[lbo-talk] Dean Baker on immigration

[ravi]

At around 17/4/06 1:52 pm, Marta Russell wrote:
> On Apr 17, 2006, at 10:27 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> Marta Russell wrote:
>> 
>>> The moral ground I see is that so many who come here wind up
>>> getting on government benefits.
>> 
>> Actually they don't.
> 
> Not in my neighborhood.  They are middle age people.  "On balance in 
> contributing to the fisc" doesn't really mean anything to me.  I see
> the consequences of an overburdened system all around here.  The
> emergency rooms are overrun with non english speaking legals or
> illegals.  The public health care system is shutting down in LA.
> Emergency rooms are closing.  What emergency rooms remain open
> require 12 hour+ waits to see a doctor.  My disabled friends suffer
> because there are so many people on MediCal that they have cut doctor
> pay down to next to nothing and they don't get decent service.  Its a
> bottom of the barrel thing.

[If I am reading you right] I guess we don't need Rovean cunning to
divide and be conquered.

Here's a piece on another one in the hierarchy of oppressions:

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=75073
[Richard Kim]

=> If you want to see the pathologies plaguing the gay marriage movement
=> in action, you need look no farther than this article penned by
=> Jasmyne Cannick. Titled "Gays First, Then Illegals," Cannick's
=> editorial spews the kind of xenophobic rhetoric now rarely heard
=> outside of right-wing radio and white nativist circles -- unless, of
=> course, it's coming from the mainstream gay press. Pitting gay rights
=> against immigrants' rights, Cannick -- former "People of Color Media
=> Manager for GLAAD" -- considers it a "slap in the face to lesbian,
=> gay, bisexual, and transgender people" for Congress to debate
=> immigration reform when same-sex marriage remains unrecognized. For
=> your pleasure or fury, here are some of her greatest hits:
=>
=> "Immigration reform needs to get in line behind the LGBT civil rights
=> movement, which has not yet realized all of its goals. Which is not
=> to say that I don't recognize the plight of illegal immigrants. I do.
=> But I didn't break the law to come into this country. This country
=> broke the law by not recognizing and bestowing upon me my full rights
=> as a citizen."

Marta:
>
> I don't care what the national stats say.  What is happening on the 
> ground here is real.
>

In other words, the plural of anecdote is data?

	--ravi