Anti-"Illegal Immigrant" is Anti-Immigrant Politics
You will see folks - including in comments in my last post - repeating the contention that the current wave of anti-immigrant politics is just about being against "illegal immigration," not against immigrants more generally. While a few folks may think they mean it, it's clearly untrue. Most obviously, unless you support increasing legal immigration to match current levels of undocumented immigration, a crack down on undocumented immigration is support for a net reduction in overall immigration levels. But the harder reality is that the policy attacks on undocumented immigrants inevitably bleed over into attacks on legal immigrants.
Just take the example of the stimulus package. Anti-immigrant activists denounced the idea that "illegal immigrants" would get a tax rebate. So what happened? The proposed Senate bill is promoting a provision that would cut off help to many legal immigrants as well: The Senate Finance Committee was scrambling to fix the problem...by only allowing taxpayers using legitimate Social Security numbers to receive rebates...The Senate version of the bill would prohibit use of ITINs [tax ID numbers], meaning some legal immigrants would not receive rebates. Similarly, when Congress voted for SCHIP health care funding expansion last year, they prohibited states from using that money to provide health insurance for LEGAL immigrants. We've been here before. When anti-immigrant attacks exploded in California in the form of Prop 187, it was followed by a wave of restrictions on legal immigrants and new laws that restricted how states and non-profit groups could use federal money. In the welfare law passed in 1996: In the welfare reform bill enacted in 1996, new legal immigrants to the United States became ineligible for public benefits for low-income Americans. A few provisions were subsequently eased, but legal immigrants who entered the country after August 1996 can live here for five years or longer and still not receive Medicaid, food stamps, cash assistance for poor families, or assistance for the needy blind, disabled, or aged. Laws passed the same year banned organizations receiving Legal Services money from the federal government from representing most LEGAL immigrants, leaving such immigrants vulnerable to exploitive work and living conditions since they could not get help in court from legal services lawyers. It's convenient rhetoric to talk about a distinction between "illegal" immigration and legal immigration, but both present policies and history show that when xenophobia rears it's head under the banner of attacking "illegal" immigration, policies will be enacted that inevitably hurt legal immigrants just as much. That's one reason why even voters who come from heavily immigrant communities, who might even theoretically believe in the distinction, so clearly are punishing politicians who engage in anti-immigrant rhetoric, even when they claim to be going after "illegal" immigration. They know where the rhetoric leads when laws get drafted.
Comments (11)
Sorry Nathan, but you're drifting into Bush territory here.. you take a lot for granted, and hope that we won't be swift enough on the uptake to pick up on it.
You are promoting ideology, it has nothing to do with reality, or human rights. You seem to be advocating on behalf of an agenda here.. one that seeks to exploit poverty and actually create more desperate poverty by allowing a corrupt status quo, and that includes wealthy foreign governments, allies of the Bush administration and the corporate elite to exploit the poverty that exists in Latin America as a means to achieve everything the US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable have always sought. The destruction of the American wage standard, workplace and environmental protections, even the minimum wage. Social Security, medicare, medicaid, welfare programs, unemployment insurance, workman's compensation.. the New Deal and the Great Society programs in one fell swoop. Let's not forget all those consumer safety regulations as well. There is no amount of spin in the world to make your arguement legitimate. I wouldn't suggest you educate yourself on the realities because I know you are all too well aware of them, so I can only assume that you have your own profit motive to blame for what is a hateful and inhumane theory, and perhaps prejudices of your own that allow you to even try to get away with it.
The US doesn't have a strong, booming economy. We have been experiencing a serious decline in jobs since the 1980s when outsourcing began. It got worse under Bill Clinton's adoption of NAFTA and then MFN status for China, and it has exploded ever since. Clinton greased the wheels for half of the nonsense the Bush administration has been able to get away with. The abuses of the visa program not only got started under Clinton, his wife has helped even foreign nationals exploit the program from within the US. The willing indifference to the lack of border security, and the ever increasing problem with illegal immigrants that has gotten steadily worse each time an amnesty has been declared. All countries have immigration laws, most especially to protect their citizen workforce.
