>On the theoretical side, the best response is Doug Henwood on
immigration.
>He had a three minute bit on it in passing on his most recent show:
>
>http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#060406
>
>around minute 5:30. Below are the key bits:
Thanks for the plug.
I also said in this segment that it would be very difficult to mount a principled argument for closing the borders. One argument from principle would be a desire to preserve some notion of cultural purity - an odious principle, but still a principle. The "dean of feminist economists," Barbara Bergmann, has argued for putting up a fence around the first world because the teeming hordes threaten feminism and other liberal values. That's a principled argument of a sort, but also an odious principle. There's also a desire to defend income disparities, but that descends from principle to entitlement and greed. It would be very messy practically to open the borders, for sure, but there's no moral ground for keeping them shut.
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I don't think Marta or Baker or anyone, at least on this list, is arguing for shutting the borders. Marta makes a good point about citizenship. How can a government remain a national entity, if its politicos don't regulate citizenship?
I think the current immigration policy is doing what the government wants. It's getting cheap labour to those employers who need it. It's hard enough to talk union. It's much harder, if you're afraid of being deported, if you talk union.
That some of those employers are part of the dual 60 hour work week sector of the upper strata of the working class is all to the good in terms of keeping people politically supportive of "the way things are".
If Americans really want to preserve a national entity called the United States (and I think they do) and if the overwhelming majority want to live or think it natural and free to live in a capitalist system (and I think they do), then perhaps replacing illegal immigration (cat and mouse games at border fences with cops) with legal immigration is the key. How to do this, if the current system of cops and fences isn't working?
Americans are big on punishment as a solution to crime. Most support the death penalty. Why not require all job seekers to have a U.S. Passport? After all, the new ones are supposedly tamper proof--to keep the "terrs" out (porous borders aside). Combine this with mandatory sentencing of five years in a Federal pen for employers who hire people without U.S. Passports and you can remove all the fences (feminist ones included) and layoff the border patrol and use that money to set up and hire for the increased needs of the U.S. passport bureaucracy. At least, it would be more honest and the people who to would come to the U.S. under this system would be less afraid of talking union--always a scary topic for wage-slaves.
Now, what you've got is a kind of social Darwinist border game, where poor people with greater cunning are able to make it through the Federal/local cop-net to low paying American jobs and the rest get caught, manhandled and deported, only to try again. Some of them die trying to cross those deserts or floating in from the Caribbean. It's HOT and very dry out there between Chihuahua and Ciudad Acuna. Now, what you've got is the poor fighting over the scraps of the safety net--Marta's Medical stories--and employers gleefully raising the rate of exploitation. Now, what you've got is simmering ethnic hatreds, especially in the lower strata of the working class. Now, what you've got is what the ruling class wants: a weakened, demoralized, atomized, ideologically racist, divided proletariat.
But, will a ruling class whose interests are being served by the current set up or a reformed version of same buy a proposal designed to punish their members?
I doubt it.
Regards, Mike B)
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