``As weird as it sounds initially, the government policies actually make a lot of sense because U.S. capital NEEDS *illegal* immigrants (or at least "guest workers" who have very limited rights). Legal immigrants with full rights (i.e. green cards) would be a serious problem for all sorts of industries. What business needs is a work force that is compliant and scared, and unlikely to complain about things like the employer's failure to pay the minimum wage -- which is to say an illegal work force....'' WD
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You're absolutely right. I don't know why I didn't see it. Of course. The new war on the new working class is to keep them non-persons---oldest trick in the book. The new class war is just the same old war with different legal manipulations, different names. Thanks for that.
It makes great sense. Follow the history of non-persons and you follow the class wars. Slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow... Or follow women, another class of non-persons. Or follow the immigrants paths in the late 19th and early 20thC. Legally wrapping people into non-person status goes hand in hand with class war. It is class war. I also think re-defining the war as class war through abrogation of civil rights, makes the link between civil rights and class war much easier to see, to grasp...
This is from the link you posted:
``21 pork plant workers charged with immigration violations
The Associated Press RALEIGH - Almost two dozen workers were arrested by immigration officers Wednesday at the country's largest hog slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, where about 1,000 mostly Hispanic workers had walked off the job recently to protest firings of immigrant workers.The 21 individuals, whose names and ages weren't released, were escorted from their jobs at the Smithfield Foods Inc. plant to an upstairs conference room, where they were interviewed by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Smithfield spokesman Dennis Pittman said.The workers were arrested on administrative immigration charges, which can include being in the country illegally or overstaying a work visa..''
Isn't that swell? Arrest the organizers and deport them if possible.
You know what's interesting is the media propaganda filters are so effective that most people not directly connected to these events, don't see them for what they are. Hell, I didn't--not really, not quite so clearly. BTW, these kinds of fed raids go on a lot around here and are reported as if the victims are the perpetrators in a classic distortion by reversal. I have come across some of these raids on my routes in SF, especially in the Castro and outer Mission. They cause tremendous traffic jams because the local cops block off a whole street and surround the place.
Last month or so there were a whole series of these raids and they caused a big sink---but I forgot the details.
I get waved at all the time by small groups of Hispanic men standing on street corners, especially on Cesar Chavez Blvd. The delivery van is big and looks similar to a contractors box van. This street used to be named Army St and it connected the old port-industrial area (downhill and east to the bay) with the working class neighborhoods just across the freeway that fed the industrial area with workers. The street functions pretty much the same, still does the same thing, but most of the workers standing on the corners are on the uphill side of the street looking for small building contractors who pick up crews to work on the rich houses way up the hills or somewhere else.
``Don't believe for a minute that Congress will pass immigration reform that will prevent the bullying of low wage immigrant workers -- that would overturn the business models of entire industries (the price of produce would skyrocket if agribusiness needed to pay higher wages, for one thing)...'' WD
Agreed. The big establishment political problem is how to define the issue so as to mask it. Taking our jobs, living off our hard earned tax dollars, filling up our public schools and hospitals, keep crime down, keep out disease, drugs, etc. And then in the same breath, Congress justifies `free trade' to promote the Mexican economy, by cross border agri-bizz importation of produce grow with whatever genetic engineered, toxic waste stew, radiated stuff that passes for lettuce, tomatoes, and so forth. I eat it anyway. God only knows where last night's chicken came from or what was in it. Hopefully the lime, curry and jalapenos neutralized the toxins. I gotta try this curry out on some toxic bay rock fish.
Here is a related thing. A lot of wheelchairs and parts used to be chromed. But the US EPA and other regulatory agencies started to crack down on the pollution, especially in the mid-western industries that dumped into the Great Lakes. So those industries outsourced their chrome and other plating work to a whole series of maquiladoras in northern Mexico, bordering the Rio Grande. Nice huh? The same thing happened to the electro-mechanical components which used to be made in the US---lots of heavy metal pollutants. These required a more sophisticated production system so these were outsourced to Taiwan and China. Most of these components come back here to be assembled into finished products---by less skilled production line workers---no doubt heavily populated by our new working class.
CG