Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) said during a recent interview with Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor-in-chief of Tikkun Magazine, that having national borders is a cause of “injustice.”
“Since NAFTA, Mexican wages have dropped between nine and thirteen percent,” Ellison began. “Now, some people have said to me, oh, Keith, that’s too bad for them. And my answer is, no that’s too bad for us because that means those people are going to be a low wage sector not only in Mexico, but here in the United States. And the undocumented worker is an exploited worker.”
“We just have to say that the 12 million undocumented people in the United States are here because somebody wants them to be,” Ellison continued. “But they want them here to do the work, but they don’t want them to get any rights. They don’t want to pay them fairly.”
Ellison added: “And labor, which is a regular person, cannot travel back and forth across the border. And so corporations, certain people who get certain rights, can go back and forth across the border seeking out the lowest wages, but people, regular people, cannot go back and forth across the border seeking out the highest wages. So what it creates is an imbalance. It creates an injustice.”
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