An American Story: My Illegal In-Laws
“I love Puerto Ricans and Negroes — as long as they don’t live next door, so love me, love me, I’m a liberal…” — song fragment by Phil Ochs.
I’ve got a story to tell you about the illegal aliens in my own family. I’ll do that in a moment. But first…
I was thinking about that great song by the late, great Phil Ochs as I was slogging through the 400 or so comments appended on the two previous blog postings below. This illegal immigration stuff has really struck a nerve. Traffic on this site has been running six to eight times higher than normal since Saturday’s rally of a half-million here in Los Angeles.
No surprise that the Minuteman types would be horrified by the sudden explosion of Mexican immigrant political power. But as I briefly mentioned the other day, there’s a certain special revulsion that comes from reading the comments of self-professed liberals who have also clambered onto the anti-illegal soapbox. Natch, their arguments are so much more sophisticated than those of crude racists.
Or are they? From the comfort of their armchairs, their idignant fingers shakily flying away on the keyboard, these anti-illegal libs pit the desperate low-wage Mexican masses against the beleaguered and foresaken “American worker.” We need fewer illegals but higher wages and more unions, they demand. They overlook, of course, the untidy fact that the principal institutional organizer of Saturday’s demo was — organized labor! They don’t register the fact that over the last decade the only union growth in this country has been among immigrant service workers — most of them “illegals.” Indeed, these workers are the motor force of contemporary “progressive” labor.
These enfuriated America First Liberals are also quick to denounce the current historic push for immigration liberalization and reform as nothing more than a sinister right-wing/corporate cabal. It’s all about “insourcing” cheap labor they tell us — a conspiracy by McDonalds and Tysons to deprive worthy Americans of those $19 an hour jobs flipping burgers and plucking chickens.
These same folks, you understand, are absolutely, positively in “solidarity” with impoverished Mexican workers and, of course, with those hapless Mexican farmers screwed-over by NAFTA — just so long, that is, that they don’t move next door! We know your’re hungry and oppressed but, whatever you do, please don’t come here, Pancho!
The prescription for social justice being sent to the Mexicans (and Salvadorans and Guatemalans and Hondurans) who cannot feed their family is: we stand with you companero. We will even support you in worldwide revolution but, in the meantime, don’t think about coming to the local car wash looking for a job… you might take away my parking place!
Now, about those “illegals” in my family. Settle back: This might run more than a few paragraphs.
I met my wife, Patricia, in Chile just prior to the 1973 military coup. She came to the U.S. legally on a fiancee visa in 1974 and she became a permanent resident (green-card holder)when we were married a few months later.
She is an only child and her parents, left behind in Santiago, weren’t doing so well under the Pinochet dictatorship. And they missed their daughter. So a couple of years after we moved to Italy, we brought her parents to live with us there in 1977 (I can’t recall any immigration problems with the Italians back then).
A couple of years later, for various reasons, Patricia and I decided to move back to Los Angeles. But what to do with her parents? We weren’t about to send them back to Chile. They certainly couldn’t make it on their own in Italy (an absurd idea). And they didn’t qualify to come to the U.S. as “legal” residents nor even really as tourists (they didn’t have sufficient assests as a “guarantee” they would come and then leave).
Without going into detail, let me say, that I was resourceful enough to cleverly “game” two separate U.S. consulates in Italy into granting them temporary tourist visas. Each in-law was processed in a separate consulate, the U.S. officials believing the other spouse was staying behind as the anchor-guarantee (this was almost 30 years ago so I trust the statute of limitations has expired!).
Yes, my in-laws intentionally overstayed their 30 day tourist visas and moved into what was then our second bedroom. They were “illegals.” I harbored and abetted these dangerous and wanton law breakers.
My father-in-law, (a humble book-keeper tossed out of work by Pinochet’s downsizing of the state bus companies) never worked once he got here. He was too old and sick with emphysema and spent most of his time watching futbol on Univision.
My mother-in-law, Silvia, on the other hand, had a life-changing transformation. She was about 50 when she got here. Orphaned early in life, she had been raised by some spinster aunts in the austere Chilean countryside. Dropping out of school in the 9th grade so she could help out on the primitive farm she was living on, she was barely literate in Spanish. Adhering to the traditional woman’s role in machista Chile, she had spent the first five decades of her life as a full-time wife and home-maker: cooking, cleaning, washing, scrubbing and even sewing her daughter’s dresses etc.
But she was smart enough to immeditely sense that she had come, after all, to America. Laugh or scoff if you please, but I saw the American Dream materialize for her.
Within two months of her arrvival (now an official “illegal”), cooped up in what was then our two-bedroom apartment, Silvia broke free. On her own, she became a volunteer worker at Olive View County Hospital — commuting back and forth to her non-paying job on the bus.
A half-year later, jumping over a throng of unionized high-wage “native American workers,” I further abetted her lawbreaking by making a few calls and securing her a full-time job as an orderly at the local Jewish Home For the Aged. Starting wage was minimum wage: about $4.25 an hour, if I remember right. She gave her employer nine random digits as her Social Security number. She was assigned to the swing shift — 3 to 11:30 pm. On the nights when we couldn’t pick her up, she would take the midnight bus home.
All on her own, this once-invisible, faceless vieja enrolled in driving school and bought herself a clunker VW. After eight hours of backbreaking work, moving warehoused patients from their beds to their baths and back again, she would get up early in the morning and — before going into work– sponged off the taxpayers by taking gratis ESL classes offered by the public schools (and eventually learning to speak English quite well). Next, she studied arduously to pass the state licensing test as a Certified Nursing Aide — which won her about a 50 cent an hour raise.
For six years she continued like this (and without a valid SS#, never filing for a tax refund by the way). After my wife got her own U.S. citizenship, we could then file for legal residency for her parents.
A year or two later, the paperwork was finished. Both in-laws finally had their status “adjusted” to legal permanent residency. Now into their sixties, they both — nevertheless — enrolled in free citizenship classes and sometime in the late 1980′s became official, bona fide citizens (passports and all). I clearly remember my aged and frail father-in-law nervously practicing his answers in English for the mandatory “personal interview” given by what was then the INS and not being able to remember if the Supreme Court had 8 or 9 members.
For another decade, my mother-in-law worked the same job. Her employer seamlessly accepted the change in her Social Security number. She had magically moved from being iillegal to legal. But nothing else changed — only her “immigration status.”
She never changed her grueling shift. Her salary never rose much above the minimum wage. When she retired in 2000 (at age 72 and almost deaf), she was making only about $8 an hour. In the meantime, she had built an entire and fully glorious (for her) second half of her life. She had kept a job, given care and succor to hundreds of abandoned elderly, mastered English, learned to drive, and saved enough money to take package tours (with her husband) to New York, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Mexico, Spain and other venues I can’t recall. She was also able to be a hero, sending a couple hundred backs now then back to a Chilean niece, helping her pay her way through vocational school.
Mostly, Silvia had earned what most of our own immigrant granparents had found in America: a sense of self-respect and self-worth.
Suffice it to say that this experience made my mother-in-law quite a patriot! She would frequently clash with me over what she called my own “ungrateful” attitude toward my own country (it just wasn’t fair, she would argue, that someone should criticize such a generous country). And, yes, in the last few years Silvia took to bemoaning all the “illegals” who were coming here to take away jobs. I kid you not. Can there be a more American Story?
Likewise with my father-in-law (who passed away in 1998). I can’ tell you the number of times my wife and I would bicker with him on this same issue. Almost a hermit, Enrique had a fixed ritual: every morning he would walk the 6 blocks to the local 7-11 to buy La Opinion and a fistful of lottery tickets (he hit two $5000 scratchers one year). That corner was — and still is– an informal gathering point for immigrant day laborers and my father-in-law would come home grumbling about how scary all those “illegals” were. Mind-boggling, really. When we would remind him that he also had been an “illegal” only a few years earlier, he would answer that his case was different– he was Chilean, you see, not a Mexican.
For her thirteen or fourteen years of “legal” labor my mother-in-law, meanwhile, was rewarded with a monthly Social Security check that currently runs about $625 (if her other six years she worked as an illegal while still paying the same taxes were counted the pension would be higher).
Though now an American citizen, she spends most of her time living with relatives in Chile. She thinks the health care system is better there.
Perhaps, now, you can better understand from where I derive my views on illegal immigration.
P.S. I almost forgot the best part of the story. For the last couple of years my daughter, Natasha, has worked as a health care sector organizer for the Service Employees International Union (when she’s not completing her studies at UCLA). This past summer, she had been asked to spend some time at union headquarters helping to clear up the clutter of boxes of old files. To Natasha’s amazement, she came upon a folder documenting a (failed) unionization drive staged in the early 90′s at Silvia’s worksite, the Jewish Home For the Aged. There was even an organizer’s check-off list of who was expected to vote “yes” or “no.” Natasha found her grandmother’s name on the list: in the “no” category — though Silvia now swears she voted “union.”
Life is complicated.
March 28th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
Great story but it dodges the core issues of “social policy”, which is what we’re discussing. And, of course, it’s introduced with the requisite dishonest “liberal” bashing that, to be frank, is turning my stomach. You still haven’t addressed any of the questions I raised in the last thread.
March 29th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Oh, by the way Marc – the phony middle-class liberals Phil Ochs was singing about aren’t complaining about “illegal” laborers. They’re hiring them to mow the lawn. I’m not upset about that. What I’d like you to discuss in, like maybe one paragraph, is how illegal immigration has affected wages and unionization in industries like agriculture, meatpacking, construction and textiles historically.
March 29th, 2006 at 12:27 am
“Great story but it dodges the core issues of “social policyâ€, which is what we’re discussing.”
No, I think Marc’s post gets to the heart of the “social policy” issue. As I have said before, the basic principle here is between nativist and internationalist perspectives on immigration issues. Nativist perspectives insist that there is a fundamental difference between “Americans” and other people that must be maintained by laws, fences, enforcement, fines, prison, and so forth. An internationalist perspective questions what borders are for, how seriously we should take them, how many people should die or be thrown in jail for trying to cross them, and so forth. An internationalist perspective would seek to, within realistic limits, accept the existing reality that any human being–and that includes reg if he were stuck in povery down in Guatemala–will try to better their lot and that of their family, and search for humane solutions to this dilemma. A nativist perspective looks to the truncheon. Simple as that: Get that basic social policy principle right, and the rest follows more easily.
March 29th, 2006 at 12:36 am
I mean if reg were stuck in poverty, of course, not povery. Reg, your posts on this blog often show great humanity and compassion, but on this issue I am afraid it is your imagination that is impoverished.
March 29th, 2006 at 12:36 am
Reg.. You are putting the cart before the horse. American social policy has, indeed, failed to provide adequate guarantees to workers. It’s too difficult to organize a union. It’s too easy to break them.
Minimum wage levels have sagged to a sorry and inexcusable level. Too much manufacturing has shut down.
Social policy has failed to put any brakes on out migration of jobs. Employers in ag, meatpacking, constructiion, textiles (and other sectors as well) have been more than happy to break unions and to employ cheaper immigrant labor. I think that is obvious.
Has this put downward pressure on wages? You bet!
Has this cost the jobs of “native” workers? Most certainly (or more likely has forced them or their children) to shift from union higher paid jobs to non union lower paid jobs.
Ive written extensively about meatpacking and the fall of wages from $20 to half that amount and the shift to an immigrant work force.
It’s also true that those most negatively impacted by immigrant labor are native workers who, previously, were closest on the social hierarchy to immigrants i.e. poorer workers. In America, primarily, black workers.
There is nothing in all of that to celebrate nor deny. These are, indeed, the rougher edges of the capitalist system: employers screw workers by any and all means necessary.
That said, capitalism is a global system. Mexican workers are also screwed by it — and a lot worse than most Americans are. They cant find any jobs that pay enough to support their familes. What is a horror of a job for most Americans is a golden oppty for a Mexican.
The most available solution for these workers is to occupy the lower rungs created — at cost to some others– in the American job market. Like other immigrant workers in earlier phases of American and inustrial history, there are two sides to the Mexican workers’ story: they are at one oppressed, exploited and taken advantage of while, simultaneously (and with varying success) engaged in a multi-generational course of upward mobility.
The “solutions” to these probelms are not simple. Of course, there should be a vigorous fight for improved wage and employment policy, as well as (you would agree) more state intervention and regulation of industry to provide all of the necessary incentives. So, don’t get me, wrong, I am not an advocate of unfettered markets.
That said, like it or not, there is a real life market demand for the millions of immigrant workers. Some of it created by employer strategy, but without question some of it created by an aging, more skilled, more educated work force who would NOT perform much of the manual labor for even double the current wage.
If we had, however, raised wages over the past years and increased union density there is no question that the shape of the labor market would be quite different and that this same market would have reduced (I dont know how much or little) the immigration we have experienced in the last 20 years. Immigrants would not come to take jobs that were not open to them — they cannot receive, as you know, welfare.
As to the current state of affairs: we have 12 million people here who are engaged in the economy but cant get a drivers license. I cant imagine you are among those who advocate they be rounded up and deported — in many cases breaking up families in which the children, born here, are U.S. citizens. Even if you were “for” that policy — it could never realistically be implemented.
Whatever one’s view of the problem, providing those already here and working and integrated into society some pathway toward legal residency is plain common sense. It works for everybody: employers, workers, police, national security advocates, and union organizers.