You, Nathan ignore the realities that exist with the problem of long term unemployment and underemployment, the fact that the US takes in approx 2 million legal immigrants per year, including visa workers, more than all the nations of the world combined.
We have limited resources, and we are facing economic meltdown. We do not have a shortage of workers, that was proven by the study released by Harvard University late last year. Whether we're talking about blue collar, tech or white collar workers, there is no shortage of American citizens to do those jobs. Nor do we have a skills shortage, that was proven also to be a lie. We graduate nearly a half million IT professionals and engineers per year, and the job market isn't creating enough new jobs in those fields to keep pace with graduates. If we had a shortage of tech workers, corporations wouldn't be firing them, and wages would rise, not shrink. The same can be said for lower wage workers. We are not facing a shortage of migrant farm workers either. Farmers fired all their legal migrant labor a few years back, and then started clamouring for illegal immigrant labor so crops wouldn't rot in the fields. They deliberately avoided the legal workers they had relied on in the past. The ones they had been obliged to pay a fair wage and benefits to, to hire cheaper illegal labor. Our farmers have relied upon legal migrant labor for decades and the price of produce didn't actually start skyrocketing until the farmers started hiring illegals, and of course, let's not forget how so much food started being imported from Latin America and Asia. It's another example of how outsourcing and over reliance on imports hasn't made things less expensive. I'm ashamed of you for adopting Bush's shell game, Nathan.
All across this nation, citizens who are black, brown and white (I felt the need to state this, because I can't help but wonder if you are hoping there will be a perception that the concerns about illegal immigration are the products of fevered white minds, Nathan), and that includes Americans African as well as of Hispanic origin are angry about the problems of illegal immigration. Hispanic Americans formed an organization called "You Don't Speak For Me", because they were concerned about their jobs, their wages, their children's futures, which they recognized were being harmed by the massive increases in illegal immigrants in their communities, the negative impact on wages, their own experiencing of the health care crisis, rising state and local taxes, the problems of overburdened schools, crime and so many other related issues. They were angry about organizations that pretended to act in the interest of immigrants rights, but were paid for lobbyists for the US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable. LA RAZA, MALDEF and LULAC, which accept untold millions of dollars and are helping the corporate elites hide behind a smoke screen from which accusations can be hurled out to demonize and dehumanize citizens who are attempting to petition their government to seek redress because they are suffering from being discriminated against in their ability to keep and maintain a job, because they are American citizens entitled to a wage standard and workplace protections.
Mexico, as well as many of the countries in Latin America are wealthy, Mexico is one of the wealthiest in the world. It paid off any national debt it had roughly ten years ago. It has a large and thriving middle class, and it's housing boom was proclaimed in the worldwide media last week, to stand in sharp contrast to the US mortgage crisis. Let's contrast some more, America's middle class is declining because of a lack of jobs, and you want to increase competition for the ever decreasing amount of jobs that remain, with more immigration, even illegal, which will further increase problems including the costs of housing because of more competition for it? What about resources such as burdens on water, infrastructure, the already severe health care crisis? With declining incomes who can support a public education system? We are witnessing the Bush administration's desire to overburden what remains of the safety net, so he can more effectively take it away as a failure.. and you are seeking to assist him in this, I have to ask why?
What is your in depth analysis backing up your claim that those who speak out against illegal immigrants, as being against immigration? How are they being unreasonable, when in reality there are an extraordinary number of reasons why their concern is extremely valid? Is the threat of homelessness, hunger, dire poverty, the destruction these problems impose upon families irrelevant to you? I'm asking you just as I would ask any neo-con who was attempting to play Newt Gingrich's game of divide and conquer.
If we're going to consider subconscious level bigotry, as you seem to be attempting to paint those who are upset by illegal immigration, as being guilty of.. you're going to have to provide something to substantiate your claim.
Also, while we're on that topic, let us engage in what might be some subconscious or perhaps even something a little closer to the surface, bigotry on the part of you and others who try to paint any legitimate concern about illegal immigration as racist or xenophobic.
