Immigration: Ten Points to Ponder

1. Why is it that no one seems to notice, much less ever mention, that the World Bank and the IMF have implemented economic measures that have left large sections of their populations unemployed and destitute? (The illegals are not doing this, you see, but this population is easier to attack and is more defenseless than the World Bank and the IMF.)

2. Why is it that no one seems to notice, much less ever mention, that the effects of NAFTA have backfired driving more than six million Mexican farmers off their land?

"The powerful have insisted on trade policies that allow capital to go wherever it will generate more profit. But there has not been a parallel change in the rules regulating the movement of labor. Circumstances force tens of millions to try to emigrate, but they are not allowed to do so legally. Having no choice, they do so anyway."[1]

3. Why is it that no one seems to notice, much less ever mention that,

"In one wealthy country after another, there has been an "anti-immigrant backlash". Even European countries heretofore famous for their tolerance of outsiders have banged the door shut, or are talking about doing so. Anti-immigrant movements and organizations have arisen in all the wealthier countries. Spectacles of fascist skinheads beating up immigrants or torching homes thought to harbor foreign-born people have become commonplace. In the United States, the current anti-immigrant rampage comes from the same sources that support the Bush administration, and the initiation of the Iraq war. These same forces attack affirmative action, social welfare and democratic rights. This anti-immigrant movement cloaks itself in a suspect concern for the well being of US-born workers."[2]

4. Why is it that no one seems to notice, much less ever mention that,

"The anti-immigrant juggernaut has both ideological and practical dimensions. The ideological attack focuses on Mexican immigrants. Basing themselves on seemingly plausible statistics, anti-immigrant activists assert that immigrants compete for jobs with African Americans and other poor and minority sectors of the working class. Well-meaning people who are sympathetic to immigrants sometimes counter by saying that "immigrants only take jobs that Americans don't want." But this defense is limited. It is easily countered by the anti-immigrant response "well if immigrants were not so readily available and easily exploitable, those employers would have to make the jobs more attractive by cleaning up the workplace and offering better pay".[3]

5. Why is it that no one seems to notice, much less ever mention that,

"The fact is employers hire the undocumented precisely because they can pay them less, prevent them from unionizing, and get rid of them when better pay is demanded. However, the solution is not to try to deport immigrants (which will weaken their position even more), but to allow them to organize and fight for better wages and working conditions. If the eight to 12 million undocumented immigrants currently thought to be in the United States were all deported, what would one have accomplished? In the world of corporate globalization, "competition" from desperately poor workers in foreign countries is a much more powerful tool for dragging down wages than is "competition" from immigrants. If all undocumented immigrants from Mexico currently working in the US would be "rounded up" (A racist phrase if ever there was one) and "sent back," it would cause a significant drop in wages in Mexico, which would make Mexico an even more attractive place for capitalists to move production."[4]

6. Why is it no one seems to notice, much less ever mention that,

"A novel twist in racist anti-immigrant propaganda is to portray immigrants as a threat to the environment. This refers not only to things like littering on desert pathways immigrants use to enter the United States, but to the issue of "overpopulation" as well. The littering on the border would not happen if there were an orderly mechanism of labor movement."

7. Why is it that no one seems to notice, much less ever mention that,

"The United States is not "overpopulated". In fact, most of the countries that send immigrants are much more densely populated than is the United States. This has not prevented anti-immigrant agitators from trying to use sectors of the environmentalist movement, such as the Sierra Club, as mechanisms to promote their anti-foreign agenda."[5]

"America has traditionally had one of the lowest proportions of immigrants in the developed world. Just 6 percent of people in the U.S. are foreign born, compared with, for instance, 8 percent in Britain and 11 percent in France."[6]

The argument that the U.S. is over populated is a bogus one. America has 68 people per square mile. France has 256 and Britain over 600 per square mile.

AMERICA IS NOT OVER POPULATED!

8. Why is it that no one seems to notice, much less ever mention that,

"Relatively new is the tendency to blame Mexican immigrants specifically for the crisis in health care and health insurance coverage in the United States. Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies points out, correctly, that a large portion of the uninsured working poor are immigrants, especially Mexicans and other Latinos. Why poor immigrant workers don't have health insurance is no mystery: employers can get away with denying them on-the-job health coverage, and with paying them too little to afford to purchase family policies, because immigrant workers are vulnerable to employer reprisals when they demand better wages and benefits. However, Camarota gives the impression that these immigrants somehow brought "lack of health insurance" with them in their suitcases when they came from Mexico. If they were legalized and allowed to become citizens, they would be less vulnerable and more able to fight for better conditions both in the workplace and the community."[7]

9. Why is it that no one seems to notice, much less ever mention that,

"Particularly obscene is the notion that immigrants are polluting US culture and threatening the English language. This is the central thesis of Samuel P. Huntington's book Who Are We: The Challenge to America's National Identity. Huntington asserts that the United States was founded by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who imparted certain cultural values particular to their background to nation building. Latino immigrants can't adapt and thus damage the United States. In his scholarly way, Huntington expresses the old know-nothing anti-foreign position. Most people who make this claim cannot specify just what these special white Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural values are that are so essential to democracy and lacking in foreigners. But if it means an adherence to democracy and freedom, this characteristic is at a very high level in most immigrant populations. And while first generation immigrants may struggle with English, their children almost always speak it as fluently as do other English speaking Americans. So this argument boils down to simple nativist bigotry."[8]

(This is one of the many irrational arguments that Mimuteman Guru Frosty Wooldridge makes in one of his "articles". He claims ALL Mexicans "Legals or Illegals" are BRUTALIZING American student with Spanish.[9])

10. Why is it that no one seems to notice, much less ever mention that,

"So deep is the racism of the right-wing think tanks that they even go after erstwhile allies like Mexico is President Vicente Fox. Incredibly, immigration from Mexico is seen as a conspiracy headed by Fox to take back by stealth lands Mexico lost between 1836 and 1848. In 1836, Mexico lost Texas to an intrigue by pro-slavery US settlers. In 1846, the United States invaded Mexico without provocation and made off with Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. In 1852, Mexico lost another piece of Arizona in the shady Gadsden Purchase. Thus in the 19th Century, Mexico lost more than 60 percent of its national territory to US aggression and pressure. While this is remembered in Mexico and generally not here, there is no serious political movement there that calls for the restoration of this territory."[10]

[1] http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/995/1/90/
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] I'm a Stanger Here Myself; Bill Bryson; Broadway Press: page 107
[7] http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/995/1/90/
[8] Ibid
[9] http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty59.htm
[10] Ibid

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