In the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey is shown an alternate, dystopian version of Bedford Falls. In Pottersville, renamed for the greedy local mogul, the neighborhood bar is instead a raucous saloon, George’s flirty childhood friend has become a prostitute, and his real-world wife, Mary, is instead a spinster librarian.
At one point in Bedford Falls, George and Mary confess their love while on a phone call with a wealthy school friend. In the course of the call, Sam Wainwright announces plans to build a plastics factory in Rochester. George answers:
Why not right here? You remember that old tool and machinery works? You tell your father he can get that for a song. And all the labor he wants, too. Half the town was thrown out of work when they closed down.
If there had been a Pottersville version of that call, Sam, instead of hiring those jobless locals, would have responded, “Hire Americans? Nah, I’ll just import foreign workers on visas. Hee haw!”
Welcome to Pottersville.
Bad Policy Meets Harsh Reality
With 10 million unemployment claims just in the past two weeks and a jobless rate that could reach 32 percent, the Trump Administration is continuing the trend of increasing importation of foreign workers, whose numbers have doubled over the past decade. . . .