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Illegal immigration - the politics of blame - look up, not down

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TroubleMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:07 PM
Original message
Illegal immigration - the politics of blame - look up, not down
I'm paraphrasing here something I wrote in another post, but I would like to discuss this with my fellow DUers, so I made separate post. I was responding to a post, and I got so into it, it turned almost into an essay.

The main point is that illegal immigrants don't cause you to lose jobs or benefits - it's the insatiable greed of those above us that cause this:

The cause of your problems is above you, not below you.

This is a common trick that the rich and powerful have used forever, and it always works. All the problems that people have cited and blamed on illegal immigration are not caused by illegal immigration. It's caused by the greedy, the rich, and the powerful. They have found a scapegoat for you to direct your anger at.

Instead of directing it at the real source of the problem, greed, they have tricked you into believing that illegal immigration caused you to have your benefits cut. This has worked throughout history, and it's one of the best plays out of the elite playbook. Here are some examples:

The poor whites blamed the Indians for their problems on the early frontier days. The problem was actually caused by large plantation owners using slavery instead of hiring people. Also they used power, political favors, and money to buy up all the land and not share it. This pushed the poor whites to the outskirts of the territories and into Indian territory. Of course, the Indians were blamed.

Post reconstruction white sharecroppers and tenement farmers blaming black sharecroppers and tenement farmers for their problems. Once again the problem was greedy land owners practicing unfair practices, but like usual people blame those below them, instead of looking up, and the blacks were blamed.

In the early union days big companies would break picket lines by hiring starving, unemployed blacks to work for them. Instead of blaming the greedy companies, they blamed the blacks, who were just trying to feed their families.


It seems it's almost human nature to blame somebody who's in a worse position than you or who is more defenseless. It's hard to lay the blame where the real problem is, the rich and powerful. They use their money and power to amass more money and power. The dirt poor are already dirt poor, and have nothing else to give. So where does this extra money and power come from? You....It gets squeezed out of you.

It's hard to look at the rich people and say that they're the ones doing wrong, that they're the ones hogging all the resources, but it's true. It's hard for you to admit that, because everybody wants to be rich and powerful. Everybody wants to move up in the world. You look up to these people thinking you could one day be like that with hard work and discipline (if you're good) or that you can scheme your way into that (if you're bad).

Most people want to be rich and powerful, so they think those people must have done something good to deserve it or are really hard workers. That's usually not the case. Nobody wants to be dirt poor, so they think those people have done something bad or are lazy. I know from personal experience, that's almost never true. I refuse to paint such a broad swathe to judge people, because there's good rich people and there's bad poor people. But your problems are caused by the bad rich people and not the bad poor people.

The problems you're mad about are caused by companies like Walmart who practice unfair business practices, anti-unionism, and who kill off a lot of jobs and small businesses. They also pay so low that it lowers the wages in your area. Also, they have horrible benefits, so that more employees are forced to apply for state benefits. When your benefits are cut, do you blame the Walmart worker? Is it the fault of the minimum-wageslave, who has to work at Walmart because the business they work for got put out of business by Walmart, that you lost some benefits? No, it's the greedy executives at Walmart that took it. Your money went to buy their mansion. However by your logic, you would blame the worker.

The problems you're mad about are caused by the rich and powerful voting to give themselves a tax cut, who voted on the bankruptcy law, who mandated the No Child Left Behind Act and refused to fund it.

Your problems are caused by big money going into politics so that the rich can enact the laws they want so that they can legally steal from you.

That's who you need to blame, not the illegal immigrants. They are just fighting to feed their families. They're not trying to take your job or your benefits. They're just trying to survive. Instead of blaming them, you should help them out. If you and others teamed up with them maybe you could do something to change the injustices that are causing problems from you.

You are idolizing the people who are stealing from you and hating the people who share your problems.

Also, all those examples I have cited above led to violence. The poor killed each other like pawns on a corporate chessboard, while the rich cashed in on the situation. Listen to what the "minutemen" on the Mexican border and their supporters are saying now. They believe that they have to "defend themselves" from illegal immigration. They should be storming wall street, but instead their terrorizing the poor.
....

I'd like to know if people here agree with me or not. Thanks for listening.
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solinvictus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:08 PM
Response to Original message
1. Fine the employers..
if the government assessed a fine equal to 10% of the net business value for hiring illegals, it would stop.
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TroubleMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:12 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. It's not about hiring them....we all share the same planet...
Edited on Thu Mar-31-05 08:13 PM by TroubleMan
We all share the same resources.

It's greed that's the problem. The tendency for those with wealth, power, and resources to enforce policies that take our money and our power and give it to them. This leaves the rest of us to scrap like dogs for the remainder.
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chomskyite_naderite Donating Member (44 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 10:02 PM
Response to Reply #2
16. no , fine and jail the employers
you have to have a carrot and a stick
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scarletlib Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:27 PM
Response to Original message
3. Good Post
Howard Zinn talks about this in his history of America.

This is nothing but class warfare but it is always disguised underneath another issue ie race, immigration, religion.

It is so easy to get the poor and disenfranchised to hate one another instead of looking as Troubleman says to the real source of the problem. Right now in this country there are elitist cheap labor republicans who are happy to see illegals take your jobs and drive down your wages. It benefits the elitists. At the same time their talking heads will stir up resentment among the illegals and the citizens in this country. Hey its great for the elitists. The illegals get jobs at lower wages. The ones who lose the jobs resent the immigrants rather than the elites who are allowing this to happen.
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chomskyite_naderite Donating Member (44 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:37 PM
Response to Reply #3
6. and we help them divide us up and turn us against ourselves
when we call people who want less immigration, racists.
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TroubleMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:39 PM
Response to Reply #6
8. Excellent point....I've been guilty of that

I shouldn't be so quick to blame either.
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chomskyite_naderite Donating Member (44 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:29 PM
Response to Original message
4. very insightful
but very few people think on that level. THe only way to teach most people to think like this is through video. But they don't run documentaries containing this sort of info on PBS, do they?
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tyedyeto Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:31 PM
Response to Original message
5. Good thought provoking post and I agree with what you have said. n/t
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TroubleMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:38 PM
Response to Original message
7. kk897 just reminded me that the Holocaust is the most dynamic example
of what I was talking about.

