Akkam’s Razor

I'm ashamed to say this, but bleeding heart liberal that I am, I have no real minority friends.  No people of color were at my wedding.  I don't share any hobbies or interests with people from other lands.  So I can't fall back on my legion of brown, red, and yellow allies.  I do have plenty of coworkers, classmates, employees, and acquaintances, but no real friends to speak of.

But that doesn't mean I'm unqualified to comment on the issue.

Sometimes it's tough being a liberal.  My family and friends, despite being in near-total agreement on the environment, the war, healthcare, and politics in general, are far off to my right on this issue.  It's irritating, but I really have no desire to argue with them - the benefit is too small, the effort too great.  I'm not going to overcome generations of Philly riverward life, the rowhouse mentality, and blue collar work ethic.  Not gonna happen. I suspect that my view of life, the jobs I've had, and the way I see the world and other people gives me a different perspective.

That said, should they ever feel the need to ask some questions on their own, here's my thoughts on the usual immigrant strawmen we hear about so frequently.

I don't really get the whole resistance to the idea of immigration - it's an inevitable outcome.  We are going to HAVE to import people in order to continue growing the economy.  Long story short - there are not enough Caucasian babies being born to offset the number of Caucasian deaths.  Meanwhile, immigrants tend to have larger families, making up the difference.  Even if we JUST maintained the status quo, it is probable that "white people" will be in the minority by 2050.  This will not change - it's too expensive to have a larger family in this country, and there's too many people who would lose out if they changed things (like taxes, education, and health care costs).  So fighting against it is pissing to fill up the ocean.

The whole "Melting Pot" metaphor is interesting.  When creating molten steel, the various pieces of metal are placed into a furnace.  Much like oil floats on top of water, the lighter, weaker metals float on the top of the molten steel, where they are dragged off as impurities.  What we are ideally left with is "pure" steel, supposedly stonger and better.  The lesser metals are discarded.  So it is with our population - those undesirable traits of our individual cultures are cast aside, making us all cookie-cutter Americans, devoid of any historical culture-heritage other than Nationalism.  This contrasts with what we know for metallurgy -  the stronger and lighter metals are frequently hybrids - alloys of two or more metals blended together.  So it should be with our cultures, yet we hang on desparately to the myth of the Melting Pot.

Others online have made mention of the interesting political problem that Republicans have with their stance on immigration.  Republicans have created their machine on the basis of wedge issues - dividing the electorate into "us-versus-them" segments, where they know they can count on various slivers of the electorate to vote thier way.  The slivers almost always are also the one's likely to participate in the grassroots portion of running an election or to provide campaign funds. 

Campaigns based on this ideology leads to the hyper-wealthy to supporting the removal of the Estate Tax, or the use of Abortion or Gay Marriage as wedges-issues to drive evangelical voters to the polls.

The party that has made fear, uncertainty, and doubt patented trade craft  is certainly not above thinly-veiled racism to drive the vote.  We all know that "urban blight" is just shorthand for "black people" and "urban gangs" is slang for Latinos.  It just is.

But immigration puts them in a difficult spot.  Two of their prime constituencies are at odds, neither one of which the Republicans can afford to lose.  This difficult spot has been referred to as a "double-sided wedge", in that no matter which side the GOP favors, there are still negative consequences from the other.

If they favor the xenophobia and borderline white-supremacist ideology of the far right and their talk-radio cheerleaders, then the financial spigot gets turned off from corporate America.  If they cater to big business, the disillusioned wingnuts may stay home, or write in some unelectable fringe candidate.

On the other hand, with the metaphorical leader of their part in Nixon-territory for public approval, the thinking may be that there's no one else to lose, so they might as well allow Bush to try to make his legacy immigration reform.  Whether they like it or not, if the GOP continues to be the white man's party, and the numbers of white people are shrinking, then the future of the GOP is in doubt.  We've seen multiple examples of outreach by Bush, but the regressive efforts of his political base are turning off people-of-color.

As for those on the left who are anti-immigration, consider the following:

• The non-Caucasians that you have been around are likely second or third generation Americans, here legally.  They may behave like jackasses, but it's not because they came from another country.
• You often hear that immigrants are using governmental services, depriving lawful residents from using them.  Think about that for a second.  You are here illegally.  So you are going to go to a federal or state office to APPLY for government aid?  I don't think so.  Odds are, their own communities provide all the support they need.
• Their exclusive communities - we often take umbrage to their ethnic enclaves and their use of their native tounges.  I know my neighborhood is quite polish, and you only have to go back three generations to find a non-English speaker.  I'm certain that the Mayflower blue-bloods of the time had the same fears of the dirty primitive Poles, Irish, Italians, and Germans who fowled the pure soil of the Scots-Irish America.  Ask yourself if you have equal outrage at the immigrants from Eastern Europe, who are also non-English speakers, or is it just because they look different from you?
• Concerned that Unions are on the decline?  Immigrants might save them.  Worried about the decline of the city.  Immigrants to the rescue again.
• Us white-folk don't like getting our hands dirty.  And those dirty jobs?  Odds are we wouldn't do them for the wages they pay.  Enter the immigrants.  How much do you think landscaping and drywall and carpentry would cost if not for immigrants?  The homebuilding industry is built on the back of illegals.  So keep in mind that the cost of your home would have gone up considerably if not for the illegal tradespersons doing the kind of work our grandfathers and great-grandfathers would have done.
• Don't think for a second that we could really throw all 12 million illegal aliens out - the cost would likely rival that of the Iraq War.  Not gonna happen.
• Getting here legally…that argument is based on the assumption that anyone who wants to come here can.  There's a many-hundreds-of-thousands backlog for applications, and naturalization for those who follow the process runs thousands of dollars.  Those "poor, tired, huddled masses yearning to be free" better have their checkbooks with them.
• Letting them in is amnesty for lawbreakers - this is my absolute favorite.  The wingnut crazies would have you believe that it's all water under the bridge, and that all the illegals here currently would just be naturalized and put on the tax roll.  Absolutely not.  It would cost at least a $5000 fine (plus lawyer fees and such) in order to become a naturalized citizen), not to mention a backlog sure to be years long.  The only other exception would be to be sponsored by your employer, which basically would return us back to the days of indentured servitude, where you become the property of your employer (anger your employer, get fired, lose your certificate, and get thrown out of the country).
• Lastly, remember the killer-lettuce stories and rampant bedbugs that fill the evening news on slow nights?  Well, that's the natural outcome of declining labor pools based on the fear-mongering of an illegal alien workforce.  There's no one to pick and clean the lettuce, and no one to strip and clean the hotel beds.  And there's your outcome from the jobs no Americans want.
• If you noticed, the Catholic church is A-OK with Immigration (many Latinos are catholics, which picks up for the same losses in population that the Catholic Church is feeling as a whole, particularly in the inner cities).  Conversely, although there is a not-insignificant evangelical Spanish population, the Fundamentalist faiths oppose immigration.  Likewise, new immigrant voters are likely to be Democrats, further highlighting the rationale against citizenship.

There you have it.  The anti-immigration movement has nothing to do with law and order, it only has to do with making sure that the white-Christian power structures stay in power a few more years.  Yet immigration is useful, necessary, and inevitable. The only question is whether we'll be on the winning or losing side of the equation when we are in the minority.