Could it be that you are silent on the score because you support the status quo in those countries? Or perhaps you have some prejudice.. a belief that the people of Latin America are somehow deficient, incapable of protesting, working for change in their own countries?
Americans all throughout the last century protested and worked for change, higher wages and increased opportunities.. do you believe poor Latin Americans are not up to the same task? I'd appreciate reading a response from you on your lack of attention to these pertinent facts. There are groups mobilizing in those countries that bemoan the fact that their own people run away from opportunities to work for change to ensure a future where their people have a better chance. But of course, that would require you believing those same illegal aliens are equal to American citizens, that would require you actually caring that those people, and their fellow citizens in their home countries having a future, being committed enough to demand our government took a stand against those countries and demanding they raise wages and the quality of life for their own people.
Mexico and other Latin American countries, again, are not undeveloped nations.. they have been publicizing their own wealthy stable economies, and what problems they have with poverty could be dealt with by their own government, if they raised wage standards, and taxed some of their many millionaires and corporations to provide more opportunities for their own people.
Could it be that you have a prejudice against working poor and struggling middle class American citizens? Perhaps you dismiss them as "rednecks" as some here in the past have, or you look down upon them for some other reason.. ? Do you disrespect them because you stereotype them as not the sort who vote for the same candidates as you, or because they have rebuffed your particular ideology, as some here have done in the past? Do you have a prejudice where you believe that poor and struggling middle class Americans are less entitled to human rights considerations or even their own civil rights? I have to ask, because it's apparent that you ignore the very real suffering that exists in the United States by American citizens, again, who are black, brown and white.
It is completely irresponsible and inhumane to dismiss their legitimate concerns and to demonize them by inferring that they are somehow in the wrong, or anti-immigrant because they dare to speak out.
February 2, 2008 9:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mares, much of what you complain about isn't caused by the immigration, it is caused by tagging immigrants "illegal". The inequities do not flow simply from not being American-born, but instead from a governmental requirement that all workers be documented without legislating a method for all workers to procure necessary documentation. This is what gets exploited, not nation of birth. Yet you will to continue the method of human exploitation, even as you accuse others.
The very concept that an immigrant living in America would for that reason alone be a criminal is oppositional to free markets, anti-liberty and un-American.
There can be no free-market as long as capital freely flows like water through a sieve across borders, while labour is caught behind them like dolphins in a drift net. This fault is even mored acute presently, because the fictional construct, corporation, a collectivist business entity, not only has been given life as a person in courts of law, the largest walk as gods on earth with annual earnings greater than the GDP of many nations. It will be a coercive force as long as labour is restrained from following capital.
As to your claims of being denigrated with innuendos of racism; you have aligned with VDare, FAIR, Council of Concerned Citizens, The Minutemen, Aryan Nation, Christian Identity..., yet expect not to be tainted by the company you keep?
The concept of "illegal immigrant" is antithetical to the Dreamtime America. It posits differing standards for the applicability of natural liberty, based solely upon nation of birth. It also defames The nation's birth. Without a natural universal human right to freely throw off the shackles of nationality, America's founders were only rebellious subject of King George, and personal liberty is only a delusory dream. It would also mean that rights do not originate within humans, but are instead gifts of the state. A leviathan released from its muzzle and leash will at some point in the future turn, and rip out the throats of its masters.
What it all gets distilled down to in the end is: do you stand as a friend of liberty, or its foe?
February 3, 2008 1:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Pseudocyants" pathetic username, btw. You do represent a form of pseudoscience, a dogma based on false claims in the interest of something other than a legitimate goal.
Your Rovian twist on the concept of liberty for your own Machievellian purposes was pretty transparent. What you advocate for is allowing the most powerful the "liberty" to impose slavery upon the majority of the people of the world... again it's a further example of what Bush has sought to impose.
