employers tossed in jail if they tried to impose them inside our country. The Walmarting of American manufacturing jobs really is the next best thing to slavery if you're trying to save wage and benefit costs.
For too long, states in the industrial Great Lakes region have watched our standards of living decline as the manufacturing jobs that are the backbone of our economies left for foreign lands. And people want us to worry about the financial strains placed on the Southwest states and communities due to illegal immigrants from Mexico? Really?
Forget it. We in the Great Lakes region have finally united with our common cause. We understand that our economies are so closely related that we will all sink together if we don't unite and defend what's left of our manufacturing economies. The decline of manufacturing jobs has even reliably Republican Ohio and Indiana now ready to help elect Chicago resident Barack Obama as President.
2008 may very well have Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York all voting for one Presidential Candidate. Toss in Iowa and New Jersey because their economies and demographics are so similar to our. Have all these states EVER voted as one before? Even Fritz Mondale carried Minnesota.
A unified electoral voting bloc of the states in the Great Lakes region could decide Presidential elections for years to come.
Oh behalf of all of us, I'd like to say that we're very pleased ta meet cha!
