Taking Down Words requested feedback on the immigration rallies. I left a comment there that seemed like the good basis for a post. In particular, TDW asked whether it seemed like a good political move or whether it would simply “motivate the right-wing conservative base that wants to build a wall around our country.” A couple of commenters noted that illegal immigrants had, by definition, broken the law and that appeared to end the discussion. One noted the political ineptness of the folks who flew foreign flags during the rally.
I responded:
I’m impressed that these other commenters have enough faith in our lawmakers to regard technical compliance with the law as the end-all-be-all of decision making. As for myself, I do not know enough about immigration law to know whether I should regard noncompliance with that law as more like raping a nun or more like straying over the speed limit.
As for the flags — I suppose it was politically foolish. But there is certainly a double standard going on. When right-wingers fly the Confederate flag, while we question whether they’re racist, they usually get off the hook by claiming that it’s a sign of their support for their heritage. We don’t question their patriotism. But we should. After all, the Confederate Flag is the flag of traitors. The flag of Americans who took up arms of against their government. The same can’t be said of the foreign flags at the rallies.
As for whether it will serve to motivate the right-wing Republican base, I think that’s something we have to stop caring about. Some emotional wedge issue will always be found to get those folks into a lather. Democrats have to resist the impulse to be quiet because they’re afraid Republicans might complain. The Democratic Party has become like a battered wife, walking on egg shells for fear of setting off her drunken lout of a husband.
Personally, I don’t know whether the rallies were a good move politically or not. In my opinion, the main immigration reform we need is with respect to wages and conditions of employment. I don’t have any real problem with the immigrants who come here seeking a better life. I think ultimately they give more than they get resource wise. They pay sales tax. Many of them overpay income tax and can’t claim a return. However, their inability to enforce legal rights mean that employers can underpay them with impunity. Absent employers’ ability to underpay illegal immigrants without fear of consequence, perhaps we would not have seen the steady decline of median wages over the past 25 years. But, in that debate, immigration is but one of many issues.
Doug,
Here are some of my random thoughts on immigration.
First of all the dirty little secret that BushCo does not want to tell Americans is that it has been Illegal Immigration that has been helping prevent the middle class from suffering the inflationary effects of rising energy costs. Because illegal immigrants have no legal recourse in the labor market and because they exist as a shadow labor supply US businesses have been able to pay otherwise below market wages and hold down wages and prices. Likewise Illegal immigrants are the first to start car pooling, share an apartment and even walk long distances to work. They have helped keep inflation down and likewise prevent the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates and killing the weak jobless, consumer and morgage debt driven recovery.
Without illegal immigration large numbers of employed American would be far less unaware just how much they are living beyond their means. More and more Americans wish to live in larger and larger homes in exclusive subdivisions and gated communities farther and farther from work that they would otherwise have no means to keep up. Many Americans still expect to eat out at least a dozen times a week. How is that remotely possible without immigrant labor??? Who watches the kids while Mom and Dad work and commute 12 hours a day. Who maintains the yards and swimming pools. Who provides the general labor that ofset union wages that allows the national homebuilders to sell 3000 sq foot homes to the public.
Another example, in last couple of years between jobs I have delivered food from some of the niciest Chinese, Italian, Greek and Steakhouse restaurants in Chicago. Forget the busboy, dishwasher and prep jobs. I am telling you Latinos increasingly COOK the food regardless of the resturant’s ethnicity. The deliverly drivers’ joke was every restaurant was Mexican. The image of the white college educated and academy trained chief and his/her assistants that appears on TV shows and the Food channel is a joke. Well certainly not at middle class prices.
NAFTA has not only failed to address the problem of Mexican/Latino immigration, it has made the problem much worse because regional trade agreements are irrelevant in the face of exploitive global labor markets. NAFTA was dreamed up during the Reagan Administration before the fall of the Berlin Wall and China’s embrace of one party state crony, labor exploiting, export market capitalism. When it was passed in the mid-ninities, at the height of the popularity of Neo-Liberal economic thought, by the Clinton Administration it was largely stripped of any labor market safeguards by the Gringrich’s lead Republican congress. The ideal of NAFTA was to create a cleaned up, properous, vibrant and stable US/Mexican border by moving lower wage US manufacturing jobs over the border and making Mexico a consumer of higher end US finished goods like computers and autos. There was a promise of hundreds of thousands of stable working and middle class Mexicans who would in turn help reform corrupt border Mexican states and dramatically cut down on mafia run drug dealing, illegal immigration, and counterfiet goods rackets that plaqued both countries.
