Last modified: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 2:20 AM EDT GUEST COLUMN: They're running away from US jobs in Mexico BY WAYNE-DANIEL BERARD In "Our next civil war" (June 28) Betsy Shea-Taylor purports to offer, "in a heartbeat," the basics of the immigration crisis, especially as it pertains to Mexico. One of the major valves of that heart, however, is missing from her analysis: the role of foreign (especially U.S.) business in the non-choice of so many in Mexico regarding emigration, as well as the accompanying responsibility of the American market in this matter. According to the Dun & Bradstreet company AllBusiness, foreign firms account for over five million jobs in Mexico. These American companies include Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Dupont, Kraft, Ford, and the group's largest employer, Motorola. Among the top 100 foreign businesses operating in Mexico are also a number that, although based in Europe or Japan, rely on the U.S. as a primary market. Five million jobs in Mexico for Mexicans may sound wonderful, but these companies locate there for two reasons only - cheap labor and the almost total disregard for working conditions permitted south of our border. The minimum wage in Mexico is 53 pesos a day (about $4 American). Bathroom breaks are unheard of (any type of break is unheard of!). There is no overtime pay, no set work week, no accommodation for illness or pregnancy. Get sick, get fired. Conditions in many of these factories make the term "sweat shop" look upwardly mobile. The immediate beneficiaries of this injustice are two: the companies themselves and you and I, the American consumer. Foreign firms hiring in Mexico make money hand over fist (although, considering the type of economic oppression involved, those terms should probably be reversed). And we, who buy these goods at cheap prices, are (perhaps unwittingly) complicit in this institutionalized cruelty. If this large a sector of the Mexican work force is treated thus, who can blame its members for doing everything and anything they can to find a better life, and to do so in the land that both helps maintain and benefits from their plight? Many Americans, including Ms. Shea-Taylor, complain bitterly about the illegality of the Mexican presence here, the accompanying strain on our systems, etc. But it is easy to cry "illegal" when the law is written by the affluent and powerful, for the benefit of the affluent and the powerful. What's represented here are the moanings of those who wish to have it both ways - for our nation's companies to pay the Mexican worker a wage that would embarrass a sharecropper, with working conditions which would have been condemned at Nuremberg, all for the purpose of cheap goods - but then to seal our borders when these same workers try to gain a share of the better life that their labor has helped pay for! In short, this is a question of "you can pay me now, or you can pay me later." Either U.S. and other foreign concerns can provide their Mexican workers a decent wage under decent conditions, thus allowing them to stay in Mexico, or we who benefit from their exploitation will end up, in effect, providing them that just compensation, once they emigrate. As Dr. King so heartfeltly stated "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Borders, apparently, are similarly bendable and toward the same end. WAYNE-DANIEL BERARD of Mansfield is a professor of English and college chaplain.