But then, how do we regulate future immigration? The sort of proposals that I like do excatly that. They dont throw the border open. They effectively increase the current level of legal immigrants from 1 million to about 1.5 million per year and they move an inexorable flow of immigrants from the deserts into legal and regulated ports of entry. In return, employers would be put under an authentic verification program. Once immigrant workers are allowed a legal path, there should be rigid worksite enforcement. I am even for some type of national ID or employee verifcation card under those circumstances.
Is this mutually exclusive with fighting for higher wages and unionization? Not at all. Indeed, the quandry you don’t address is the fact that it is these illegal immigrants who are in the forefront of American unionism. There’s many reasons why– very complex reasons. But the fact remains.
You are, in the meantime, completely wrong on Tamar Jacoby. She spoke at Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend last month (actually she was pitted in a debate with a local anti-immigrant talk jock) and she was almost physically lynched by the yick-yacks in the crowd. You and I might disagree with her macro economic views, but she is a compassionate and committed advocate of immigrants — not just as worker or cogs, but as worthy and enriching human beings.
Much of my ire in the above post, I am happy to say, publicaly is directed against serial commenter Mark A. York. His little story about how inconvenienced he was (to the point of withdrawing from school) by allegedly being pushed out of parking space at the local state college was one of the most disgusting things I have read on the threads of the last few days. It made me cringe and then seethe.
In the end, Reg… most of this moot. The overhwelming possibility is that, in the short run, there is going to be no real change in policy. Instead, we’re going to have an election.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:15 am
Loved the story, Marc. And reg et al, I can’t honestly see what in the broad strokes plan Marc has laid out that one would reasonably quarrel with—Phil Ochs aside.
(I’d still like to know who “Gary” is though.)
March 29th, 2006 at 4:33 am
I am not inspired in the least by this tale of self serving heroism. So you snuck your parents into the country illegally, your mother worked under a fake SS# so she didn’t contribute into the system, she “worked” in the health system with no background whatsoever and put patients at risk, at no time did you bother to see if you could convert them to legal status.
Like all illegals she scammed the system. How many times did she go to the “county” for health care? She had no problem going to tax supported schools while refusing to pay taxes.
Pardon me if I’m not inspired.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:29 am
California Leaders Stymied By Illegal Immigration
March 29th, 2006
For at least part of Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) seemed to be in the cockpit of history.
After being one of the few major politicians to address Gran Marcha, Saturday’s massive demonstration in downtown Los Angeles against a draconian federal crackdown on illegal immigration — which Nunez said he had expected to draw 100,000 participants but which actually drew many times that — the speaker flew to Washington to help the push for a new immigration law. There he met with the California Congressional delegation, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Mexican Ambassador to the United States Carlos de Icaza, and joined with Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain to push their bill that would create a new guest worker program and allow an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to become illegal immigrants.
During a round of Capitol Hill meetings and conversations Tuesday that Nunez strategist Steve Maviglio described as “very exciting†in a cell phone conversation with a notable hubbub in the background, the speaker pushed for a version of the bill. On Monday, in the wake of major demonstrations on behalf of illegal immigrants around the country, the Senate Judiciary Committee had passed a bill to the liking of Kennedy, McCain, and their allies. Feinstein, who had previously opposed it, came out for a guest worker program.
But later on Tuesday, progress stalled. Divided Republicans, who control the Senate, delayed moving the bill forward. Most Republicans on the committee had voted against the bill. They want strong border security provisions in any immigration overhaul.
And another major wrinkle emerged, that should not surprise knowledgeable political observers. The nation’s top labor leader came out against a guest worker program.
”Guest worker programs are a bad idea and harm all workers,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a statement. ”They cast workers into a perennial second-class status, and unfairly put their fates into their employers’ hands.”
Back in California, other top state leaders were stymied by the politics of illegal immigration.
State Treasurer Phil Angelides, the longtime Democratic frontrunner for governor, had declined to answer questions about his views on illegal immigration just the day before Gran Marcha. But his caution availed him not at all yesterday, when he took a pounding on San Francisco liberal KGO radio host Ronn Owens’ show. His biggest problem? Illegal immigration. The host and his callers went after the Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s previously established position that illegal immigrants living in California be able to pay the lower in-state tuition if they attend California State University or University of California campuses. Out-of-state students who are citizens have to pay much higher fees.
And Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to go beyond his Los Angeles Times op-ed piece yesterday on the matter. Some Republicans had suggested that he turn his scheduled speech to the Bay Area Council on his administration’s economic accomplishments and the unveiling of a state web site portal for businesses seeking to expand to California into an address on illegal immigration.
“He can strike while the iron is hot and be a national leader on this issue today,†said one. But the newly cautious former action superstar stuck to his script and in the end only took a question on illegal immigration in the question and answer session after his speech. There he mostly repeated phrases from his op-ed piece.
It seems clear that at this moment, even California’s top elected officials are finding it difficult to lead on this highly complex and contentious issue.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:33 am
!Que viva la vida complicada!
March 29th, 2006 at 6:39 am
yeah, shame on you marc. the truly admirable thing would have been to leave your wife’s parents to the tender mercies of mr pinochet’s chile. never put your mother-in-law over your motherland, that’s what i say.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:43 am
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/cummings07082004/
March 29th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Marc, I thought your story was very inspiring. I would have to say that most women, once in the U.S., inspire to better themselves, because they don’t have the chance in there home countrys.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Good effort, J Cummings, but I’m afraid you don’t have Phil’s great sense of timing and rhythm.
btw I’ve met Marc’s mother-in-law and she is very inspiring!
[ WebFuhrer Marc Cooper barges in to add to this comment saying: Thanks for your kind words Michael. As to Jordy Cummings-- reading your song parody I can say serenely: "I knew Phil Ochs and you, sir, are no Phil Ochs."
But if you were able to sidle up to Alex Cockburn and purr your song oh so gently into his ear, you might get him to stand erect -- so to speak.]
March 29th, 2006 at 7:39 am
“You can’t imagine I would round them up, etc.” because I’ve explicitly stated that’s not my approach to the issue. My approach to the issue is to enforce some minimal labor laws in some basic industries. I have zero problem with such stories as your family’s. That’s not even close to being at the center of any discussion of the politics and economics of this thing. And of course I’m not wrong about Tamar Jacoby because the loonytoons suckers who pay to spend a weekend with David Horowitz aren’t any more relevant to this discussion than the folks who used to send him money to subscribe to Ramparts. Tamar Jacoby speaks for the interests of significant capital on this issue. You know it and I know it. You don’t get to be a favored pundit in the circles she’s made her name unless you fill that “niche”. (I wish it were a niche – of course it’s not. Horowitz fills a silly niche – with other wacko ideological entrepeneurs, like Coulter and Pat Robertson.) Jacoby speaks to a material need that a dominant segment of the corporate class doesn’t want to see complicated by “nativism”. LIke you and Michael Balter, they are of course “internationalists”. Now where the cart gets put before the horse is when you or Michael – with your great imaginations – assume there is an “internationalist” way of working class people in any given country to deal with the bastards beyond the “nativist” expression of their rights as citizens of that country. It’s all we got. Which is why I have no shame in asserting the rights of citizens against corporations. That’s the only ground we’ve got to stand on in trying to create an environment that minimally regulates this stuff. And frankly if you want to yap about nativists in this one, you might start with the folks who march for their “rights” in Los Angeles or other U.S. cities carrying Mexican flags. The truth is there are two sides to the “ethnic politics” issue on this and I would argue that the “Raza” elements are at least as narrow as Pat Buchanan. You guys side with the elite on this in the name of siding with the dispossessed. You side not only with the U.S. corporate elite and their intellectual spokesmen, but the even more corrupt Mexican elite who need access to a form of economic exile for millions of their people in order to keep their game going. There’s more disconnect on this issue between “average” Americans and elites than on any other political issue. And it’s precisely because elites can tell themselves that any and every aspect of “globalization” is in some sense progressive (Marx agreed) and that anybody who feels the pinch are “yick yacks” – most of who, of course, aren’t hobnobbing with Horowitz but trying to get through the week. Incidentally, the “nativist” thing as a way of imposing pejoratives on people who take a different view of this won’t wash because from polls I’ve seen (although I’m sure there’s opinion all over the place) legal immigrants are as concerned about the impact of illegal immigration as any other group. Not “ethnic” spokesmen or pols who make their living off of this stuff, but average folks who are struggling at the bottom. As I’ve said before several times, if there are REAL labor shortages that aren’t conjured as strategies to keep wages low in certain industries, make more people citizens so they are eligible for jobs. A bill that creates a class of “guest workers” is bound to be nothing but a fig leaf for what already exists – which is not the triumph of progressivism as I’m sure you must know.
I may be wrong about some aspects of these impressions-passing-as-analysis, but one thing I refuse to privilege is some smoke and mirrors about “nativism” that negates the social value of citizenship as the first line of defense we have against global capitalism. Michael can express his solidarity in the streets of Paris and Marc can tell us great stories about his days as an activist in Chile, but back in the “real world” the best most of us can do is write our congressmen. On the one hand you appeal to “internationalism” on this issue, and then you turn around and tell us that the best thing we can hope for is for great leaders like John McCain and Ted Kennedy to cut a deal. I’m underwhelmed.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:42 am
Ochs is one of the most underrated songwriters of all time. There is another, quite tepid remake of the song linked a day or two ago on Counterpunch.
I wonder how advocates of Kennedy/McCain would respond to this critique from a Trotskyite news site:
“The bill generally follows the line of the legislation offered by Democrat Edward Kennedy and Republican John McCain, with the tacit backing of the Bush White House, providing billions to intensify the repression of border crossers, including the hiring of thousands of new Border Patrol and INS agents, as well as a guest worker program that would bring up to 400,000 new immigrant workers into the US each year on a temporary basis.
Despite claims in the media and by some of the more hysterical anti-immigrant demagogues, the Senate bill is not an amnesty for undocumented workers and does not grant them any new rights. It is, instead, a virtual bill of rights for employers who seek to exploit undocumented workers and maintain them in conditions of subservience.
Those workers now in the United States illegally would be allowed to pay a fine and get in the queue for a green card, but only if they were sponsored by their employer. This gives the employers an enormous club to use against any effort by these cruelly exploited workers to demand higher wages and benefits, unionize, or otherwise join with US-born workers to assert their common class interests.’
source wsws.org
March 29th, 2006 at 7:45 am
Let me restate for the record that I think the only pragmatic path – and also one that appeals to basic empathy – is to try to track “illegals” with families established here into citizenship. I’m not enthusiastic about “legalizing” folks who are here for jobs but have left their families elsewhere. I don’t see the moral imperative of that one. Nor am I for persecuting casual workers, as opposed to regulating some core industries who have integrated illegals into their business plans. But I don’t buy guest workers, and so far as I can tell – although I’m not expert on the details of this thing – McCain/Kennedy is a guest worker bill as much as anything.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Excuse me for not having the time to read the story and comments and respond to them. I just want to post an idea about a topic that people have been discussing in the immigration reform debate.
I think it is possible to build a wall along the Mexican border. It is only about two thousand miles long. Look at The Great Wall in China. If the Chinese were able to build a wall of four thousand miles long several hundred years ago without any modern technology, why wouldn’t Americans be able to build a wall of half the length now with all the modern technology?
A wall like The Great Wall in China will not only protect Americans. It can also become a tourist attraction and provide jobs for Mexicans. They can work on the building of the wall. They can also work on making it more attractive to tourists by doing things like building Little Mexicos along the border. They can even build tunnels underneath the wall like those tunnels built by the Palestinians in Gaza. The tunnels can be a tourist attraction as well.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Marc – I probably painted with too broad a brush in that response, because I realize that you don’t oppose more regulation (unlike, I would surmise, The Sweet But Dreaded Tamar.*) But the brush you’ve been using has been pretty broad as well and I was inspired by your polemics.
* I do have to admit that anybody who ends up on the wrong side of one of Horowitz’ mobs can’t be all bad.
PS: I’m listening to a spokesperson for the National Association of Manufacturers who’s making precisely the argument that Jacoby makes on NPR as I write.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:13 am
Excellent coherent description of our immigration issues Reg.
Michael may want to consider spending less of his imagination on how Lennon’s lyrics could apply to Americas problems and more realistic ways to help France with theirs.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:16 am
Let’s also consider…and I’m not the person to do it with any specific knowledge or expertise…how the flip side of this impacts Mexico. I would argue that you’ve got a country that has “normalized” economic exile as a primary strategy for dealing with some combination of failures and limitations as society. That can’t be healthy and it must force many people to make painful choices. It also gives the Mexican elite an extra leg to stand on that they don’t deserve and helps to postpone the day that they have to face some music or take some reponsibility for their corruption and exploitation. My take on Mexico is that it’s a country that has tremendous potential, but that it’s been steadily skimmed from the top.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:33 am
I think Mexico is too hot a place to work. They should try to convince Americans to go there for vacations and tourism.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:43 am
I’ve been to Mexico several times and stayed months at a time. My husband is from Guanjuato Mexico. It is a very beautiful Country, but there is too much corruption in the government.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:44 am
“What I’d like you to discuss in, like maybe one paragraph, is how illegal immigration has affected wages and unionization in industries like agriculture, meatpacking, construction and textiles historically.”
