An intentionally unemployed buddy recently mentioned that he read that restaurants here in town are having a hard time finding enough workers. (A recently disappointing experience that my wife and I had with our favorite Thai restaurant would confirm such an observation. “We’re having troubles in the kitchen,” the manager explained.)
The same with cleaning and maintenance companies. Many local construction companies are likewise having a hard time filling their crews. And farm hands are more and more scarce. (I’m so glad I’m retired!)
Part of the reason for this labor shortage, my friend suggested was that the mushrooming “marijuana grow houses” are hiring more and more people, at higher wages than these traditional industries. In fact, he says if he were to return to the work force—which he is not especially inclined to do—he would seek employment in this rising (high rising?) industry.
But a larger part of the reason for the local labor shortage in these exact industries is because of the lack of wisdom, and the overwhelming presence of fear, with a healthy wallop of down-home stupidity, now oozing from our national policy on immigration.
Across the country, the Trump Administration is now arresting over 100 immigrants a day who have no criminal record. Which turns out to be a “cash cow” for our private prison industry, which houses over 76% of these “non-criminal” inmates generating billions of dollars a year in “private profits”—while some of them feed their inmates just rice and beans seven days a week. (What these corporations need is a huge tax break!)
For our own economic health, moral sanity and practical social harmony—not to mention simple peace of mind– we here in Fort Collins should immediately join in spirit with at least 18 other major cities across the country, including Denver and Salt Lake City, and immediately make our city a sanctuary city, a city that officially protects its non-criminal immigrant citizens. Our labor shortage would disappear over night, along with the deep angst so many of our recent and long-time citizens have been feeling.
We should—and can—officially refuse to cooperate with the newly hired brutes — oops, I mean kids– from the Immigration and Custom Enforcement Agency (ICE) as these toughs follow their orders to round up our families, and our friends and neighbors. We should not let the violently racist, deeply flawed black or white, “arrest, hold and deport” policy (often without due process) be enforced in our dear city. We should resist ICE. History will be on our side. The policy is an abomination, not to mention—though I did just mention—it’s idiocy.
The vast majority of the people that ICE agents are now targeting across the country are hard working people, NOT criminals; they are NOT illegals, they are simply tax paying undocumented workers.
The reason they are undocumented has everything to do with the flawed immigration system here in the U.S. that stupidly does not issue, in a timely and efficient manner, the official documents these workers need to work as they do here in our flourishing economy.
Let’s become a sanctuary city. Our current city council, of course, and alas, seems not to be brave enough to follow such a higher path. But we citizens of the city know the right thing to do. We can—and do— start by offering sanctuary in our homes, and in our churches. (Hey, Fort Collins Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, and Episcopalians—not to mention you Evangelicals—where are you in this deeply Christian moment?)
But we can—and should—make it a city-wide movement. Let’s make Fort Collins a sanctuary city. Let’s let the light shine in!