Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) issued a warning about child labor and immigration on January 17th. Published to Twitter/X, her post was her usual self-righteous grandstanding. Delivered as the White House and the GOP tried to come to terms on a deal between immigration to prevent a government shutdown, she didn’t do anyone any favors.
“Historically, the United States has economically outperformed other countries in part due to our welcoming of immigrants. Republicans would like you to believe that they support legal immigration, but today, they launched an attack on legal immigration pathways…Many of these Republican legislatures would rather roll back child labor laws and put 11- and 13-year-olds back in the workplace than allow immigrants into their community and do what they’ve always done.”
Instead, she demanded Congress devise a way for immigration policy to include illegal immigration methods, “that can be documented, that people can get a job, put a shirt on their back, support their kids without being a public charge, and defend the very soul of what it means to be an American.”
One of these methods she and other liberals are suggesting is something Biden brought back called “humanitarian parole.” Under this service, 200,000 people fled to the US on direct flights and were allowed in without issue. Well, provided someone in the US was willing to claim financial responsibility for them. While Democrats are quick to defend the policy as doing something positive, they also reluctantly admit that it provided no pathway towards citizenship or even fixing the problem on a long-term basis.
Previously, this project was used in the 1970s for people from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, in Iraq back in the 1990s, and in Afghanistan from 2001 and beyond. The program was mildly successful but also made any idea of returning to their home far beyond imaginable. It also subjected to family and friends left behind susceptible to attacks the longer they stayed.
AOC’s answer of claiming the GOP wants child labor to be legalized is nothing short of laughable. Conservatives, by and large, have perpetually been against the idea of using children to perform adult jobs. While exceptions have been made for things like farms, this was originally on a limited basis to help plant crops or bring in the harvest.
Later, more exceptions were given to allow kids to fill roles in small employee jobs like restaurants, fresh food stands, and even small community stores.
These roles were designed to help augment the adult work of their parents or relatives who already worked there. Under the guise that AOC is presenting child labor, it would imply conservatives were behind the recent rash of child labor. Mostly illegals, these kids were found working at meat processing plants in Democratic strongholds like California and Idaho working alongside adults and behind hidden when the labor and safety board reps would show up.
Currently, the US has a labor problem caused by an inflation issue that resulted from failed policies from President Biden. As much as AOC and others want to ignore the issue, it all stems from decades of on-and-off-again liberal policymaking. They want the American people to be reliant on the government for everything, and without it, they believe we are incapable of being successful. As we have seen historically, this is a nation that works more efficiently the less we have big government deciding everything for us.
If AOC and the rest of the left are so certain things can turn around, then they need to listen to the will of the American people. That will isn’t opening the border and flooding the country with immigrants. Nor is it allowing kids to go from getting a C- in chemistry to running the frame treatment machine at the Ford assembly line.
Instead, it’s putting an end to overtaxing the American people to pay for services we don’t want or need. Keeping costs of doing business under control by preventing local and federal governments from collecting $0.27 on every dollar of taxed goods and services sold. If we as a nation can help control costs, trim useless spending, and stop having a society that makes $20 an hour the living wage, we might just save ourselves from communism.
