Both Sides Get It Wrong on Immigration
Much has been made of the bitter divisions that the recent immigration debate has exposed in the Republican Party. Far less ink has been dedicated to the divisions among Democrats on the issue, even though the chasmic disparity among Dems is just as if not more pronounced (and emotional) as the split among Republicans.
With Republicans, the great divide pits the cultural conservatives ("no amnesty for lawbreaking invaders!") against the Chamber of Commerce hacks ("we need immigrants to do the jobs Americans won't do!") With Democrats, the limousine liberals ("we're a nation of immigrants!") are much more quietly facing off against labor defenders ("immigration suppresses wage levels for working people!"). Personally, I'm firmly aligned with the labor wing of the Democratic Party, and have personally witnessed the saturation of the low-skill/semi-skill labor pool via immigration cut wage levels by half in what were some of the best-paying industries in the country. And while the media obsesses about the split among Republicans over immigration, it's the Democratic Party that probably stands to lose the most if the immigration agenda they appear to be endorsing comes to fruition.
It is truly sickening to see Ted Kennedy and the vast majority of Senate Democrats align themselves with cheap-labor conservatives, particularly in the push for a noxious "guest worker program" (hats off to North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan for being the first Senate Dem to balk about what a sellout such a program would be to working people). The Democratic sellout of their traditional voter base can be understood based on two different phenomena. The first and most obvious of the two is that they are whoring themselves for "the Hispanic vote", which most Dems believe will solidify a long-term Democratic majority because of demographic shifts. Secondly, "the working man" matters less to the Democratic Party with each passing day. The recent high-profile crackup of the AFL-CIO will further marginalize the influence of labor, and the amount of money they'll be able to produce for Democratic candidates in future election cycles.
Yet despite the labor vacuum, Democrats have actually done very well in fundraising in recent years. Where is the money coming from? "The new left", specifically latte-sipping elitists from Manhattan's Upper West Side and the posh mansions of Beverly Hills, along with professors from college towns all over America. For the most part, the "new left" is isolated from the everyday struggles of working people, making it easier to ignore the consequences of unbridled immigration beyond their romanticized visions of a multicultural utopia. Even revered liberal economists/columnists Bob Samuelson of The Washington Post and Paul Krugman of The New York Times, who both wrote columns warning us what a bad bargain current immigration reform proposals are, don't seem to have succeeded in exposing the "jobs Americans won't do" canard for the heap of bourgeoise bullshit that it is.
Clearly, we have a huge immigration problem and we have to do something. What should it be? First, swallow our pride and grant amnesty and a track to citizenship for the 12 million illegals currently living in America. Deporting all of these illegals is not a realistic option, nor is the current "compromise" being debated in the Senate where amnesty will only be granted to those who have been here illegally the longest, sending the Jose-come-latelys back across the Rio Grande. And it doesn't do us any good to have a segment of our population the size of Ohio living beneath the radar and disengaged from the political process of the nation in which they work, live and raise a family. It would be particularly pointless to deny emergency health care and education to illegal immigrants and their children, assuring that the problems of current immigrants will extend to the next generation. Some of the Republican immigration proposals are sound, but they have to realize we need to bite the bullet and legalize the current batch of illegals amongst us.
Secondly, however, we have to secure our borders to stem the ruinous influx. Limousine liberals gasp in horror at the prospect of building a huge, ugly fence along our border, but most Republicans (and a growing number of Democrats) are right to keep this on the table as a viable option. Post-9/11 security concerns being what they are, it's almost shocking that we don't already have a fence on the border. And guess which country has a fortress on its southern border? That'd be Mexico. They'll be damned if they're gonna let all that cheap labor from Central America suppress their wages! They have no moral authority here. If we don't follow Mexico's lead and take whatever steps necessary to seal our borders, we'll find ourselves granting "amnesty" to tens of millions more illegal immigrants 20 years from now. That's unacceptable.....and even the most clueless open borders ideologues should recognize that.