It was also Rovian of you to use a brief snippet of Justice Iredell's ruling, taken completely out of context of his meaning... which went on to refer to the fact that those who seek to expatriate must do so legally, under the terms of the country they seek to enter. The ruling had to do with such things as for example, a woman, a citizen of the United States, who marries a foreign national, does not lose her American citizen status.
Did you assume that no one would bother to research something if they weren't immediately familar with it?
As someone who is part Native American, I have to say I am offended by your attempt to exploit an Aboriginal term, "dreamtime". We aren't talking about people following the seasons or herds of game. We are speaking of the modern world, where citizens have the rights of expectations that their governments, formed as part of the social contract, where the citizens are the ones who hold the power, and have the rights of freedom and liberty to be protected and a say in their governance. The citizens of other countries have civil rights expectations in their own countries.
International law, the Vienna Convention for example also states that foreign governments and foreign citizens do not have the right to interfere in the governments or elections of other nations.
Here are two articles written on the subject of immigration and it's impact on poor, low skilled American citizen workers, most especially African American citizens. Before you cry racism or xenophobia, the author, Carol Swain is African American. She grew up poor, and worked her way up from poverty to become an academic. She teaches at Vanderbilt University. She's also authored a book titled The Immigration Debate. I'd suggest you read it.
Perspectives: On Immigration and Black Unemployment,
Congressional Black Caucus Remains Silent
by Dr. Carol M. Swain
May 22, 2007, 07:34 http://www.carolmswain.net/articles/Diverse%20May%2022%2007.pdf
In the new book Debating Immigration, I criticized the Congressional Black Caucus for its failure to take a leadership role in reforming the nation’s immigration laws. A perusal of the CBC’s Web site and press
releases during the 109th Congress revealed that the issue was not listed among its legislative priorities, nor had the organization, traditionally concerned with jobs and education, acknowledged the negative impact that high immigration rates has had and is continuing to have on members’ districts.
When the CBC finally addressed the issue in the 110th Congress, its official position placed the organization firmly in favor of amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants and for a guest worker program that would bring in even more immigrants to compete with Blacks and other low-wage, low-skill workers for housing, health
care, education, employment opportunities and goods and services.
We need only focus on unemployment to get an idea of how Blacks and other groups are adversely affected by high levels of immigration. Consider that Black unemployment rates are usually double the rate of Whites
and are higher than the rates of Hispanics. For example, in April 2007, the national unemployment rate was 4.5 percent. The Black unemployment rate was 8.2 percent, with the rate for Black males at 9.7 percent. The rate for Hispanics was 5.4 percent. Moreover, the Bureau of Labor statistics has forecast that in the
next seven years the Hispanic labor force will be 6.3 million workers greater than the Black work force. By 2014, the Black work force will lag behind Hispanics, Asians and White non Hispanics in labor force participation.
Employed African-Americans include a disproportionate percentage of high school dropouts and graduates who compete directly with legal and illegal immigrants for low-wage, low-skill jobs. Immigrants arriving since 1990 have increased the supply of labor by 25 percent for the kinds of jobs traditionally taken by poorly
educated Americans. Using data from 2000-2004, Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies has found that while immigrant workers constituted 15 percent of the U.S. labor force, they were a whopping 40 percent of workers without high school diplomas. Only 12 percent had greater than a high school diploma.
The greatest competition for low-skill jobs is now occurring among people at the margins of society, a multiracial group that includes poorly educated Blacks, Whites and Hispanics. It is no wonder members of the working-class are the ones most upset about high levels of immigration.
Whether the topic is education, poverty, housing, health care or unemployment, Blacks remain clustered at the bottom of the ladder in a most desperate situation. Therefore, their need for representation in Congress is on-going — the more vigorous, the better.
The CBC has not been an effective voice on unemployment and related issues such as immigration. It was U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who chaired the Senate committee that held hearings on Black male unemployment in spring of 2007. James Wright, a journalist writing for Afro-American News, reported that U.S. Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., chose not to sit on Schumer’s committee. At the time that Wright’s newspaper went to press, no CBC representatives were seated on the bicameral committee of House and Senate members.