Me too. Of course this was the personal story I suspected which takes journalistic objectivity out the door. It’s advocacy. Olive View by the way is the very hospital overloaded by Mexican nationals exploiting the system and bankrupting the county for legal residents. This may be an unpleasant fact, but it’s a fact nonetheless. And it’s the reason county medical centers have closed. If you really want to cover this story, try that angle.
It’s been awhile since marc had to park at CSUN after paying $140 for a permit that meant nothing before three in the afternoon when maybe two spaces would open up. This ain’t the ’70s. The again with reserved faculty parking you’d be immune from that problem at USC.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Nice story to share, Marc, but before everyone gets caught up in a love fest over success stories of illegals, let’s hear from all the people who want to share their disasters. I want to see the story from the illegal Mexican who went around the U.S. murdering innocent women. Maybe another from a family that crossed the border to have a child and stuck the hospital and taxpayers with the bill. But, we won’t hear those tales, because those people want to stay hidden, and liberals don’t want that type of information to get around.
The newspapers and internet are filling up today with such stories as yours. The AJC requested such tales and provides links to blogs for people to share their feel-good tales.
None of that changes the arguments for enforcing the laws and protecting our borders. Logic and good sense should be applied–not isolated cases filled with emotion.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:52 am
An aside on that Phil Ochs song. When he sang it at the first national march on Washington against the Vietnam war in April of 1965, he was followed on stage by the great radical journalist I.F. Stone – who proceeded to tell Ochs and the gathered crowd that they were fools to make “liberalism” their enemy. Given the trajectory that SDS, the demo’s initiators, took over the next five years, Stone was obviously prescient. I’ll admit as someone who was there and helped organize it, that it took me too many years to understand Stone’s warning and to put culturally chic observers like sharp, witty Phil Ochs in perspective. I didn’t boo Stone like some, but unfortunately I was more impressed by the hip, smart aleck singer than the more nuanced, aging scribe in a rumpled suit.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Again reg is correct. And he’s a “serial” commenter too. Internationalists with cushy writing jobs. Yeah the view is peachy from poolside.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:01 am
I wasn’t trying to be pejorative toward Michael or Marc, just realistic..
March 29th, 2006 at 9:09 am
Neither was I.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:44 am
“In-state tuition is available for certain nonresident students who have attended high school in California for at least three full years and have graduated from a California high school or received the equivalent. Students without lawful immigration status also must file an affidavit with a CSU campus stating that they have filed an application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to legalize their immigration status or that they will do so as soon as they are eligible to do so. Students applying for the exemption should request from the campus admission office the “California Nonresident Tuition Exemption Request” form, complete the document, and show proof of attendance and graduation from a California high school.”
http://www.csumentor.edu/planning/high_school/residence_classification.asp
Since I advised the kid to apply for citizenship, here is his avenue. It’s an exception with criteria though, not a blanket amnesty of sorts of the type that happened in 2003 with the resulting overflowing result.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Marc, you wrote:
“…Suffice it to say that this experience made my mother-in-law quite a patriot! She would frequently clash with me over what she called my own “ungrateful” attitude toward my own country (it just wasn’t fair, she would argue, that someone should criticize such a generous country). And, yes, in the last few years Silvia took to bemoaning all the “illegals” who were coming here to take away jobs. I kid you not. Can there be a more American Story?”
I think your in-laws are inspiring too, but I also think the tone of your writing implies that while you are immensely proud of them, you are chuckling to yourself at their silly naivete. She appreciated working hard and saving and getting ahead,and sharing with her family. She didn’t NEED a union, or citizenship to attain her dreams. She didn’t have a degree, she had something far more valuable. Silvia had plain old common sense. She saw the problems with numbers. It works for a while, but eventually there are just too many, and many of those want unearned entitlements. If this woman were unrelated to you and had access to the net, she would probably be agreeing with Reg! And I doubt she would be marching in the streets waving a Chilean flag.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:04 am
The great immigration debate is a sticky issue, one that divides so-called lefitsts as much as or more than any other. I tend to agree with Balter, however, that those with an international perspective, those rare American folks who have lived abroad for an extensive period of time somewhere, tend to see the ugly fears about illegal immigrants in an entirely different light. This will sound corny, but, what is that Statue of Liberty doing out front of NYC. I thought this was a welcoming country for people of all backgrounds. I know that my grandparents, who came through NYC from Poland just before WWII broke out were forever in love with the USofA and would often tell me that I should not even think of myself as anything other than American. In other words, and I am rambling a bit, but the ole corny idea that we are a vast melting pot, a land of immigrants, is the fact jack. Now, I sense one problem some Americans may have is that this new wave of immigrants is coming now, not from Europe, but from the poor, Latin America south of the border. I think there is a lot of hidden racism toward Latinos behind many anti-immigrant positions of Americans — and, I’d venture to guess that the ugly stereotypes many “Americans” have of Latinos is, like most racist attitudes, due to their ignorance. 95 percent or more of Americans have absolutely no clue of what its like to live in Central and South America. Perhaps 98 percent of Americans never even travel beyond the island America much less read the dwindling coverage of Latin America in the mainstream media. Yet, the elitist image we have of ourselves as Americans is shattering day by day as the rest of the world cringes at the policies and opinions our government and citizenry foster. We are, may I dare say, full of sheet. Get a grip and allow your minds to expand America! The people south of the border are Americans as much as we are. They are dignified, high character, highly capable and very educated people in most instances. They are not from some enchildada eating, backward rainforest, but from advanced societies, too.
To sum up, this, to me, is about how to get the USofA to grow up and take another step forward to maturity (just as we were challenged back in the 60s by the civil rights movement). I see it as positive that Latinos now make up the largest minority in the USofAmericas, time to embrace that and count ourselves lucky we share the hemisphere with these good people. Right on..
March 29th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Last one….
Marc, such stories as yours may not matter or be needed, as it appears that what Americans think doesn’t matter to elected officials. Isn’t it strange that people who have no right to be here have caught the ears of politicians more than those who are here legally?
Mexican illegals vs. American voters
By Tony Blankley
The Washington Times, March 29, 2006
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060328-102545-2371r.htm
National polling data could not be more emphatic — and has been so for decades. Gallup Poll (March 27) finds 80 percent of the public wants the federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don’t even want illegals to be permitted to have driver’s licenses). Time Magazine’s recent poll (Jan. 24-26) found 75 percent favor “major penalties” on employers of illegals, 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism and 57 percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (March 10-13) found 59 percent opposing a guest-worker proposal, and 71 percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls.
An IQ Research poll (March 10) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of the White House and Congress.
Yet, according to a National Journal survey of Congress, 73 percent of Republican and 77 percent of Democratic congressmen and senators say they would support guest-worker legislation.
Politicians must think we’re stupid…well, some of you are.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Two responses only for the moment:
To Howard: My mother-in-law paid for health insurance thru her employer which also covered her husband. So no, my little snake, she never sopped off of ur hallowed tax dollars. On the contrary: she contributed to the treasury beyond what others did because she was ineligible for refunds.
To Mark York: the poolside view will be improved when we turn the heater on in two weeks.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Interesting and instructive Izzy Stone story, Reg. Thanks for that.
But on the immigration issue, I truly think y’all are going to find yourselves on the wrong side of history.
Mark, you keep throwing this “advocate” thing around as a pejorative. There is a long and honorable tradition of advocacy journalism, which doesn’t mean cooking facts, and Marc hasn’t. He’s just drawn conclusions then taken a position based on his knowledge, experience and expertise. You might honorably disagree based on yours. But you don’t get to criticize him simply for TAKING the position.
Hate to shoot and run, especially with such an intriguing ongoing discussion, but my own deadline is glaring at me viciously.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:31 am
“I truly think y’all are going to find yourselves on the wrong side of history.”
As long as there are no firing squads involved, I can live with that and God knows it wouldn’t be the first time.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Reg.. Ive already put in for an absolution for you on this so perhaps you will be spared.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:35 am
It’s just that rosedog’s “shoot and run” made me a bit nervous…
March 29th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Marc, you’re swinging and missing on some important points here. For one, in your claim that “an aging, more skilled, more educated work force…would NOT perform much of the manual labor for even double the current wage” you ignore the MILLIONS of young, uneducated, unskilled, disproportionately black (but also whites, Latinos, etc.) workers who would absolutely work a job that could pay housing and food costs. That you deny this is truly disingenuous and disgusts me.
Secondly, your comment that “immigrants would not come to take jobs that were not open to them” is, quite frankly, an observation from Mars. Do you honestly think that this is how it works? Well, Marc, try working in a job training program. Try talking with local employers day in and day out, and then maybe you’ll get a clue. I can’t count on my fingers and toes the numbers of calls per week I would get from employers looking for Mexicans–and yes, some even had the gall to request I NOT refer blacks or whites to them–because they were cheaper. NOT because there was no one else to do them. How hard is that to understand, Marc? No, it’s not a giant Tyson conspiracy–it’s local employers who found a nice and convenient way to pay less, and to people who will probably not complain. They’re not evil–just practical. And if they can continue to get away with it, without implementing some controls, they’re ain’t no reason to stop.
Of course, that’s why I support an amnesty-type arrangement as a way of providing employment authorization to those who are here already. As for those to come? That’s the sticking point. My problems with a guest-worker program are that it has NO TEETH: immigrants are screwed, domestic workers are screwed. I’m going to keep pointing this out until I hear an answer for it. Because you haven’t provided one yet.
One possibility? No guest worker program. That will lose your Chamber of Commerce buddies with whom you drink your lattes and talk tough fishing and gambling stories (I’m being purposely snarky here, to respond to your ridiculous stereotypes), while Red State America (and working class Blue Staters)–yes those yucky workers who put Bush in office because latte liberals like you turn their stomachs–see it’s actually taking their concerns into account. In short: immigration reform with no guest worker program has more of a shot among ACTUAL voters, as opposed to just chasing the money with your beloved Kennedy-McCain bill.
And man, your opening sentences sure were insulting. Lucky I know you’re a great guy (even though you don’t know me from Adam), and an excellent writer, or else I’d probably not come back…
March 29th, 2006 at 10:39 am
I believe that we need this debate to be about creating more Americans and not about empowering illegal immigrants.
Mark’s in-laws are fully acculturated and his mother-in-law found a way to fully integrate herself into American society.
As such, her story is about how she became an American. I congratulate her on her choices.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Reg, you know I’d never shoot at you, darlin,’ even in my most bad-tempered moments.
One more thing before I go: Harold Meyerson has an excellent column in today’s WaPo. I’ve pasted the opening ‘graphs below. But read the whole thing as he also gets to the possible political consequences of Saturday’s march:
***************************
New Immigrants Teach an Old Lesson
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, March 29, 2006; A19
Every so often, for good or ill, Los Angeles astonishes itself. Twice in the past half-century, the city that most embodied the post-World War II American dream was racked by massive racial rioting that shook the city to its core. Twice in the past half-century, L.A. also became the first American mega-city to elevate minority politicians to its top office — electing as its mayor the African American Tom Bradley in 1973 and the Latino Antonio Villaraigosa in 2005, in both instances with heavy white support.
This past Saturday Los Angeles stunned itself yet again as more than a half-million largely Latino, preponderantly immigrant demonstrators jammed the streets of downtown to protest the draconian and xenophobic immigration bill that House Republicans passed late last year. Commentators have noted that this was the city’s largest demonstration in recent decades, which is a little like characterizing a storm that drops five feet of snow in the Hollywood Bowl as unusually inclement weather. In fact, Los Angeles had never seen anything like Saturday’s outpouring, which flooded downtown with more than 500,000 totally peaceful demonstrators.
L.A. has never been a city for public outpourings of any kind; that’s not been the Angeleno way. But somehow nobody remembered to tell this to L.A.’s huge immigrant population, and on Saturday, in all ignorance of the city’s culture of noninvolvement, they redefined my hometown.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032801228_pf.html
March 29th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Rich: You’re being so nice that next time Im invited over for brandy and cee-gars over at the Natl Manufacturing Assoc I’ll see what I can do to get you an honorary membership (but only after I turn the poll heater on).
Look, we’re not teribly far apart on this. There’s only one flaw in your asnalysis. The honed analytical skills that you apply to the American labor market are the same ones you refuse to apply to the Mexican labor market.
What you’re forgetting is that the Mexican economy is such, and the lure of America is such, that NO MATTER what you legislate — including draconian worksite enforcement and a $25 minimum wage– hundreds of thousands of Mexicans per year are still going to find a way to come here. THEIR market drives that.
Put a cop in every American factory– you’d still have a booming back market of illegal Mexican labor– maybe even a more vibrant one.
So we dont fundamentally disagree.. it’s only that I would prefer to put a dent in illegal immigration by allowing those who are gonna come here anyway to have at least some minimal status. It will be a lot easier to raise wages and unionize than it will under current circumstances.
You havent told us how your view is going to STOP people from coming across the border.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Well advocacy in journalism is a debated topic. How much, when and if, and so on. We sure did at my journalism school. It may be perceived as a pejorative by some so affected, but there are many perceptions that are incorrect. It’s these sorts of conflicts that are the root of the media bias claims from wingerville. I remember sitting at an interview with an editor at a small eastern paper as he read my logging story about Big Bear.