Third, we should customize our legal immigration channels to carefully manage labor demand rather than saturate labor supply. Nursing is a professional employment field where we already have a labor shortage, and are expected to have a much larger labor shortage in the future. Letting in a sufficient number of nurses (and nursing students) would be a win-win for everybody. And low-skill/semi-skill immigrants should by no means be excluded from continued acceptance in our country. A controlled influx blue-collar immigrants inject needed growth in the domestic labor market and the competition fuels and helpful productivity motivation for native-born workers. The problem comes when entire industries become so monopolized by immigrant workers that they suppress wage and benefit levels and drive down industry working conditions, such has been the case with meatpacking and increasingly commonplace in drywalling and construction. A smarter approach to who we legally let in, combined with a fiercer gauntlet to keep others out, would produce countless dividends for the country and the economy.
Lastly, as I opined about in a previous thread, we must avoid at all costs the institutionalized apartheid of a "guest worker program", which would disenfranchise and dehumanize generation upon generation of immigrant workers...and create an incentive for as many American industries as possible to slash wages and benefits, then throw their hands in the air and declare themselves in possession of "jobs Americans won't do", enabling them to qualify for a pipeline of "guest workers". Of all the proposals floated around regarding immigration, the "guest worker program" is the hands-down worst....which of course means it's the most politically popular and most likely to be passed into law this year.
The ultimate irony is that the Democrats' calculated alliance with cheap labor barons over immigration will most likely result in their LOSING rather than gaining political momentum. I diarized on the Daily Kos last month that most counties that have seen an influx of cheap labor-related immigration in the past 20 years have gotten MORE REPUBLICAN over that same period of time, and I provided an arm's length of examples to validate the theory. The calculus of this enigma is quite simple. Most Hispanics are non-citizens and don't vote. Since Republicans are most likely to talk tough about immigration, communities teeming with foreign-born newcomers end up producing a white working class that's more Republican, a black working class that's less Democratic, and an invisible non-citizen Hispanic working class that never has and never will vote. With a "guest worker program", Hispanic disenfranchisement will rise as a percentage of their overall population.....not exactly a fast-track for a minority political party to become a majority.
In the short-term, George Bush will be the public face of the "guest worker program", and will likely alienate plenty of voters because of it. However, most elected Republicans are not in sync with Bush over this issue, while most elected Democrats support it. At least under the formula being set up today, the Democratic Party is permanently cementing its political tomb by putting the interests of illegal immigrants over the interests of their own working-class base.
With Republicans, the great divide pits the cultural conservatives ("no amnesty for lawbreaking invaders!") against the Chamber of Commerce hacks ("we need immigrants to do the jobs Americans won't do!") With Democrats, the limousine liberals ("we're a nation of immigrants!") are much more quietly facing off against labor defenders ("immigration suppresses wage levels for working people!"). Personally, I'm firmly aligned with the labor wing of the Democratic Party, and have personally witnessed the saturation of the low-skill/semi-skill labor pool via immigration cut wage levels by half in what were some of the best-paying industries in the country. And while the media obsesses about the split among Republicans over immigration, it's the Democratic Party that probably stands to lose the most if the immigration agenda they appear to be endorsing comes to fruition.
It is truly sickening to see Ted Kennedy and the vast majority of Senate Democrats align themselves with cheap-labor conservatives, particularly in the push for a noxious "guest worker program" (hats off to North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan for being the first Senate Dem to balk about what a sellout such a program would be to working people). The Democratic sellout of their traditional voter base can be understood based on two different phenomena. The first and most obvious of the two is that they are whoring themselves for "the Hispanic vote", which most Dems believe will solidify a long-term Democratic majority because of demographic shifts. Secondly, "the working man" matters less to the Democratic Party with each passing day. The recent high-profile crackup of the AFL-CIO will further marginalize the influence of labor, and the amount of money they'll be able to produce for Democratic candidates in future election cycles.
Yet despite the labor vacuum, Democrats have actually done very well in fundraising in recent years. Where is the money coming from? "The new left", specifically latte-sipping elitists from Manhattan's Upper West Side and the posh mansions of Beverly Hills, along with professors from college towns all over America. For the most part, the "new left" is isolated from the everyday struggles of working people, making it easier to ignore the consequences of unbridled immigration beyond their romanticized visions of a multicultural utopia. Even revered liberal economists/columnists Bob Samuelson of The Washington Post and Paul Krugman of The New York Times, who both wrote columns warning us what a bad bargain current immigration reform proposals are, don't seem to have succeeded in exposing the "jobs Americans won't do" canard for the heap of bourgeoise bullshit that it is.