It reminds me of how normal people pushed to the brink can commit the most outrageous acts in desperate times.

Usually the anger is misdirected.
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scarletlib Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:45 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. Think also of Northern Ireland
There the issue used to keep the poor classes from uniting against the wealthy has been religion. Poor Irish Catholics fight poor Irish Protestants and again the wealthy profit from it.

Here is America the big dividing issue has always been race. Keep the poor blacks and poor whites hating and fighting each other. Meanwhile again the wealthy just keep on profiting. I think the second issue used after race is also immigration but when you think about it this is also race related.
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TroubleMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:47 PM
Response to Reply #9
11. It's easier to blame those that you're different from or disagree with
It's hard to empathize when you're told that you have nothing in common. Unfortunately we're all in the same boat.
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PsN2Wind Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:47 PM
Response to Original message
10. Importing labor
has much the same effect as exporting jobs.
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chomskyite_naderite Donating Member (44 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 10:00 PM
Response to Reply #10
15. two sides of the neoliberal pincer
Immigration for blue collar jobs and L-1 and H1B visas for white collars jobs to drop labor prices for jobs that cannot be exported.

Outsourcing and imports from overseas factories to drop the labor cost for jobs that can be exported.

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EVDebs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:52 PM
Response to Original message
12. Exporting America: Corporate greed destroying America
H1B visa fraud and now they are finding that they've allowed far more in than the 'cap'. The H1B Form 9035 also shows that they can't even investigate the frauds since Aug 2003...Congress has acted to pre-empt the Dept of Labor Inspector General from doing that or enforcing fines etc ! Those 'attestations' in the form, under penalty of perjury, cannot be investigated...

Shame ! And Bush & co continue to outsource jobs and promote it !
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scarletlib Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 08:54 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. and the rich get richer
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EVDebs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-01-05 03:17 PM
Response to Reply #13
22. Read Kevin Phillips' "Wealth and Democracy" and Brandeis quote
"You can have great wealth or a democracy, but you cannot have both"
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CrispyQ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 09:58 PM
Response to Original message
14. Blaming welfare moms instead of corporate welfare.
That one makes me wanna :puke:
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kk897 Donating Member (829 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-31-05 11:37 PM
Response to Original message
17. Once again, well said!
And nominated.

I, myself, am not sure whether racism is a construct of class war or vice versa. Either way, it's those who suffer greatly who end up suffering more.

At some point in the near future, I believe, there won't be many poor people in America left, because they will either have starved to death, been rounded up and sent to debtors prison, or have been forced into the military to support the endless war for finite natural resources. All the "lower level" jobs will have moved to maquilladoras in Mexico or plants in China... wouldn't it be ironic if Americans started sneaking into Mexico because it's the only place they can get a job? In another thread today, coincidentally, I think, I postulated that this might be called a "silent holocaust" brought about either by design (if you think the Bush administration and the neocons wish it to be so) or incompetence (if you don't buy the whole "master plan" idea).

It looks dire for the lower classes in America, but then again, I have an active imagination.
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scarletlib Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-01-05 06:56 AM
Response to Original message
18. kick for morning crowd
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Heidi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-01-05 07:17 AM
Response to Original message
19. How it works.
Edited on Fri Apr-01-05 07:18 AM by Heidi
Thank you, TroubleMan, for your insightful post. I agree 100 percent.

I was a journalist in a community that actually spent economic development funds to entice a Tyson (formerly IBP) meatpacking plant to come to town, fully knowing the company's environmental record and long track record of recruiting immigrant workers in Mexico. The community "fathers" also leveraged the area's economic desperation following the farm crisis of the mid 1980s to stir community support for the company, with assurances that it would improve conditions for local farmers and ranchers.

What were the first steps our county (and city) officials took to insure a "smooth" transition for the new workers and long-time residents? Launching a campaign of fear, which included a huge bond issue to build a new law enforcement center; enacting special zoning laws putting "affordable housing" (mobile home parks) outside the community core, effectively ghetto-izing these workers and their families; and de-annexing the meat processing plant from the city limits, so that its IBP/Tyson wouldn't have to pay city property taxes.
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scarletlib Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-01-05 08:05 AM
Response to Reply #19
20. Incredible
so I guess the farmers were 'helped' because they could continue to grow chickens and there was a market for them? What has been the outcome of all this in the community?
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Heidi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Apr-01-05 08:21 AM
Response to Reply #20
21. Cattle.
The premise was that ranchers would only have to truck their cattle to the local livestock market to get the best price, rather than shipping them further away. The cattle and feed markets really suffered in the mid-1980s, as did the downtown businesses in towns which served largely agricultural communities.

The answer to your second question is as varied as the number of people you might ask there. Socially, I thought it was good for the community to become more culturally diverse, but there were many, many things that the community wasn't told or didn't investigate in its desperation to attract a major employer.

Here are some examples of how easily a money-hungry corporate interest can turn desperate communities upside down:

http://www.migrationint.com.au/ruralnews/guam/jul_2002-...

http://net.unl.edu/swi/pers/ibp.html

http://www.jsri.msu.edu/RandS/research/irr/rr26abs.html
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