Instead what happened was that Mexico proved to be a mere speed bump before the manufacturing jobs leaving the US went to China and India instead. Chinese workers still make 25% of Mexican workers. Additionally the Chinese government makes sure their are no strikes, slowdowns, drugs, except for those that suppress pain and allow workers to work longer hours, and no calls for workman’s comp or healthcare. You know basically an employer’s paradise, Ayn Rand style. With China’s inexhaustable supply of exploitable workers, injuried and sick workers are kicked to the curb as a new crop of poor rural rubes are drawn to its cities. Also after the Tiannamen Square massacre see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/view/ : China can offer a ruthlessly intimidated young technical and engineering class to provide the know how to run its modern factories. Therefore the problem of relocating American technicians and engineers in rough Mexican bordetowns was avoided. Bought off by cheap consumer goods and a reasonably confortable lifestyle, this politically cowed yet technologically advanced large class of educated Chinese workers was something Mexico was never able to offer US corporations.
Next, without first verifying that NAFTA was creating large numbers of promised jobs across the border and with no labor market safeguards or reviews to prevent US corprations from shipping jobs to China inacted as part of the NAFTA legislation, big US Government subsidisied, energy intensive vs labor intensive, industrial Agribusiness insisted that the Mexican Government do away with price supports on Mexican corn and other cerials. This put hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers if not millions out of work http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1228-07.htm These are the millions of Mexicans now flooding our borders. What was good for very conservative Republican Agribusiness interests was a disaster for labor intensive Mexican agriculture.
In conclusion, whatever good NAFTA has brought it has been a spectacluar failure in terms of lessening illegal immigration pressures. Instead it has lead to a rapid increase in Globalization and the wasting of more of the world’s oil supply just as we are on the dawn of Peak Oil. Last Clinton era Neo-Liberal economic policies helped to defeat Democrats in 2000 and 2004. NAFTA was supposed to be a bipartisan centrist political compromise. Instead Pro-NAFTA midwestern centrist Republican and Democrats alike have been replaced with wing-nuts like Brownback, Coburn, and Thune. Believe me I spent hundreds of hours manning phonebanks and you can not convince layoffed US manufacturing workers NAFTA helped either US or Mexican workers. They stayed home on election day and were replaced by the armies of the Religious Right who feed on and recruit the DISPOSSESSED.
Democrats may think the Republicans have made a mess of the immigration issue by letting racist idiots like Tancredo run wild, but beware you may heading right for Karl Rove’s trap. Everybody knows Republican businesmen can not get by without illegal immigrants. Talks of a walled off and guarded US/Mexican border is just that, crazy talk that gets the rubes all wild up. Ah… listen to the mighty wurletzer play that tune!!! Likewise nobody is going to prosecute immigrants for being in this country illegally. Nor are the Republicans going to pass anything other than slap on the wrist legislation against US employers for hiring illegals.
No Rove’s plan is to in fact offer amnestity to millions of illegals already in this country in return for dropping the crazy talk and another round of ultimately fruitless tough talk with the Mexican government on how to stem the future floods of illegals instead. Rove will attempt to bribe Tancredo with pork barrel goods to shut up. If that does not work Rove will break out the brass knuckles and do one of his black bag specials on his ass.
Now hear is the trap for liberals. In return for a long over due compromise raise in the minimum wage that will be hard for Democrats to resist Rove will lard the immigration bill with disasterous provisions that will allow US corporation to outsource/offshore hundreds of thousands more of middle class college educated jobs. Look already at the proposed immigration bill has clauses in it to allow an additional 45 thousand H1-B visas for a total of 110 annually with a clause allowing for a automatic increase of 20% in the future. Additionally there will be more massive tax breaks to encourage US corporation to offshore huge numbers of white collar jobs in Mexico, Central Ameria(primarily Honduras and Costa Rica) and the Carribean. In return Corporate America will promise the Republicans huge donations to allow them to continue outsourcing and hollowing out the American economy.
