Discount Tutor
Learning Objectives After completing this module, students will be able to:
• Accurately explain economic and distributive justice in discussion • Accurately define natural law, in your own words, on the discussion board • Use economic and distributive justice to analyze the case, Day Laboring
Lecture:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-distributive/
Day Laboring
The United States is a nation of immigrants. Some come legally, others illegally. Both groups, though, come for freedom and opportunity. Of the 38.5 million immigrants, 11.5 million have come from Mexico,crossing dangerous borders in search of greater economic opportunity. Historically, Mexican immigrants have made their homes in metropolitan cities in Texas, California, and North Carolina. It was surprising to local residents when they settled in Farmingville, New York, a hamlet of approximately 15,500 people, mostly “Anglos.”
About 1,500 Mexicans came to Farmingville in the late 1990s alone in search of job opportunities. Farmingville offered easy access to the Long Island Expressway, a major thoroughfare for construction and landscaping trucks. The hamlet was also near many popular eateries, all of which were eager to hire immigrants, legal or otherwise.
The sheer number of undocumented residents provided a significant boost to the local economy. These women and men often worked long hours for low wages and took jobs few others would consider. Yet residents subjected the Mexican population to harassment that sometimes devolved into violence.
The people of Farmingville protested that Mexicans loitered at well-traveled corners and at “their” 7-11 convenience stores and Home Depots. Local citizens were disturbed that Mexicans rented houses in their neighborhood and filled them beyond occupancy limits. The influx of undocumented residents divided the people of Farmingville. Some upheld the newcomers’ right to stay. Critics countered, “We’re being invaded and overrun.”
On one side of the protests was Margaret Bianculli-Dyber, a concerned Farmingville resident who founded Sachem Quality of Life (SQL). In the movie Farmingville, which brought awareness of the day-laboring movement and established the hamlet as ground zero for immigration discussions, Bianculli-Dyber says that she never expected to become an activist. The public nuisance, housing challenges, loitering, and increased crime rate in Farmingville prompted her to “protect her neighborhood.” Despite Bianculli-Dyber’s efforts, politicians greeted her protestations with suspicion and an unwillingness to act.
Ed Hernandez from Brookhaven Citizens for Peaceful Solutions and Joe Madsen, a Catholic religious brother and sympathetic accompanier of the Mexicans, led the other side, motivated by the belief that the Mexicans were good hard-working people, doing work that quite often others would not. In fact, as Hernandez and Madsen emphasize in Farmingville, if Mexicans did not provide the low-cost labor to the construction, landscaping, and restaurant businesses, the economy would experience a downturn. They accused the other side of racism and intolerance.
The Farmingville situation came to some painful junctures for both sides during the course of the heated exchanges. First, Mexican laborers Israel Pérez and Magdaleno Escamilla were violently accosted and left seriously wounded in the basement of a home where they were told there was work. They had been led there under false pretenses by perpetrators, two men with a known connection to a white supremacist group, who were later tried and convicted. This incident drew the attention of the press and increased sympathy for the Mexican laborers. A second incident increased the disdain for the Mexicans and further polarized the Farmingville community. In the early evening hours, a pregnant woman was struck down by an unlicensed immigrant worker.
As a result, two significant efforts were made to resolve this situation. The first involved the establishment of hiring halls, central locations where Mexican day laborers could find secure work. This proposal generated hope as well as significant resistance. One group enlisted the help of the
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a national organization whose mission is to examine immigration trends and effects, to educate the American people on the impacts of sustained high-volume immigration, and to discern, put forward, and advocate immigration policies that will best serve American environmental, societal, and economic interests today and into the future. [emphasis mine]
The involvement of this national group only heightened the anti-Mexican sentiment and led to involvement of other national immigration watch groups. The pushback effectively stopped the proposal from moving forward.
Some twenty years have passed since the arrival of the first Mexicans in Farmingville. There are still no hiring halls, and day laborers continue to congregate at local stores in search of work. The situation, while still tense, has become somewhat less inflammatory than it was when the Mexicans first arrived. Aggravated residents have either moved out or become more tolerant.