“This is advocacy,” he said. I didn’t get the job.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:14 am
“even in my most bad-tempered moments”
Before I click on Harold Myerson, who I look forward to checking out, I’ll note that your “most bad-tempered moments” come across like my good moods. So I’m not terribly worried.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:18 am
It strikes me if you buy the premise that it can’t be stopped anything can follow.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Rosedog: Thanks for the link to Harold’s piece in the WashPo. Excellent point. Better stated than the way I did in my posting: this IS the American labor movement.
Yorkie: You’re skating mighty close to the trap door. I suggest you don’t lecture me on journalism. And I strongly suggest you cut your posting quota down by 2/3. Neither the world nor our readers require a riposte from you on anything and everything that is commented upon. Believe me it’s true.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:37 am
Believe me when it comes to name calling you never got one from me. I have my own venue.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:53 am
Marc, thanks for the reply (and humor). Aside from the fact that I (surprise!) have no good answer (yet!) to your question, I also am falling hopelessly behind in my work. Can’t you write something on Vegas to give us a breather? But ah’ll beee bahck!
In the meantime, I’ll answer rosedog’s shoot and run with a Roy Clark-esque dueling WaPo banjo (in honor of recently-deceased Buck Owens):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/21/AR2006032101146_pf.html
March 29th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Rich – I had trouble downloading your link into my iPod.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Hmm, not sure why, reg. The link works when I click on it (using both IE and Firefox). Maybe you can find it in WaPo’s archives (3/22/06; Robert Samuelson).
March 29th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Anybody know a lawyer who could send Bill Bradley a cease and desist order? It would be a shame if he makes a habit of cluttering this comment section with a verbatim record of his own blog. It’s called spamming.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
no human is ‘illegal’. fuck the border.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Marc,
I find your articles enlightening, I agree with you completely on the issue of immigrants. I’m waiting to read your next articles on the immigration reform bill.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Thanks for the original post. There’s way too much generalizing of the categories of legal and illegal (I hate that word, but use it I will). I’m a citizen, legal all the way: political asylum, residency, citizenship in that order. I have one son who’s illegal (should I have left him behind?) and one who is naturalized. Two daughters who are native born citizens. If I get into extended family, my head will spin.
As to “reg”, among others: The blame you put on immigration for unfair competition (ie: “What I’d like you to discuss in, like maybe one paragraph, is how illegal immigration has affected wages and unionization in industries like agriculture, meatpacking, construction and textiles historically”) is completely misplaced. Were the Okies at fault for artificially lowering ag wages when they came? No, employers will always seek out the worker who will work for the lowest pay and who has the most to lose from standing up and demanding unionization. The employers in all of the industries you mention routinely use what they call “contractors” to supply labor. Contractors used to travel and pick up Okies (native born US citizens)for ag jobs, canning, meat packing, etc, now they travel and pick up “illegal aliens”. This is not hyperbole, look at the Tyson cases on this. Conagra in the midwest. It is in the interest of big business to rely on illegals. It is much cheaper to import cheap fearful labor than to export the factories and incur capital costs for building and start up, then shipping costs for the product to get back to the US market.
Don’t get me started on free trade without open borders…It is US policy influenced by big business that has created this monster. Not people who are trying to feed their families.
March 29th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Marc –
Your argument is to me underwhelming at best.
According to the 2000 Census Hispanic Origin makes up about 12% of the population, or 32.8 million people. Which means that 88% of the Population is NOT Latino/Hispanic Origin.
You are arguing, as far as I can tell, for an endless importation of Illegal Aliens into this country on the basis of creating a Mexican Social Network that by it’s nature excludes 88% who are not Hispanic Origin. Try getting into the local Drywaller’s Union as an African American when it’s dominated by clans from Michoacan. A more deliberate policy to alienate the vast majority of Americans from the Democratic Party could not be imagined.
[Tammany Hall only worked as long as there was a frontier and endless jobs to fill in a newly industrializing nation. Once the Depression hit Jimmy Walker was canned for reformer Fiorella LaGuardia and immigration stopped DEAD. Yes racism was a part of the anti-Chinese immigration laws, but imagine being a Union organizer out West in the 1890's and facing the influx of 10 million Chinese workers.]
Marc the central issue of illegal immigration (2 million in 1986′s Amnesty, 12-20 million NOW) is that it creates winners and losers. You can’t escape from it and it’s abundantly clear to everyone.
“Since 1980 the number of Hispanics with incomes below the government’s poverty line (about $19,300 in 2004 for a family of four) has risen 162 percent. Over the same period, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty rose 3 percent and the number of blacks, 9.5 percent.” — WaPo Robert J Samuelson LOSERS: Poor American citizens and legal residents.
“The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990′s. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20′s were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20′s were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000.” — NYT article on “Plight Deepens for Black Me.” LOSERS: African-Americans (once again the Canary in the Coal mine).
What’s the matter with Kansas? Illegal aliens depress working men and women’s wages. Same or decreasing supply of jobs (outsourcing) with increasing every day labor pool. Lou Dobbs guests yesterday (African American talk show hosts) say their callers (African American audience) see this clearly and don’t like it all. Neither do heartland working class Anglos.
You want winners: 1. Corporations that exploit low wages; 2. Mexico’s corrupt remittance regime; 3. Unions that sell out their workers for social networks based on identity politics; 4. Mexican-national based social networks dominating Unions, Government, and other areas.
You want losers: 1. The citizens and legal residents of the US who work for a living. 2. Everyone not La Raza who is excluded by definition from social networks dominating Unions, Government, etc; 3. MOST ESPECIALLY African-Americans who have the highest rate of exclusion from the workforce and need jobs the most.
[High rates of poverty, violence, and other social ills in poor African American communities cost Americans of all classes dearly.]
Enforcing existing labor laws leads to self-deportation and the radical reduction in the jobless rate of African Americans as employers can’t choose from a vast pool of fire-at-will illegals.
The idea of a borderless society goes both ways. If so there is no reason at all for the US not to intervene EVERYWHERE immigrants come from and eventually just annex all of Latin America. If the “border is an illusion” why not send the Marines into Mexico to simply arrest all fugitives from the US, enforce US laws re Narcotics and corruption, take over Mexico’s Oil. I would suggest that good fences make good neighbors. Unless you like yours hopping the fence to use your pool any time they want (I don’t think so).
I agree with Reg. His points on Izzy Stone are well taken.
Marc — end the remittance regime, seal the borders, and Mexico will face a revolution demanding an end to corruption and violent thuggery. There is no reason Mexico could not be like Canada except the self-perpetuating remittance regime keeping a corrupt oligarchy in power.
Rose — Myerson is wrong as usual. Mayor Tony and La Raza gave a giant civics lesson that anyone not Mexican faced exclusion in City Government. All those Mexican flags pissed off everyone not La Raza. Anyone not Mexican origin should just forget about bidding on anything in LA City Government.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
“Myerson is wrong as usual. Mayor Tony and La Raza gave a giant civics lesson that anyone not Mexican faced exclusion in City Government. All those Mexican flags pissed off everyone not La Raza. Anyone not Mexican origin should just forget about bidding on anything in LA City Government.”
This sentiment is somewhat disturbing and in my mind racist. I am sure that the folks that are up in arms about Mexican flags do not want to force San Francisco to change “Chinatown” to “American Town.” Nor do they resent Irish flags on St. Paddys day, little Italy, or probably any approved ethnic celebrations.
For some reason Mexicans are not allowed to express pride in their culture. So Cal has benefited tremendously from Mexicans and Central American culturally (in addition to the cheap labor). Why the hostility?
I have a trailer in Baja along side a number of American. I have discovered entire ex-Pat colonies in Baja. I have also seen plenty of American flags and they do not seem to enrage the population. Wealthy Americans flying flags would seem to be MUCH more offensive…
This all seems to be about race. Nobody is up in arms about the Canadian anthem and flag being flown at NHL games. That is ok. But some Mexican immigrants fly a flag and it becomes central to this debate.
Seems a rather trite issue to focus on considering the gravity of the immigration debate.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Just to add to the “winners and losers theme” …
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004869.htm
and Mickey Kaus http://www.kausfiles.com …
I will submit that message is a loser. Protesters decisively rejecting America, American values, and embracing La Raza and Reconquista (loathesome and formerly marginal issues).
March 29th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
“It is in the interest of big business to rely on illegals”
So when I call for more regulation and enforcement to stop this, my “blame” is misplaced exactly how ? You really want to have it both ways…either you support the right of big business to exploit illegal labor or you don’t. I don’t. And I don’t blame poor people for trying to get these jobs being dangled before them. I blame a system that has turned a blind eye to the practices of key industries. Also, in general anyone who considers themselves “progressive” yet puts no value on citizenship and believes countries have no right to control their borders or enforce labor laws is digging themselves into quicksand – economic, political and, dare I say it, cultural.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Amy, you see for yourself what I report on this story. I am tired of having what I say willfully distorted and will not stand for it.
I still see no reponse/explanation from Marc to the opposition of the AFL-CIO to his opinion.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Me: “Rich – I had trouble downloading your link into my iPod.”
“Rich Says:
March 29th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Hmm, not sure why, reg. The link works when I click on it (using both IE and Firefox). ”
Oh shit…I’ve got to do it again. I was making a joke off of your “Roy Clark-Buck Owens” reference. “iPod”…get it. Dave Chappelle is doing three and a half hour free-form gigs at one of our local clubs all this week and I can’t even pull off a couple of crummy one-liners on a goddam blog.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Note to Bill Bradley: If you have a question for Mr. Cooper, ask him. He might even respond. But don’t be cryptic and bury it in a long spam. He might not even see it. Anybody who wants to read your endless policy wonkingg can go to the Los Angeles Weekly or your blog.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Reg…. I got it. Almost stepped in to rescue you when Rich was confused—remembering my own humor-challenged moment yesterday. However, the slings and arrows of actual paying work intervened.
But, honestly, the stand-up routine is still safe. I promise.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Dave Chappelle is doing free gigs at one of your local clubs? Damn! I’m moving north.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
“But, honestly, the stand-up routine is still safe. I promise.”
Yeah, and I’ve got another 3 hours and 29.7 minutes of great stuff….really. Chappelle’s gonna be sittin’ at his farm in Ohio, choking on that crappy homegrown Midwestern hemp and wonderin’ what the hell happened to him. Just you wait and see…
March 29th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Looks like Bill Bradley has had his soul possessed by Mark A. York and has become a serial commenter.
Ok, I’ll indulge you and respond to your naive question about the AFL-CIO.
Fact is that the AFL-CIO was an early supporter of the same McCain-Kennedy legislation that my “advocacy journalism” advocates (LOL Excuse me while I laugh at your dull-edged barb. I am employed by journals of opinion precisely to write pieces with a point of view!).
When the labor federation split last year, the breakaway group which lumps together the most dynamic sector of American labor formed the Change To Win Coalition. CTWC fully supports McCain Kennedy and Guest Worker and helped organize last Saturday’s “pro-illegal” [sic] demo in Los Angeles.
The AFL-CIO, in turn, backed away from what’s called guest worker a few months ago.
But sorry to humiliate you in public Bill, you don’t understand the nuance. So here it is as reported recently in the San Diego Union:
“What the labor federation opposes is the importation of additional foreign workers on a temporary-only basis, without the right to stay permanently, which makes conditions ripe for exploitation, said Ana Avendaño, the AFL-CIO’s immigrant worker program director.
“Guest-worker programs are bad public policy, and they are bad public policy because they tie workers to employers,†said Avendaño, who pointed to a number of legal complaints that have arisen out of the H2B visa program for seasonal unskilled workers. ”
In other words… Bill… the AFL-CIO wants to go further in favor of the illegals than I or Kennedy or McCain do. Its criticism is that guest worker wouldn’t quickly enough provide full rights and citizenship for the illegals ur so worried about! LOL.
The same piece also says:
“Chavez and other AFL-CIO leaders said they support legalization for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already living and working in the country.
This is a key component of proposals introduced by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and another introduced last week by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., which the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to begin discussing tomorrow. ”
Need that be any clearer? The AFL-CIO is totally within the pro McCAin-Kennedy legalization program coalition.
There was a piece I read last week in which AFL official Linda Chavez Thompson, when pressed by a reporter on opposition to guest worker, made it abundantly clear that this was a tactical position WITHIN the pro-reform coalition and that this one objection would NOT stop the AFL-CIO from supporting the board outlines of McCain-Kennedy.
Seeing as how you are a presidentia-level advisor and everything, I’ll let u find the link on ur own.
In the meantime, here are a few other links that will help u better understand the position of labor.
http://www.coxwashington.com/news/content/reporters/stories/BC_IMMIGRATION_UNIONS26_COX.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20060301-9999-1b1aflcio.html
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/0308edimmigrant.html
And now a few words about your attitide. Please continue to berate me as emotional, as an advocate journalist (!) or anything else you want. All you’re doing is making a lot of people wonder WTF is going on with you?
Here’s my brief analysis of what happened:
You stuck ur foot into something you have not been following very well and dont know very much about and you got tweaked by me– with absolutely no hostility on my part.
Instead of graciously accepting the difference of opinion — as Mickey Kaus did in one sweet line– you (much to the shock and awe of the readership here) have fully invested your ego in a food fight that will have no resolution.
You seem unprepared to handle the buffeting that comes with being a public blogger.