African-Americans should expect and demand more from the CBC, because its members have chosen to
organize as a racial caucus. By doing so, CBC members have placed upon themselves the obligation to represent the interests of the millions of Black constituents who have faithfully and repeatedly sent them to Washington. Instead, CBC members have ignored social science studies, congressional testimony and census data documenting the harm that high levels of immigration has had and is continuing to have on lowwage, low-skill workers. Intervention is needed. Blacks and their allies should hold CBC members and other Democrats accountable for failing to represent the interests of their constituents.
The interests of American citizens should trump any obligations to illegal immigrants who have willfully broken the nation’s laws and demanded rights and privileges not guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Often, these immigrants show open hostility and disdain for African-Americans, the very group whose civil rights movement have and continues to benefit them enormously.
CBC members should be expected to bring more to their districts than descriptive representation and loud rhetoric about race and rights. Effectively representing their constituents should trump symbolism and the Caucus’s tendency to pursue abstract rights for imagined coalitional partners. If the CBC is to fulfill its goals and obligations to America, it must be actively involved in shaping immigration legislation to take into consideration the needs of the most vulnerable Americans.
Hate Creeps In; Opponents of Amnesty Aren't the Problem by Carol Swain 8/05/07
http://www.carolmswain.net/articles/Tennessean%20-%20Hate%20Creeps%20In.pdf
Hate speech is often defined as words that insult, disparage or threaten groups or individuals because of their race, color, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or religion. But whether the debate over immigration has gotten so harsh that it qualifies as hate speech depends on a host of factors.
Recently, pro-immigration groups such as Blue-Latinos.org, La Raza and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which moniters hate groups, have used a broad brush to label the senators who voted against the immigration bill, some talk radio commentators, and TV news show hosts, such as Lou Dobbs, as haters, nativists and xenophobes who are responsible for unleashing a wave of hatred across the nation. In fact, the label of hatemonger has been so loosely applied that it might include anyone who raises objections about amnesty, border security or the lack of enforcement of existing laws.
This is a most unfortunate turn of events. It's counterproductive for American democracy, and it weakens the credibility of those advancing the allegations. The Senate bill that died last month died because it was flawed legislation that would have worsened the problem.
Pro-immigration forces have invested too much of their energy and rhetoric in pretending that amnesty is a win-win for America and that the only victims are illegal residents and their children. This is hogwash of the highest quality. Victims of illegal immigration include people from every race and ethnic group who find themselves in the class of citizens who compete with low-skill immigrants for jobs, housing, education, health care and other goods and services. Victims also include everybody who finds themselves disadvantaged by greater congestion and pollution.
We are doing a great disservice to America and to free speech if we kill the messenger whenever someone makes a statement with which we disagree. Indeed, there are real haters with real threats in America who need to be exposed. By crying wolf because one has lost a fair fight only serves to undermine the leaders of the immigrants rights movement and their allies who have taken to maligning respectable people.
In 2002, I published a book called The New White Nationalism in America in which I issued a warning about a converging set of conditions creating a devil's brew for racial and social unrest. The conditions I identified included high levels of legal and illegal immigration, declines in high paying low-skill jobs due to globalization and structural changes in the economy, continued resentment over affirmative action, fear of crime and an over-emphasis on identity politics and group pride. I argued that these were working collectively to create a potentially explosive situation.
The remedy for decreasing hate groups and hate crimes includes a healthy national dialogue that welcomes honest debate about issues that make us uncomfortable. Instead of throwing insults at mainstream voices, we ought to applaud the brave men and women who value our democracy enough to educate the public about issues that afffect the health of our nation.
— Dr. Carol M. Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, is the editor of
Debating Immigration (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
February 3, 2008 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dr. Swain,
Can you explain, why don't we have honest debates?
Which interested are being protected, what’s the game?
February 3, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not Dr. Swain, I only posted two examples of her writings on the subject.
February 3, 2008 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you an supporter of open border policy?