Clearly, we have a huge immigration problem and we have to do something. What should it be? First, swallow our pride and grant amnesty and a track to citizenship for the 12 million illegals currently living in America. Deporting all of these illegals is not a realistic option, nor is the current "compromise" being debated in the Senate where amnesty will only be granted to those who have been here illegally the longest, sending the Jose-come-latelys back across the Rio Grande. And it doesn't do us any good to have a segment of our population the size of Ohio living beneath the radar and disengaged from the political process of the nation in which they work, live and raise a family. It would be particularly pointless to deny emergency health care and education to illegal immigrants and their children, assuring that the problems of current immigrants will extend to the next generation. Some of the Republican immigration proposals are sound, but they have to realize we need to bite the bullet and legalize the current batch of illegals amongst us.
Secondly, however, we have to secure our borders to stem the ruinous influx. Limousine liberals gasp in horror at the prospect of building a huge, ugly fence along our border, but most Republicans (and a growing number of Democrats) are right to keep this on the table as a viable option. Post-9/11 security concerns being what they are, it's almost shocking that we don't already have a fence on the border. And guess which country has a fortress on its southern border? That'd be Mexico. They'll be damned if they're gonna let all that cheap labor from Central America suppress their wages! They have no moral authority here. If we don't follow Mexico's lead and take whatever steps necessary to seal our borders, we'll find ourselves granting "amnesty" to tens of millions more illegal immigrants 20 years from now. That's unacceptable.....and even the most clueless open borders ideologues should recognize that.
Third, we should customize our legal immigration channels to carefully manage labor demand rather than saturate labor supply. Nursing is a professional employment field where we already have a labor shortage, and are expected to have a much larger labor shortage in the future. Letting in a sufficient number of nurses (and nursing students) would be a win-win for everybody. And low-skill/semi-skill immigrants should by no means be excluded from continued acceptance in our country. A controlled influx blue-collar immigrants inject needed growth in the domestic labor market and the competition fuels and helpful productivity motivation for native-born workers. The problem comes when entire industries become so monopolized by immigrant workers that they suppress wage and benefit levels and drive down industry working conditions, such has been the case with meatpacking and increasingly commonplace in drywalling and construction. A smarter approach to who we legally let in, combined with a fiercer gauntlet to keep others out, would produce countless dividends for the country and the economy.
Lastly, as I opined about in a previous thread, we must avoid at all costs the institutionalized apartheid of a "guest worker program", which would disenfranchise and dehumanize generation upon generation of immigrant workers...and create an incentive for as many American industries as possible to slash wages and benefits, then throw their hands in the air and declare themselves in possession of "jobs Americans won't do", enabling them to qualify for a pipeline of "guest workers". Of all the proposals floated around regarding immigration, the "guest worker program" is the hands-down worst....which of course means it's the most politically popular and most likely to be passed into law this year.
The ultimate irony is that the Democrats' calculated alliance with cheap labor barons over immigration will most likely result in their LOSING rather than gaining political momentum. I diarized on the Daily Kos last month that most counties that have seen an influx of cheap labor-related immigration in the past 20 years have gotten MORE REPUBLICAN over that same period of time, and I provided an arm's length of examples to validate the theory. The calculus of this enigma is quite simple. Most Hispanics are non-citizens and don't vote. Since Republicans are most likely to talk tough about immigration, communities teeming with foreign-born newcomers end up producing a white working class that's more Republican, a black working class that's less Democratic, and an invisible non-citizen Hispanic working class that never has and never will vote. With a "guest worker program", Hispanic disenfranchisement will rise as a percentage of their overall population.....not exactly a fast-track for a minority political party to become a majority.
In the short-term, George Bush will be the public face of the "guest worker program", and will likely alienate plenty of voters because of it. However, most elected Republicans are not in sync with Bush over this issue, while most elected Democrats support it. At least under the formula being set up today, the Democratic Party is permanently cementing its political tomb by putting the interests of illegal immigrants over the interests of their own working-class base.
posted by Mark at 4:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home