You seem to be incapable of ceding any ground, accepting any criticism, or recognizing that people can differ from you without being emotional, or mindless hacks. And you’re also seriously deprived of a sense of humor or any hint of capacity to be self-critical, or self-effacing.
March 29th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
They’re not free and they sold out almost immediately. My wife hung on the phone for an hour trying to get tickets and struck out. He’s doing these insane 3 hours-plus improvisations based on whatever pops into his head and stuff the audience suggests to him to riff on. I’m pretty sure it’s his way of developing material for an HBO show or something.
I love that guy.
March 29th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
P.S. oops.. I missed the key sentence in the piece from the San Diego Union:
“We continue to be concerned (about a guest worker program),” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a statement. But the McCain-Kennedy measure “will bring our nation one step closer to justice for America’s immigrants,” he added.
Bill, how would you explain that? Unless Im having an emotional episode (and putting aside the actual first hand knowledge I have on this matter) it would certainly seem to me that the AFL-CIO president is endorsing the same plan I am: McCain-Kennedy.
That damn emotional John Sweeney.
March 29th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
I must read more than 500 blogs every day, from all parts of the world. Marc, your takedown of Bradley is one of the more powerful blows I’ve seen delivered in the blogosphere in months. It hasn’t been this good since the Judith Miller fiasco brought out all the whack jobs. Speaking of Bradley, when will this critic of rational immigration policy either shut up, or, better yet, admit his ignorance and join the right side? Be a responsible citizen. Bill. How bout it?
March 29th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
“We remain deeply troubled by the expansion of guest worker programs — for workers not already in this country — contemplated by the bill voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Guest workers programs are a bad idea and harm all workers. They cast workers into a perennial second-class status, and unfairly put their fates into their employers’ hands, creating a situation ripe for exploitation. They encourage employers to turn good jobs into temporary jobs at reduced wages and diminished working condition and contribute to the growing class of workers laboring in poverty.”
John Sweeney
March 29th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
“There is a downward pressure on wages,†said Alan Wasdahl, a member of Local 547 of the carpenters union, which is not part of AFL-CIO, but who attended the news conference. “The plan is to export jobs, and import cheap labor.â€
Only the Shadow knows.
March 29th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Cicero, another fake handle, I am not at all a critic of rational immigration policy and it is perfectly obvious that I think the Sensenbrenner bill is dangerous garbage.
You seem to have no idea of what I think.
I simply said what is obvious to any knowledgeable, rational political observer. That demo invited a backlash.
Marc Cooper, in an uncalled for rant on a weekend night, said there was no danger of that.
He has since pulled a 180 without ever admitting the truth and says it is obvious and so what and besides Bill won’t tell us his immigration policy.
Of course, he will twist and turn and never explain this because he can’t.
Marc Cooper » Blog Archive » Immigration Issue Explodes Says:
March 26th, 2006 at 12:30 am e
[…] My otherwise smart guy friends, Mickey Kaus and Bill Bradley have surely gone off the deep end on this one. They both conjecture that these giant marches, full of Mexican flags and Mexicans chanting ‘Mexico! Mexico!’ are inviting a virulent nativist backlash.
March 29th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Amy, unfortunately, my dear old friend Marc will grandstand here with wild distortions of what I said and what he said to kick this farce into gear, but he won’t answer my simple questions.
Incidentally, since you put it so inaccurately, I don’t do policy wonking, I analyze and report on politics. On this day, for example, I reported on Rob Reiner’s resignation under fire and major developments in the governor’s race. So I haven’t been quite so focused on this little melodrama.
March 29th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
In other words.. no comment from Bill Bradley after he asked a question about the AFL-CIO and got shot down again.
Sweeney is “deeply troubled” he says by the bill coming out of Judiciary. I think Bradley should be able to interpret that politico-speak.
No need for Sweeney to either vigorously endorse nor oppose the bill in current form.
Sweeney is positioning himself ambigously at this juncture because he knows — as we all do– that this bill is not going to eventually pass; it will be killed in the Senate or in conference in the House so why not move the margins of the debate as far as you can in one’s own preferred direction? I, by the way, agree with Sweeney — though his vision will NEVER pass. With this bill lost, and with a dozen different interpretation on the table as to just what Guest Worker means, Sweeney is positioning himself on the left flank of the McCain-Kennedy coalition, staking out an even more liberal position for when the debate begins again post-2006 or 2008.
The central facts remain on the table: the AFL-CIO is indeed in alliance with the Chamber of Commerce and a certain advocacy journalist in supporting comprehensive immigration reform that would provide paths to citizenship to those already here “illegally” and, in the Federartion’s case, an EXPEDITED path to citizenship for future migrants.
P.S. I have turned not a degree in my position on “backlash.” I wrote Saturday that the nativist backlash was already here — as of a few years ago– and that it was virulent. Virulent enough to have been codified in Sensenbrenner. What is “obvious” is that mobilization of Mexicans on the streets of L.A. (with or without Mexican flags) is going to fuel those same backlashers. I also said that this time around, they’re on the wrong side of history as the political clout of Latinos is and will continue to grow faster than they. Sorry, no change.Â
Â
March 29th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
I write this as the son of one immigrant and the spouse of another. Unlike most of us here they became citizens through swearing their allegiance to this country and not as an accident of birth.
I don’t know if any of you have dealt recently with the USCIS, the ICE or the old INS. I have. I completed my wife’s green card application, filed the application to have the condition removed from her green card and filed her naturalization papers.
We filed for her green card in June 1994. We had our interview the following December. In the seven months between then, they were unable to get a file from the eighth floor to the fifth floor, so when we went in for the interview, they were unable to give us an answer right then as they usually do.
When we filed for her citizenship, we submitted the application in February 1998. Nearly two years later they scheduled her fingerprint appointment. It was more than another year before she was sworn in. It took the involvement of my Congresswoman at the time, Carolyn Maloney to get them off their asses.
These departments are chronically underfunded. It has been my experience that the employees are rude to the point of revelling in their rudeness. If you have any doubts, I urge you to sit in the waiting room at 26 Federal Plaza here in NYC some time and experience it. You won’t be feeling the love, I assure you.
So imagine what happens when a program such as the one proposed by President Bush, who is incapable of funding a war properly, gets implemented. People will look nostalgically upon the two year waits for fingerprint comments.
If not designed for failure, it is destined for it.
BTW Marc, you were smart to game the system with the tourist visas for your in-laws. When I went with my in-laws to the consulate in Rio to get their visas, I came prepared. I showed that my father-in-law owned a working farm, that they owned real estate in the city where their kids grew up. We had arranged for health insurance policies for them for the two months they stayed.
Nevertheless, the consulate staff insisted on being difficult. Why? Because they could.
March 29th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Randy… how sad. Can you believe this: in 1974 I married my wife in L.A. at 11:00 am. on a Tuesday.
She was in possession of a temporary 90 day fiancee visa. As soon as our little ceremony was over, we drove downtown to the Federal bldg and armed with our validated marriage certificate and other ID, and with no prior appt., we submitted the paperwork (at about 1 pm). At 4:45 pm we came back and they handed her a laminated green card. Stupefying.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
Marc, when Mércia was sworn in the first thing I thought was that I would never have to deal with INS again except when reëntering the country.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
My old friend Marc just can’t answer the question.
Here is your middle of a weekend night attack just below. But now you say what I said was obvious. Flip-flop Coop.
Who knew you were a gymnast? ROTFL
Nice spin on the Sweeney ambiguity.
>Marc Cooper » Blog Archive » Immigration Issue Explodes Says:
March 26th, 2006 at 12:30 am e
[…] My otherwise smart guy friends, Mickey Kaus and Bill Bradley have surely gone off the deep end on this one. They both conjecture that these giant marches, full of Mexican flags and Mexicans chanting ‘Mexico! Mexico!’ are inviting a virulent nativist backlash.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Bill Bradley seems to have gone bonko. Too bad. I started reading him a few weeks ago because Marc linked to him and praised him.
He seemed like a pretty good analyst of California politics. Sort of a boring, sttiff writer but then again he was writing about boring subject matter (I mean how much does anyone really care about Rob Reiner?).
Now he seems off his rocker. Bill. You did ask Marc a question about the AFL-CIO and he gave you a complete and rather devastating answer.
Now it seems you have decided to become a stalker. Marc wasn’t spinning Sweeney’s ambiguity. Sweeney was.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
This guy Bradley is the doctor of spin. If you can’t take the time to carefully read Cooper’s posts and comments, why not hire an ESL illegal at $6 an hour to read them to you? Or, if you’d prefer, call your old friend, Gary Hart. He’s a wise man and can probably steer you right on this complex immigration stuff. You have major gaps in your grasp of Border Basics 101.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Zack hit it on the head. Bill Bradleys off base. I’m a member of a UAW political committee and I can vouch for what’s being said here. I was a delegate to the last Federation convention and the AFL-CIO supports the comprehensive reforms. No question there.
Of course we have problems with the guest worker proposals. We don’t want a sub-class of cheap labor underneath what unions are left.
But that’s what we already have. Better to legalize the workers who are here, it benefits us all. This is a great blog by the way. Just discovered yesterday through a Yahoo link.
People here are smart and have some good arguments.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Good to see those comments by Union Guy and Amy.
Hey Marc, should we vote Bradley off the island?
Just asking
March 29th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
You know, handful of people, on my blog I discourage sycophancy. I am simply trying to get my very emotional and deeply involved friend Marc to explain the fundamental discrepancy between what he attacked me for and what he now says is obvious.
He refuses to answer. I have given him the opportunity to attempt to do so privately. He has lots of jokes about The Sopranos and what he uses the blog for, but no actual answer.
So sycophants, thank you for bringing it up so that I can once again give dear friend Marc the opportunity to explain why what he foolishly attacked me for in his middle of Saturday night screed is now so obvious.
>Marc Cooper » Blog Archive » Immigration Issue Explodes Says:
March 26th, 2006 at 12:30 am e
[…] My otherwise smart guy friends, Mickey Kaus and Bill Bradley have surely gone off the deep end on this one. They both conjecture that these giant marches, full of Mexican flags and Mexicans chanting ‘Mexico! Mexico!’ are inviting a virulent nativist backlash.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Bill O’Bradley, man you are intense!
How can you honestly call Cooper a “grandstander” and a “ranter.” Do a word count old sir. You have been dropping names, mentioning your illustrious credentials, and insulting almost everyone for a few days now. You are going to have a heart attack old sir.
You sound more and more like the stodgy old farts that 60′s radicals used to torment at universities. But you are even more arrogant! You have managed to combine the “expertise” of a former political insider (to a disgraced Gary) with baby boomer arrogance.
Are your “pal†Arnold and Reiner in rival Hollywood camps? Does that put you on Arnold’s side? You are actually bragging about ignoring the biggest story around right now to right about Reiner? Remember, the Astrology page gets 10 times as many hits as that “meaningful” analysis. This little “melodrama†is far more important than what your celebrity friends are doing.
You have yet to present a coherent policy in regards to immigration. You have insulted, ranted, bragged, etc… till the COWS COME HOME. What real alternatives do we have to amnesty?
This is the labor movement and legal or not, they are American workers. If you do not see this group as a potential valuable constituency for the Democratic Party, than you are indeed a hack. Berkeley and Santa Monica can only provide so many votes. This issue will probably decide the governor’s race.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
“write about Reiner”… that is.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Take a rest, all of you Bradley critics. He’s got it wrong, again, but he’s good at getting it wrong. He stands without peer when it comes to defending his wrongness until he’s alienated even the true aliens among us. It’s good entertainment. It’s a sign of a good columnist. It — dare I say it — sells blogs. Bring it on, Bill.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
“and not as an accident of birth” Well Randy with all due respect most of us don’t consider it an accident. Especially when one has ancestors involved in the fight to become a country and write the US Constitution. I mean really. This is one of the worst blogpile-ons I’ve eve seen. Hell my own anecdote was miscontrued out of an emotional connection to the issue. Yeah it’s heated more than the pool.
I chose to stick up for Bradley based on his narrowly focused point that the event, regardless of attendence statistics, will be used by the hard right. That’s on track. And besides we’re both SAG members. It’s about solidarity. And truth.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Mark,
That was directed as much at me as anyone else. My point also was to show that those who get naturalized become citizens as a matter of choice, not as a birthright.
Perhaps in so doing there is a greater sensitivity to love of one’s adopted country than those who trumpet their patriotism the loudest and are quick to call those who disagree with them unpatriotic.
I certainly don’t mean you in that regard.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
I hear what you’re saying: last refuge of scoundrels and all that. True and deeply unfortunate. I think what the gripe is here is the desire to reap the benefts of the country without bothering to feel this love, or bother to pursue to all as multitudes before have. They’re just being exploited. Those willing to do what it takes get through legally. It’s a finite amount and not everyone can come that may want to. I don’t know how else to address this biological reality.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
Dear Jane Lu,
During the 19th century economic recessions native born Anglos said Chinese immigrants were taking “American” jobs and supported Chinese Exclusion Act. Again and again throughout the 19th and 20th century during economic recessions and depressions politicans have blamed it on immigrants: on Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans. Now, with another tight labor market and falling wages, people are blaming immigrants again. This is called scapegoating. Scapegoating never got 1 person a job. Scapegoating never got 1 person an increase in wages. Scapegoating just is a fantasy solution that gives people a place to vent their anger while letting the actual economy get worse. the HR 4437 is just scapegoating as passed by the House. It’s an awful, dangerous bill. Everybody should be against it.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
“Though now an American citizen, she spends most of her time living with relatives in Chile. She thinks the health care system is better there.”