Do you propose that any person in the world should be able to come to US and immediately get social services such as health care, subsidized or free housing, affirmative action help and free college education for the children?
February 3, 2008 2:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bush and his mexican scab army...Chavez' worst nightmare...
February 3, 2008 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
My two cents. I "support increasing legal immigration to match current levels of undocumented immigration". I also support giving significantly higher quotas to applicants from specifically Mexico (and I suppose Canada too) above what Mexico would otherwise get if it were treated as just another country. Mexicans are great for California. But I am firmly opposed to giving any kind of amnesty or quasi-amnesty to any illegals because it exacerbates the long-term problem. Which part of illegal do you not understand?
Raising the spectre of policies that hurt legal immigrants is *totally* beside the point. A *totally* different issue.
February 3, 2008 11:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mares; do you often attempt to leverage weak positions with ad hominem rhetoric? That would truly be pathetic.
Let me attempt to explain what I previously stated, because no one seems to understand. Asking me if I support "open-borders" is putting the cart in front of the horse.
I believe in Natural Human Rights. By Natural rights, I mean that there exists rights that humans possess which are pre-eminent to the legitimate powers of a free-state. An assertion of deity is not a necessary element of this. A right to be free is a function an ability to will. Natural Rights are those which cannot be ceded to a state and its citizens remain free actors. There is room for debate what exactly belongs in the category: Natural Rights, but it is self-evident an essential one is the right for humans to shed citizenry. Without this right, a human cannot be free. It is a Natural Right to Expatriation, and before anyone gets caught up in silly sematics, I am using the term as it was generally understood at the time of America's foundation, that often is considered an antiquated or secondary definition for the term. Here are three citationss:
A natural right to expatriation is also an integral element within the Dreamtime America, and comingled at the very bedrock from which flows the fount of original intent:
The concept was embraced by many in America's revolutuionary era:
To cede the right of expatriation to the state is to surrender your freedom to it also; and this I will never acquiesce to. Natural Rights are universal, they are not a gift of citizenry. This is a very important concept to remember, and its application, must be extended to even enemies, and be defended from theft by the state. Natural rights are forfeit only after a strictly adhered to due process of law has righteously ascribed guilt.
Forgetting this is wherein the American people's guilt for this current administration's acts of human torture resides. I want no part of it, and I do not desire its taint to befoul this nation's future.
The question whether I support open borders is not relevant. I stand for human liberty; open borders flow as corollary. To be free is to accept that choices must be shouldered as responsibility, and that some of these choices will lead to paths which are neither personally agreeable or tending towards a gestalt of societal harmoniousness. Still, the alternatives are exponentially worse.
Do you stand to defend the Rights of Free-Humans,
or do you prostrate yourself at tyranny's boot pleading for security?
You must choose,
there is no escaping it.
February 5, 2008 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will all people who have their houses repaired, ate out and had their dainty little lawns hand picked for weeds by an immigrant shut the (*&*(*&(*& up. Thanks.
April 3, 2008 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's nice to allow that a few people at least think they believe what they're saying. That's really big of the poster. I feel so validated now.
Not everything that stands against the pro-illegal immigration cause is anti-immigrants generally. That is so fallacious, so, well, stupid, that it hardly merits response.
There are a lot of legal immigrants (um, my wife is one) who are offended at the self-help aspect of our current immigration non-policy that not only prefers neighbors, which it should, Mexico and Canada are great partners and are our neighbors -- but overprefers neighbors.
We _should_ get the greatest share of our immigrants from Mexico, but we should get more from Africa and Asia, and should exercise some choice in the matter ourselves. Securing borders isn't antiMexico or antiimmigrant. One can love Mexico and Canada and want America to determine the scale and proportion of immigration to permit. That this idea is deemed delusional or quasiracist is utter crap.
Mexico adds a ton to our culture and our economy, especially in the Southwest. I love Mexico. But that doesn't answer all issues and all questions on this topic. If you don't live in Arizona, you probably don't get how complex it really is, and how the easy answers of extremists on both sides are idiotic.
April 17, 2008 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink