10. "ILLEGAL ALIENS"

Up until now, most of the media coverage of illegal aliens has concentrated on draining welfare funds, creating unemployment, and not paying taxes into a system from which they benefit. To receive welfare, proof of citizenship is required, which the illegal alien does not have, and the illegal alien is not causing unemployment since the state has tried to get the urban poor to take the jobs in the fields, and failed. The urban poor could make more on welfare and unemployment than accepting these jobs. Also, not many people would accept below minimum wage, long hours, or nonappealing jobs.

Most employers, therefore, benefit from illegal aliens in that they can demand more for less; they also use threats of calling the border patrol to keep workers under extreme working conditions. An example of this inhuman profiteering is Senator Barry Goldwater's brother, Robert, who has been hiring illegal aliens for more than a decade. After he paid over $100 to have them smuggled in, he then paid them as little as $5 for a dawn-to-dusk work day. Their living conditions were horrible, and they lived like rats in homes made of crates. Even though they were required to pay taxes, they were unable to collect benefits from welfare or unemployment.

Ironically, millions of dollars are being spent to apprehend, detain, and repatriate illegal aliens, however, three times as many people continue to get through the security barriers than are returned or detained. The media tells only one side of the story of the illegal aliens and ignores the other side of this story; this is why this story has been nominated as one of the "ten best censored stories for 1977."

SOURCES:

New West, "California's Illegal Aliens, They Give More Than They Take," p. 26, also "How Illegal Aliens Pay as They Go," p. 34; by Jonathan Kirsch and Anthony Cook, May 23, 1977.

In These Times, "Illegal Aliens the New Scapegoat," June 1-7, 1977,p.6.

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, "Aliens Abused on Ranch Owned by Goldwater's Brother," March 21, 1977, p. 14. Copyright, 1977, by Investigative Reports and Editors Inc.; Distributed by United Press International.