Marc,
So where should Americans go when they’re elderly and sick and need nursing care–I guess they’ll go to that “special state” the “state of bankruptcy”–a location well-known by many American citizens, who can’t escape into socialized medicine.
There is an entire under-class of 50 million U.S. citizens that are living the Mexican dream; did you see our populace drowning in New Orleans–that was only the tip of the melting iceberg. There are thousands of sociological Katrinas throughout this country–what obligation do we have to these people?
The answer lies in our international policies–didn’t we support Pinochet? We support a tyrant, the population flees, and the U.S. poor and working-class pay–Gee I must be a
Racist–I abhor inequality!
March 29th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Is it even possible to attempt to respond to some contradictory, ill-informed gibberish?
This reads like something produced by a malfunctioning artificial intelligence program.
>Josh Legere Says:
March 29th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Bill O’Bradley, man you are intense!
How can you honestly call Cooper a “grandstander†and a “ranter.†Do a word count old sir. You have been dropping names, mentioning your illustrious credentials, and insulting almost everyone for a few days now. You are going to have a heart attack old sir.
You sound more and more like the stodgy old farts that 60’s radicals used to torment at universities. But you are even more arrogant! You have managed to combine the “expertise†of a former political insider (to a disgraced Gary) with baby boomer arrogance.
Are your “pal†Arnold and Reiner in rival Hollywood camps? Does that put you on Arnold’s side? You are actually bragging about ignoring the biggest story around right now to right about Reiner? Remember, the Astrology page gets 10 times as many hits as that “meaningful†analysis. This little “melodrama†is far more important than what your celebrity friends are doing.
You have yet to present a coherent policy in regards to immigration. You have insulted, ranted, bragged, etc… till the COWS COME HOME. What real alternatives do we have to amnesty?
This is the labor movement and legal or not, they are American workers. If you do not see this group as a potential valuable constituency for the Democratic Party, than you are indeed a hack. Berkeley and Santa Monica can only provide so many votes. This issue will probably decide the governor’s race.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Jerry Brown used to talk about “the octopus principle,” in which a bureaucracy that cannot answer a question throws a lot of words at the problem hoping it goes away. Like an octopus shooting ink into the water in its desperate effort to obscure the scene.
All the meaningless, contradictory gibberish spewed by the above idolator of my friend Marc — and I hope he is doing well with all he has on his plate, Marc, that is, not the poor dude who has no clue — will not obscure the basic question that Marc still cannot answer.
In his middle of a Saturday night rant, Marc attacked me for the terrible act of saying what he now says is obvious.
Explain the contradiction, as the Marxists would put it, my old ex-Marxist friend.
>>Marc Cooper » Blog Archive » Immigration Issue Explodes Says:
March 26th, 2006 at 12:30 am e
[…] My otherwise smart guy friends, Mickey Kaus and Bill Bradley have surely gone off the deep end on this one. They both conjecture that these giant marches, full of Mexican flags and Mexicans chanting ‘Mexico! Mexico!’ are inviting a virulent nativist backlash.
March 29th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
By the way, it may actually be the “the squid principle,” not “the octopus principle.” Those of us who are, you know, very old, do suffer from Alzheimer’s at times …
March 29th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich weighs in – one of the most realistic, common sense pieces I’ve seen. He’s not impressed with this legislation, calls it basically a punt that attempts to offer a little something for all sides (maybe that’s why it’s called “McCain/Kennedy” – duh!) and suggests that, gee, maybe effective enforcement of basic labor laws would decrease the demand for illegal labor over the long term.
http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=11364
March 29th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
One thing that used to bother me was this ghostly spectre, of how the immigrant worker was going to be this silent group that would take advantage of benefits, but never stand up in an activist sense for the hard earned democratic landscape. However, after the last few years of observing union activism mostly from this camp have quelled my fears. Some need to study the history of this activism, in my opinion – they are becoming a bulwark against employer exploitation.
The part about all the immigration phobia that has always puzzled me is where do these people expect them to go? After all, you have this capitalistic thrust in their country that drove them out – where did you expect them to land?
It is just common sense to come to a country which has advanced in democratic territory, if you want to survive and hopefully thrive. Sometimes I think people are merely uinthinking and cruel – I am convinced, that the last refuge for scoundrels is immigrant bashing (either crude or high sounding) when they can’t find anything or anyone else to blame for mounting domestic problems. It makes no sense whatsoever.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
I didn’t read the post, but based on the first comments I’m going to assume it’s the usual story about a personal tale of woe, and we’re then supposed to base public policy affecting hundreds of millions of people on that one specific set of circumstances.
Meanwhile, could anyone let me know whether Cooper has responded to the fact that the Georgia illegal immigration march was organized by a former Mexican Consul General?
How about the fact that the USCIS – future administrators of a “guest” worker program – won’t have fraud management system in place until 2010?
How about the fact that in a recent article he told his readers that we’d been doing “enforcement only” for years and it doesn’t work, without also telling his readers that we do almost no workplace enforcement.
Do you the reader think Cooper was misleading you? Has Cooper offered a correction?
March 29th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
“I was making a joke off of your “Roy Clark-Buck Owens†reference. “iPodâ€â€¦get it.”
D’oh! Okay, I’m going to use the work excuse for that one sailing over my head. Jeez, and here I pride myself on my subtle sense of humor..
And, echoing rosedog, I’m rabidly envious of your Chappelle gigs. I could use a good laugh.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
This image that’s being generated that illegal immigrants are rapidly becoming union members and are at the forefront of activism for improving wages and working conditions is, to put it bluntly, bullshit.
Give me the numbers. What percentage of illegal immigrants are organized ? What I’m getting is anecdotal bits from the SEIU being blown up into a renaissance of unionism being driven by the influx of non-citizens into the workforce. I’m tempted to offer a bridge for sale to the folks here who would swallow that one. Would anyone care to come forward with something that proves this is a trend rather than rhetoric that’s so counterintuitive that it’s not to be believed – except perhaps as isolated phenomena perceptible only to a very limited circle of insiders who are vested in putting the best face on the issue.
If illegal immigrants have, in fact, been reviving the movement for workers rights and improved pay, we can look for all of those negative effects on wages and working conditions that bigots and morons like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich associate with the illegal labor market to, in fact, reverse or at least begin to.
Somebody explain this one to me with some actual data as opposed to mere assertion or anecdote. Please. Also, if it’s true that illegal immigrants are responsible for a wave of unionization, they’ll soon be losing their comparative advantage – and thus the jobs – because the calls Rich gets at the job training center will start specifying that they want the relatively docile blacks and Anglos, and please quit sending all of those undocumented folks who are uncompromising in their demands for better wages and working conditions.
And remember, I can get you that bridge in San Francisco or Brooklyn. And they come in colors.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
“The speaker, who is the nation’s capitol to push immigration reform and more money to rebuild California’s levies, offered charitable words about President Bush’s advocacy of a guest worker program that might offer undocumented immigrants a chance for citizenship.
“”I think that President Bush has added a refreshing voice to the immigration debate,” Nunez said.
“Meanwhile Nunez, a former labor leader, said he differed with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who has spoken out against guest worker programs.
?”They’re not going to become union members if they are making two-and-half dollars an hour, and living in the shadow of our society,” Nunez said of the nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.”
March 29th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Here, more than likely, is this great “breakthrough” we’re supposed to be celebrating. Looks like something being written, slomo, by the Chamber of Commerce.
March 30, 2006
Hastert Hints at Compromise on Immigration Bill
By RACHEL L. SWARNS/New York Times
WASHINGTON, March 29 — Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said Wednesday that he and other House Republicans recognized the need for a guest-worker program, opening the door to a possible compromise with the Senate on fiercely debated immigration legislation.
“We’re going to look at all alternatives,” Mr. Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said at a news conference. “We’re not going to discount anything right now. Our first priority is to protect the border. And we also know there is a need in some sections of the economy for a guest-worker program.”
Many House Republicans and conservatives in the Senate still oppose any legislation that would grant citizenship to illegal immigrants, like the bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. And as the Senate began its debate on immigration on Wednesday, Republicans were deeply divided over the fate of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
Mr. Hastert’s comments were the first public hint of an olive branch.
Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he was heartened by the remarks. He said they were a significant shift for the House, which defied President Bush’s call for a temporary-worker program and passed a border security bill in December that would criminalize illegal immigrants.
Since then, Mr. Bush and business groups have urged Republicans to support a temporary-worker program to help fulfill the economy’s needs for labor.
“I’m very pleased that Speaker Hastert has demonstrated flexibility on that issue,” Mr. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said, adding that he was prepared to support a compromise that would not provide a path to citizenship for all illegal immigrants in an effort “to present an even more balanced approach.”
On Monday, before his committee voted, Mr. Specter proposed a compromise that would require illegal immigrants to return home briefly after spending six more years in this country. They could then participate in a temporary-worker program or move toward citizenship if they are highly skilled, hold supervisory positions or have a close relative who is a citizen or permanent resident.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Well, I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s really pretty minor league. Although this is the sort of thing that on my blog would have been settled very quickly.
I put a stop to my readers calling Marc “Orwellian” for his insistence that people who break the law are not lawbreakers.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Well, I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s really pretty minor league. Although this is the sort of thing that on my blog would have been settled very quickly.
I put a stop to my readers calling Marc “Orwellian” for his insistence that people who break the law are not lawbreakers.
>This is one of the worst blogpile-ons I’ve eve seen. Hell my own anecdote was miscontrued out of an emotional connection to the issue. Yeah it’s heated more than the pool.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
“I tend to agree with Balter, however, that those with an international perspective, those rare American folks who have lived abroad for an extensive period of time somewhere, tend to see the ugly fears about illegal immigrants in an entirely different light.”–brian jones
Well, while I was sleeping here in Paris you have all been going at it. I have to agree with brian jones’ agreement with Balter. I live in Paris most of the year, although I spend 1-2 months each year in the USA and so am not out of touch as some bloggers occasionally imply in response to my posts (not that anyone is out of touch these days that the Internet Age is upon us.) Paris is a very cosmopolitan city, which is one of the pleasures of living here (a minus: dog shit on the streets.) Although there are some neighborhoods where immigrants congregate, in general French people mix every day with North Africans (Berbers mostly, but some Arabs, here we know the difference), sub-Saharan Africans, Americans, Brits, Irish, Chinese, Cambodians, Peruvians, you name it. Many French are fairly racist, but Parisians tolerate this mixing of nationalities and many revel in it–and we expats certainly do. I remember one evening, in the early years of my 17-year long stay in Paris, when we had a large dinner party at our house and I looked around and realized that everyone person was from a different country.
In the USA, despite the long border with Mexico and with all of central and South America as neighbors, too many Americans just want to know how quickly Hispanics are going to learn English and how quickly they are going to integrate into American culture. The idea that cultures south of the border are even interesting or have something to contribute to American life is sadly very much a minority view among American nativists.
This is why I have hammered away in saying that one’s basic perspective on immigration issues very much depends on whether one looks at things from an internationalist or nativist perspective, and all the policy questions follow on from that. That does not mean we should throw the borders open (I actually would have no objection to that, but I am trying to be “pragmatic”) but that our policies accept the reality and even the potential blessings of immigration and that all measures taken be humane rather than punitive of people who are doing what any one of us on this blog would do if faced with the conditions that most people in the world live under.
By the way, I hope we hear more from Jane Lu and her wonderfully satirical take on this debate.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Hmm, I am not so sure that throwing the borders open is not a pragmatic idea now that I think about it. We have pretty much done that in Europe, with 25 countries now in the mix. What if we created a union of Canada, the USA, and Mexico and extended the right to work and live to all three countries (we can add in the other south of the border countries later once this experiment has had time to work.) Think about it, and think about why you make a difference in your mind between a Mexican and a white person from Des Moines, Iowa…
March 29th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
Reg, the Reich article was excellent. If I find time I’ll share my experience of labor law “enforcement” from the trenches.
Oh, and to make up for my humor-lapse, here’s The Onion’s take on the “immigrants stealing U.S. jobs” debate:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46687
March 29th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Love it.
Bill Bradley, who says he doesn’t tolerate any crap from visitors to his own blog, and who appears (if only he’d spell it out) to favor an interdictory approach to border policing in the real world too, can’t help sneaking across the (open) border of Marc’s blog and dumping huge piles of the very crap he purports to abhor right here in our laps.
Marc, who has a more open-borders sort of outlook — regarding both real life and cyberspace — wisely understands that the more crap Bradley dumps, the more of an idiot he will make of himself, and the problem will eventually take care of itself. This takes some maturity and political sophistication on Marc’s part, not least because of the growing “Bradley go home” movement swelling in the ranks of my fellow blog contributors.
Marc’s long-sighted approach, though, appears to be the correct one. Mirabile dictu, despite the Bradley crapstorm, the general caliber of contributors coming across Marc’s open border is beginning to show signs of a marked uptick after days of depressing nativist hostility and paranoia.
Could there be a lesson here for Congress, and for America more generally??
