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The American business community claims that low-wage foreign and illegal immigrant labor is necessary to sustain the American economy. Their position is that the economy would collapse without this low-wage labor.
In 1861, Tsar Alexander II of Russia decided to free the Russian serfs from their bondage to landowners. When this proposal was made, the Russian boyars (the Russian Aristocracy) argued that freeing the serfs and then having to pay them for their labor would bring down the Russian economy.
This, to my mind, is an interesting coincidence. The low-wage laborers that American business now relies upon can be likened to the bound serfs of Russia. Is America progressing or regressing? Think about it. (6/19/2007)