Democrats will be torn as to what to do. Face it middle class corporate employees like computer programmers have been traditionally been independent voters and libertarian polictially. Being self-styled rugged individuallists and loners, they have no political organization or labor union. Democrats would like to reach out to these voters, but honestly liberals really do not owe them anything. There is no guarrantee layed-off and threatened white collar workers would not prefer to vote for a Tancredo style third party candidate if one was on the ballot in 2008. Lots of middle class white cubicle monkeys are still years away from being politically informed or mature enough to vote as a solid block.
The only smart move is to hold off any vote on immigration until after the 2006 election. Because if Liberals make a compromise on behalf of Hispanics and the most needy of the working poor, Rove will then turn around and attack Democrats as the party that panders to illegal immigrants as well as a bunch of out of touch do gooder liberals and of course Gays all the while selling out the white folks. Imagine a campaign comercial where Democrats are painted as championing those who wave foreign flags while Republican stand for those who wave the Star Spangled Banner. If Liberals then mention the Stars and Bars, Rove and Co will still claim it as an American flag not a foreign one.
Rove has made this sort of thing work for the Republicans in the past. Remember after all NAFTA really hurt Democrats. Also BushCo still controls the Federal Reserve, the new appointments are political hacks, the Treasury and the Labor Department. As long as Bushco can publish phony employment numbers, provide easy credit and keep the homebuilding suburban sprawl economy going things will be OK as long as gasoline does not hit $4.00 a gallon in the midwest.
The Republican proposed Immigration bill will have less to do with immigration then allowing Corporate American to Outsource/Offshore Middle class jobs.
Hear is what I bet the BushCo proposed immigration bill will have in it when it comes up for a vote. Another general amnesty for illegals already in this country like the ones passed in the 1980s and 1990s. An unworkable and exploitive guest worker program like they had back in the 1950s and 60s. A modest increase in the minimum wage to get liberals on board.
But the real propose of the bill will be to load it up with all sorts of K-Street project corporate goodies. Things like large and continuing increases in H1-B visa with no workable enforcement provisions against employers/middlemen/body shops from abusing the system by not paying market wages or benefits, no protection for the largely Indian workforce from being exploited, ie not getting payed between assignments, shakendown for kickbacks, lack of healthcare, or working overtime.
Nothing really new here. Republicans have had this in the proposed bill for months now.
The new parts will be about increased tax breaks for US companies to OFFSHORE more white collar jobs to Mexico, Central America and the Carribean. Lets face it under NAFTA, World Bank and WTO Latin American and Carribean countries have sunk billions into attracting the tourist trade. Now with Peak Oil on the near horizon these countries will be stuck with literally hundreds of thounsands of empty hotel rooms and condos that are soon to be beyond the price range of the middle class Americans and Europeans. Not to mention huge investments in international airports accomdating the largest jumbo jets.
Imagine the that timeshare in Cancun a layoffed computer programmer bought years ago and can no longer afford to fly too and sold at bankruptcy or the hotel that use to attract hundreds of drunken college students on a girls gone wild week of partying being turned into a dormitory for thousands of Indian IT workers and accountants and assorted cubicle monkies shipped in on one of those no longer needed cruise ships.
Well folks don’t laugh but Corporate American and the Wall Street’s favorite high flying stocks, the Indian outsource service companies are thinking up just the thing. The beauty of this will be that US companies will ge able to get around the 10-12 hour time difference with India.
US senior managers and the corporate patrician class will no longer have to suffer jetlag flying back and forth to India. Indian workers will do 5 year stints away from their families with nothing to do but work their ass off on basically gilded corporate work farms. Mexico and Central American will at least be able to recover some of it misplaced capital invested in huge tourist facilities rendered unprofitable by Peak Oil.
Face it Indebtured Servitude is the future of the college educated middle class American job.