March 29th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
Nice try, Mr. “Professional Journalist” with fake handle(s). Are you an open border person? If so, please clarify. We know you’re not someone into answers to simple questions that can’t be answered without an apology. Isn’t there are big crowd somewhere in the world for you to go count?
Incidentally, I know Marc’s mother-in-law quite well. She’s a very neat lady. As are Patricia and Natasha (who I refer to as “Meadow” in honor of one of our favorite TV shows).
It’s very confusing, isn’t it?
March 29th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
You know, Andrew (isn’t that your name?), I just noticed another of your all too typical distortions. (I skim, some egregious stuff registers later.)
I didn’t say I don’t tolerate any crap on my blog, I said that I make sure these sorts of things are settled. If you are the “professional journalist” you’ve repeatedly dubbed yourself to be, a red flag to be sure, you can grasp that distinction.
The last time Marc visited my blog, he was confronted for “Orwellian” behavior for his repeated insistence that people who break the law are not lawbreakers. It wasn’t really a problem to convince people that that sort of name calling is unnecessary.
Marc as the moderator of this site is doing nothing but encourage name calling and racist baiting, since he indulges in it himself. This disappoints me about him.
But I believe that when the smoke clears for him, it will be fine.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
ModestProposal:
Great comment. I had been tempted to switch Bill off for a spell and your post stopped me.
March 30th, 2006 at 5:39 am
Michael – I wish we had some cities in the United States that were as cosmopolitan as Paris – you know where there are lots of people from lots of countries. At the high school down the street from me only 17 languages are spoken so I can’t imagine what it would be like to live somewhere that’s really diverse. And, of course, the French have done a great job of welcoming their immigrants. That headscarf thing really makes the little girls feel like they’re wanted. Another great thing about France – no large peaceful demos by immigrants. They do what any other French citizen would do when he’s pissed – fight the cops and burn cars. The U.S. is so goddamned backward compared to the enlightened folks of Paris. (I guess it’s all of that worldly experience the French gained running other people’s countries that makes the difference.) I also understand that unemployment is very low in France among the “immigrant” classes and that the French aren’t at all uptight about trying to preserve their “native” culture in the face of internal or external influences not percieved as “French”. By comparison, since “nativism” is so rampant and we’re so culturally stagnant, one really has to wonder what kind of idiots would ever clamor to come to a backwater like the U.S. in the first place .
Michael – kidding aside – for someone who fancies himself “cosmopolitan”, you really need to get out more. There’s no provincialism quite as grating as that of the “cosmopolitan” elites.
(I considered adding a “Le Pen is mightier than the sword” joke above, but thought better of it.)
March 30th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Touché
March 30th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Why thank you, Marc …
March 30th, 2006 at 8:24 am
All sorts of Northern Americans (Imperialist, anti-Communist, Corporatists) have been calling Latin America “Our backyard†for over a century.
Well, there are some South Americans that want to get out of the “backyard†and into the house.
You North Americans should feel blessed to have such great neighbors! God has given you such a great opportunity and instead you act like ungrateful children surrounded by misery.
March 30th, 2006 at 8:43 am
Reg, Reg, Reg. You got me so excited for about 45 seconds. I’m heading up to San Fran tomorrow and nothing would be more fun than seeing Mr. Chappel. Ah, well.
Oh yeah. Immigrants.
March 30th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Michael Balter writes great science stories, but he’s realy out to lunch politically. I often wonder driving through San Fernando what we should do to make these folks feel more welcome? It is the culture here. My question is what are they doing in Woodland Hills?
March 30th, 2006 at 9:14 am
While I’m all for multiculturalism, and Michael’s post was interesting, I’d like to point out a bit of size comparison. Subtract the portion of Europe that is actually a part of Russia, and you end up with a total amount of surface area less than that of the United States.
Perhaps then, by comparison, we should divvy up States in place of those little European nations, and every American who knows people from other states, or regularly has dinner with them, could give us an example of their own multiculturalism. This is, of course, not taking to account immigrants and visitors from other nations as well. Visit any of the states in the south half of the union, and you’ll notice a remarkable variety of ‘races’, all living together (this isn’t to slam the northern half, merely that it tends to be more concentrated in specific locations there, rather than spread out). It’s what one would expect of the nation that receives the most immigrants of any other on the globe.
Just a bit of perspective, there. Most ‘nativists’ are quite interested in other places and foods (the popularity of everything from authentic Mexican food to Japanese sushi bars and steak houses helps) and even other cultures (as can be seen by those who vacation or work to assist other nations), but naturally and rightly believe that someone wanting to stay in their home nation permanently should strive to become actual citizens. They tend to be less enthusiastic toward those who come here to game the system at the expense of everyone else, or those who come into the nation and expect others to adapt to them, instead of adapting to become citizens of the nation they worked so hard to get into in the first place.
March 30th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Dear Reg,
As for Latino immigrants in the labor movement, look at in Los Angeles the Justice for Janitors campaign (led by Latino immigrants); the drywallers strike (led by Latino immigrants); the current campaign to unioze hotel workers (led by Latino immigrants); the failed campaign to unionize Guess garment workers (led by Latino immigrants). Latino immigrants for over a decade have poured in to the LOs Angeles labor movement making it the strongest in the nation.
As for Senator Bill First on TV last night saying the undocumented people broke the law in the U.S., so they should pay the price. Well, Senator Firss supported policies like NAFTA which broke the rural economy of Mexico, as small farmers couldn’t compete with U.S. government -subsidized ago-corporations productions dumped into Mexico. If one would compare U.S. polices in Mexico that broke the rural economy for small farmers destroying whole communites out of sheer greed with desperate Mexican immigrants breaking a U.S. immigrantion law so they could eat, get a job, or even have their children see a doctor, I would say First’s actions are far far worse.
As for the Mexican economy, the only way, realistically to improve the present dreadful solution, is to act like European Union countries (EU) where both businesses as well as labor can move freely between any country within the EU. If U.S./Canada/Mexico–the NAFTA countries –were like EU, all these illegals would be here legally. There would be upward pressure on wages since even more Latinos would be organizing unions across the country like in the 1930s–hopefully joined by whites, blacks, and Asians. That’s the only real way to get an increase in wages and more job security in the U.S.
If the US were like the EU, we could look at how the EU invested in poor countries like Ireland, putting money into improving roads in Ireland, thus helping fuel the boom in Irish economy in the 1990s that encouraged many Irish exiles to go home as they finally could get a job in ther home. The US could also help improve the Mexican economy as as the Mexican economy improved some Mexicans might decide to go home. That’s a solution that goes to the root of the problem.
No, we don’t do that in the U.S. Instead we left NAFTA allow US agro-corporations dump their products in Mexico bankrupting Mexican small farmers, many of whom go north to work in the fields for those same agricultral corporations for below-minimum wage at dangerous jobs and live in chicken shacks and shanties.
If the U.S. deports 1/2 million farmworkers who among you will take their place in the fields?
March 30th, 2006 at 10:41 am
So even as an illegal immigrant, your mother in law was aided by you in getting a job. If only people would extend theirselves in that way to get jobs for the very legal and many very unemployed young black men — who are right here.
It amazes me that people tell these lovely pull themselves up by their bootstraps stories about people who got a boost up.
March 30th, 2006 at 11:04 am
“If the U.S. deports 1/2 million farmworkers who among you will take their place in the fields?”
Julia, I found much of your argument compelling, but please stop insulting those of us who would work in the fields if it paid a living wage. It’s elitist and, more importantly, flat-out wrong. My parents lived in impoverished households and worked physical jobs to get out of poverty (jobs that paid at least enough to raise my siblings and me with food on the table, clean laundry, and separate beds–things my parents didn’t always have). My uncle is a janitor who has worked unskilled jobs all his life, and–unlike you–has no choice but to continue to do so. So please, stop with the nauseating and insulting assumptions that no non-immigrant Americans would work the fields if it could pay basic living costs.
Also, it shouldn’t be too difficult to do the math: $7.00/hr. in the U.S has a lot more reach in the Mexican economy than it does here, obviously. So a black family living in Compton can’t have the option of ever returning to Mexico to spend their dollars on their family and future. I’m not minimizing the hardships of immigrants (as I’ve said umpteen times, I worked with them in the trenches for years); rather, I’m rejecting your subtle unfair pitting of immigrant workers against non-immigrant workers. Pretty unseemly tactic, whether you’re conscious of it or not.
March 30th, 2006 at 11:48 am
It also assumes that pre-NAFTA which in many ways is a dismal failure, the rural Mexican economy was idyllic and completely functional until we ruined it. People there were readilly escaping it even it was which I doubt.
March 30th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Well, I can’t say anything bad about a debate that starts with a Phil Ochs quote. Even though there are a lot of better Ochs songs. From his “Best of…” album there is the one with some relevance to the Iraq conflict: “I Declare the War Is Over.” And for any reflective occasion he wrote the beautiful “Pleasures of the Harbor.”
This debate is one to which I have little to add other than to note that it is fully consistent with the flow of American political, cultural and social history. Germans, Irish, Italians, Africans, all have been declared a threat to “the workingman” because, as most recently-arrived free agents in the workplace (African-Americans being the persistent exception to the generality), they grabbed up those jobs that, at the time, no one else would take.
And Henry Ford and like-minded economic royalists promised to hire one-half of the working class to beat down the other half. And it is happening again.
It is really this issue that has always been the litmus test to distinguish between the progressive and reactionary factions of the labor movement: how do they relate to what the Marxists call the lumpen proletariat? The progressive elements always welcome them, and seek to organize them so that they cannot be used to break strikes and be used as cheap labor to fill positions that should be well-paid. That is what the CIO and the IWW, in different ways, did. It is what SEIU and its allies are doing today. It is not important whether Sweeney and the AFL support a particular piece of legislation…one that will never be enacted because it will be eviscerated in conference committee. The question is whether they are on the right or wrong side of history, as rosedog suggested above.
As Marc has noted, using for the first time in human history an article from San Diego Union-Tribune as a source of the “voice of labor,” Sweeney is on the right side. It is the right side, I submit, because it is the one that recognizes the humanity of the weak and despised. That side prevails, in the long run, at least in the United States of America.
March 30th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
“This debate is one to which I have little to add”
Based on your pompous ‘ivory tower’ seat-of-the-pants Marxist analysis, I’d say “little to add” is a perfect assessment.
March 30th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Rich,
I think you’re insulting me by calling me names like “elitist” and by saying I’m using an ” unfair pitting of immigrant workers against non-immigrant workers.” I think anyone like you, Rich, who in this context talks about how black workers, who are having a terrible time right now, as a reason to stomp on illegal Latinos is truly pitting one group of workers against the other.
To quote Kevin Starr, California’s leading historian from his book ‘Coat of Dreams: California on the Eduge 1990-2003″ by the end of the 1990s “many California farmworkers were earning less than their counterparts in Mexico. A group of some hundred asparagus pickets near Stockton, for example, were paid $67 for fiteen days of work in September 1991. Even then, the labor contractor was deducting $8.50 a day for lunches and $2.50 per can of beer, having refused to provide water in the fields …. ” (500)
As for where farmworkers sleep in Califonia, Starr says they slep “in tool sheds or chicken cops, in makeshift playwood huts waterproofed with plastic sheeting or in tents made from plastic garbage bags ” (501).
Rich, these souls have included the Zapotec Indians from Mexico who were enslaved by a flower grower in Somis, California, in the 1980s are going to be now “criminalized” by that horrendous House Bill 4437. I really can’t see huge U.S. agricultural corporations, when they can asparagus workers, to work for way below minimum wages have the slightest interest in raising wages for anybody.
U.S. agricultural corporations want cheap labor, and set up this huge system of laws including NAFTa to get cheap labor. HR 4437 is just beating down on the poorest, most vulnerable members of U.S. society.
HR4437 criminalizing illegals is one of the most outrageous awful bills the House of Representives has ever passed.
March 30th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
“many California farmworkers were earning less than their counterparts in Mexico”
If this is the case what was the incentive to come to the US to work for less? It’s nonsensical.
March 30th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Julia:
First of all, you’re ignoring my preface: i.e., much of what you said I found interesting and compelling.
Secondly, I said your comment was elitist–not you. And indeed, it does smack of class-baiting, something I recognize quite well from my time working for a Latino social service organization. It goes like this: company X calls and asks about my sending them some Mexican workers, because they have such a great work ethic (read, “docile”). It was always interesting (in a sickening sort of way) when, in 1995, during a time when we were helping a large number of Cuban refugees settle into homes and jobs, when I would get a call from employer X the day after I sent him a Cuban job prospect. The more careful ones just said it “didn’t work out”, but occasionally a more brazen employer would just come right out and say he thought I was sending him a Mexican–not a black guy. (Unaware, of course, of the fact that millions Latinos are indeed black.) And he had had some, well, you know, bad experiences with blacks in the past. They just don’t work real hard, etc. And furthermore, these Cuban guys get all feisty (read: ask to be paid for overtime work).
