Western nations have a right to be proud of eradicating chattel slavery. Yet, having done so, many of these same western nations, have within their borders at the present time, what appears to be an updated and insidious form of slavery. We have to keep in mind that we live within a very big world in which the wealth, so of, is not even close to being equally distributed. Further to the point, the governments that many people live under, are in a lot of cases, repressive, non-democratic in actual form, as well as lacking foundational good educational facilities and/or decent employment opportunities.
All of this basically means that in war-torn countries, be it civil war, or wars between nations, or in those lands of internecine narcotic wars, and similar, those that are simply trying to live a decent and wholesome life, are placed in the unenviable position of having to consider outlets that may well be outside their township, or even their country, such as a foreign land. After all, in a situation in which a family doesn’t see any good possibilities for themselves, while also desiring that their offspring have better opportunities then they have so had, they are going to be susceptible to being enticed by sketchy outside recruiters, as well as through their own volitional thinking, that the grass truly is greener on the other side. The fact that they believe in that, isn’t even wrong, for western nations, typically have a stable rule of law, as well as better educational and employment opportunities, but alas in a lot of cases, that picture, in reality for those so immigrating, through illegal means, is often just a very tempting mirage.
The problem with a capitalistic system, or any monetary system, in which the lure or need of money is the overriding desire of a given entrepreneurial person or corporation, is that the unrelenting lust for that profit, above virtually everything else, addles the sensibility of what is good and fair. So then, the fact that there are so many people that have illegally crossed the border, one way or another, and typically owe those that have helped them to cross that border a considerable amount of money, in which the clock is ever ticking upon them – in conjunction with the material fact that there are actually millions of immigrants without proper paperwork, within those western nations, already, leads to those illegal immigrants being exploited, time and time again.
So then, wage laws in regards to a minimum wage, overtime, age of the person so working, and so on and so forth, is something that is going to be subverted time and time again, by those that deliberately employ people that they know have questionable “legal” rights and debatable “legal” status. So too, when it comes to the actual work and working conditions, those that hire almost exclusively illegal immigrant labor for certain job positions, are going to often circumvent those rules, in order to see that the work so being done is being accomplished in a way and manner that favors the man so paying for that labor. In short, chattel slavery has been effectively replaced with those that have come to western nations looking for liberty and opportunity, but have found instead, a bastardization of such.