Finally, regarding your point about U.S. ag companies not being entirely willing to give up a cheap labor source: well, duh! Many companies also would rather not provide a safe work environment, etc. That’s not necessarily an evil impulse–they’re just doing what it takes to stay profitable. But, of course, that’s why we have laws and regulations. Also, cutting off cheap labor streams has a historical precedent of leading indirectly to modernization, rendering alarmist claims of these pro-cheap-sourcers largely irrelevant:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/msk02-25-01.html
In short, we’re mostly on the same page (cf., my previous comments), but I feel compelled to respond to a divide and conquer strategy (however unintended/unconscious) that, in buddying up with employers to profess the absolute necessity of immigrant labor–namely, because no lazy U.S. workers would ever do that type of work–spits in the face of the segments of our population who would do any kind of work in a heartbeat if it would pay the goddam rent. And that’s very unfair.
March 30th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
“Marc’s long-sighted approach, though, appears to be the correct one. Mirabile dictu, despite the Bradley crapstorm, the general caliber of contributors coming across Marc’s open border is beginning to show signs of a marked uptick after days of depressing nativist hostility and paranoia.â€
Mirable Dictu or is really CAVEAT EMPTOR!
I’m tying to understand this circular logic—you know the kind of logic that tells you that you’re a hostile racist, paranoid, nativist , xenophobic fool.
Yes the same logic, that convinced us in the early 90’s that NAFTA, WTO and free-trade would benefit the U.S. working-class—the same neo-liberalism who favors opening foreign markets by military intervention. And the same neo-liberalism who favors political pressure through international organizations like the World Bank. And yes, the same neo-liberalism that says vive laissez-faire and screw the working-class, because the
bottom- line is that “profits†are always NUMERO UNO; even if those profits are always at the expense of the working-class.
And isn’t interesting that this exploitation of labor, under the phony guise of benevolent
multi-culturalism, is always achieved the same way, by discarding the power of collective bargaining and eliminating a worker’s right to a decent minimum wage.
There is a hell-uv-a crap storm out there—you better on hold on tight to your IMF loans.
March 30th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Julia – “Latino immigrants”
You may (possibly) be right in trying to counter what seems to me to be obvious historical fact, you more likely are wrong, but unless and until you speak to the category of immigrants I referenced – illegal – your point is moot. This isn’t about ethnicity and anyone who keeps trying to turn it into that kind of argument is evading reality. Latino immigrants have been effective in many labor struggles. But the influx of illegal immigrants – which has increased enormously over the past two decades – is clearly one of the reasons the gains made by the UFW under Cesar Chavez have been eviscerated. (Note: I said ONE of the reasons. I’m convinced it’s a significant one.)
Nobody has seriously taken on the argument – which is well documented – about the impact of illegal labor markets on wages and working conditions. My assumption is that it’s because they can’t.
March 30th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Also Julia, there’s no need to bash Sensenbrenner when trying to counter me or Rich – neither one of us supports it. Counter the argument that Robert Reich makes – among others – that labor laws need to be enforced more rigorously. That’s my focus. I would include enforcement against hiring “undocumented” workers. And if labor shortages arise in the wake of this, I’d push for more people being allowed in as citizens – with folks from Mexico given priority. I’ll even go one more round of “amnest” if it’s accompanied by commitment to labor laws that have some teeth. The charade in DC is, inevitably, going to serve the interests of the usual suspects. Much of this brouhaha started with Marc suggesting we should celebrate it as a “breakthrough”.
This is my last comment on this because I’m hearing the same stuff over and over – but nothing that suggests illegal labor markets don’t violate everything that anyone with even modest sympathy for the people at the bottom rung of the U.S. working class should be concerned about. I understand there are leftists who have other “internationalist” priorities and will moralize over my “nativism” and my myopic failure to recognize that illegal labor markets are the key to reviving unions (!) – and I’m not particularly interested because it’s either the old lefty feel-good jerkoff or simply not credible.
March 31st, 2006 at 12:26 am
Still wading through the last few days…has anyone mentioned the totally dishonest relationship with Mexico that the US has always had? What the US will aknowledge and what it won’t? What it likes to believe about itself versus what is actually true? Sheesh.
I always thought that the people who count the flags at demos like these are really too afraid to face the numbers so they do that flag thing they do. They remind me of the American folks I see down in baja flaying their Old Glories above their RVs and compounds….
I was there on Saturday with my young son. It was the demonstration I’d been hoping for for years. So many had so much personally at stake – and there they were. Yeah.
March 31st, 2006 at 8:05 am
“My assumption is that it’s because they can’t”
And I predict they won’t since all they have is a one-note samba.
March 31st, 2006 at 8:47 am
Of course everybody who has a job to offer is looking for the most “suitable.”
You profit-haters should start your own business and hire some poor folk but pay them better — you’d at least be genuinely helping one or two.
Besides the profit-seeking employer, the other winner from illegal low-cost labor is … the US consumer. In fact, since each employer is competing with other employers to sell stuff, at low prices, to US consumers, most employers do NOT make nearly as much money as most Hollywood actors, for instance. Instead, the biggest economic benefit goes first to buyers. And, since a lot more is bought at low prices, more workers are actually hired (to buy more stuff!)
But it’s unlikely any working solution, neither guest-workers nor functioning enforcement, will actually be politically feasible. Yeah, some compromise bill will be passed, but it will be clear in a few years it doesn’t work.
It’s not politically feasible because, while there is wide agreement the problem should be “solved”, there is not wide agreement on how to do it; in detail (with those slippery devils, plus those unintended consequences).
Sending more entreprenuers to Mexico is one thing that will surely help; slowly.
March 31st, 2006 at 9:09 am
And I predict they won’t since all they have is a one-note samba.
Jeez, Marc, what do you have against Tom Jobim? That was one of his best songs!
March 31st, 2006 at 9:17 am
“You profit-haters”
I love seeing self-professed “libertarians” resort to name-calling when they’re forced to acknowledge the occasional pro-employee effects of “the market”. Yup, Tommy Boy, sometimes employees gain the leverage that employers are so used to–it’s called bargaining power, and in this case a natural result of legally functioning markets (employers pay employees what the market demands). It would behoove you to try and see both sides, like the rest of us, instead of devolving into name-calling and resentment. Not very productive.
March 31st, 2006 at 9:54 am
Oh no, Randy…you’re obviously the go-to guy on this blog when it comes to Brazilian culture and you let slip that Antonio Carlos Jobim goes by “Tom”. I know nothing about locutions, nicknames or familiar contractions in Portuguese, but I have to say that I’m deeply disappointed by this bit of information. The guy’s got one of the coolest names on the planet and he ends up with the same banal handle as some yahoo congressman from Sugarland Texas ?
March 31st, 2006 at 10:11 am
reg,
He’s been called Tom since long before Delay was squashing roaches for a living.
It’s a bit of a play on words as tom in Portuguese means tone, an apt term for one of history’s greatest composers.
The official name of the international airport in Rio, btw is Aeroporto Tom Jobim.
March 31st, 2006 at 10:49 am
Reg,
All the union campaigns I mentioned–Justice for Janitors, drywallers, garment workers, hotel workers–include both illegal and legal Latino workers. Both the illegal and legal Latino workers are behind the greatest upsurge of union organizing in the United States in the last 15 years. I worked with Latino garment workers–illegal–in the campaign to unionize Guess jeans; these illegal workers were the most fervrent trade unionists I have ever met. It’s simply fact that illegals are crucial to unionizing in Los Angeles and would do so all across the nation if given the chance.
And Reg,
HR 4437 bill reminds me of Hiter’s treatment of Jews: we solve the economic problems of 1930s German by throwing all the Jews out of Jobs, professions, etc. Then all these unemployeed Germans (1 out of 3) who are hard-working, can get jobs. HR 4437 reminds me of 19th century California where in each dreadful depression poltiicans said Chinese are taking jobs of white Californias and they passed Chinese exclusion acts. HR 4437 reminds me of 1930s Depression in California where thousands of Mexicans were deported as if deporting Mexicans would solve the problems of unemployment in California in the 1930s. HR 4437 is the ugliest bill I’ve seen in a while.
Mark York,
I never said that pre-NAFTA Mexican rural economy was idyllic. I think it was bad before NAFTA but then NAFTA came and destroyed the frail hopes of small farmers.
Also, Mark, I quoted Kenneth Starr that for some farmworkers conditions are worse in the U.S. than in the Mexico. You can read the section on Zaoptec Indians Starr’s book “Coast of Dreams” for more details. Also, you can look at William Langwieche’s article “Invisible Men” which appeared in the New York in the late 1990s about farmworkers in San Diego. Langwieche mentions the Zapotec Indians whom a California farmer starting in1984 took to Somis, CA, and enslaved: “they were ensalved: held in a compound in perpetual debt, frightened into submissions by warnings about the Border Patrol, and forced to work sixteen hours a day. Some of the men eventually sought help.” Anyway, slavery is illegal in Mexico, so the Zapotec Indian slaves in Somis, Ca, were treated worse than in Mexico.
Also Langweiche mentions other Zaoptec Indians farmworkers who built a shanty town in a San Diego revaine who were prey to gangs, Border Patrol, etc.–truly awful. Yes, these farmworkers came to the U.S. for a better life but got a worse life. Read “The Jungle” to see how Eastern European immigrants were destroyed in the packinghouses of Chicago.
Rich and Reg,
I never said that we need a cheap labor force. Rich, saying that I’m for a cheap labor force is straw man fallcy. I said it would be great if we would unionize like in the 1930s. We need a high-wage unionized labor force. I talked about a stragegy for unionizing in the United States. And Reg, if you want to raise wages, it’s good to look at the strongest bunch of trade unionists in the country which are Latino illegals and legals in LA.
March 31st, 2006 at 11:05 am
“It’s a bit of a play on words as tom in Portuguese means tone
I can live with that.
Julia – mixing Latino with “illegal” is apples and oranges. But your still dealing in anecdotes. And limited to L.A.’s particular – and as regards union clout, highly exceptional – urbia. The facts are that illegal immigration has been central to the destruction or weakening of unions in industries that formerly paid pretty decent blue-collar wages – meatpacking, construction – and contributed to the almost complete turnaround of improving conditions for farmworkers that the UFW managed to gain despite terrible odds.
I am totally supportive of efforts to unionize “illegals” but any argument that’s founded on the notion illegal immigration is contributing to some general upsurge of wages and working conditions and will strengthen the hand of workers is, as I said before, total bull.
Again, I don’t need a lecture about Sensenbrenner.
March 31st, 2006 at 11:53 am
Also Julia – whatever else one might say of Sensenbrenner, it’s not based on any “ethnic” or “racial” stigma – but on whether or not one has legal status in the U.S. Unless you deny that any country has the right to set the terms of citizenship, residency and eligibility for work, your analogy is ridiculous. Also, there is no “Latino exclusion act” as was enacted against the Chinese. Latinos are a large segment of our legal immigrants. And my understanding of deportation of “Mexicans” in the ’30s was that it was directed against large numbers of folks who weren’t “Mexicans” but Mexican-Americans and was, thus, indefensible. Again, totally false, hysterical analogy. I’m no fan of Sensenbrenner or his bill – because I don’t believe in persecuting poor people, just regulating labor markets – but you don’t do much good for the case against it with Hitler analogies. You’re a prime example of why the “left” is so marginalized and uncomprehending of what might constitute serious coalition politics to forge the kind of alliance with the “middle” that we’ll need to ever gain any political advantage nationwide. I don’t want to be a beautiful loser and I don’t make too many assumptions about American politics from my immediate experience in one of California’s liberal urban enclave. One thing I do know is that there aren’t many countries that have as liberal immigration policies as the U.S. nor that do a better job of offering them opportunities and a reasonable degree of (dare I say it) assimilation. (And – as a general rumination, not addressed to any comments here – anyone who thinks that a viable multiculturalism is based on something other than mutual assimilations and the evolution of a “mainstream” as opposed to a multiplicity of essentially nostalgic “nationalisms” or that it’s not preposterous (not to mention counterproductive) to assert one’s rights – citizen or no – as a resident of the U.S. under the flag of another country really strikes me as “alien” in the most profound sense of “what planet are you living on ?”)
April 1st, 2006 at 8:15 am
“you want to raise wages, it’s good to look at the strongest bunch of trade unionists in the country which are Latino illegals and legals in LA. ”
What reg said.
May 14th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Nice story of exceptional people. Sadly, not the norm. I teach middle school in Southern California. Ninety percent of the students in my school are Mexican. Parents of eight out of ten Mexican students do not speak English, although THE STUDENTS WERE BORN IN THIS COUNTRY! They arrogantly demand that the school provide translators during parent-teacher conferences. If none are provided, they scream discrimination. Isn’t 12-14 years long enough to learn the language of the country in which you are living? The obviously do not have enough allegiance to this country to even learn the language and expect everyone else to accommodate their defieciency! I welcome all immigrants who come to this country legally AND assimilate into AMERICAN culture, not expecting us to change to theirs. If their language and culture is so great– GO HOME AND SHUT UP.
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Good story. Unfortunately most people worry only about the illegal immigrants who are hispanic. It has become an epidemic of some sorts. I am married to an illegal immigrant and we are in the process of legalizing him. Unfortunatly when I put this on this I bet there will be many nasty responses. But, I don’t care. I see anyone as a racist pig who thinks anything about it. I do not think we should have as many illegals as we do. I understand we need to help ourselves by closing the borders, but there are people who deserve to be here. I also believe someone said your mother-in-law scammed the system like all illegals. How racist is that comment? For a little information I know that at least in my state anyone without legal documents cannot receive any type of benefits. That means food stamps or medical care. Thank God there is someone in this world like you Marc. You see people as just that people.
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