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Immigration: the good, the bad and mostly the ugly

Posted by daniel23 • 4/01/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: immigration, working class

So what do you lot all think about immigration? It's a contentious issue, I know. But I think increased immigration is a neoliberal strategy to smash the back of the working class -- it's a play on the chessboard of class warfare. If I may quote Jim Goad:

"The working class, regardless of color, knows keenly that we aren't suffering from a labour shortage. Look at how the special-interest groups skew on the topic, and a clearer picture might emerge: Monstro-corporations are funding pro-immigration causes, while labour unions and workers' organisations oppose them. [...] I want to make it clear that I'm objecting to corporate policies and am not placing a molecule of blame on the immigrants."

The Redneck Manifesto

Anyway, I thought that was a great point. For further mental stimulation before entering the debate, check out these articles as well:

thurrockiwca.wordpress.com/2007/11/25/new-labour-and-the-bnp/
celticanarchy.org/?p=72
www.workers.org.uk/features/feat_1007/migrate.html

Let the bun fight begin!

User Comments

4/01/08

techfun

It's funny you mention this today, the day when the US starts accepting H1-B visa petitions for fiscal year 2009.

I wrote about it at blog.techfun.org/more-foreign-workers-please.

So often when people worry about the loss of jobs due to immigration they focus on manual labor/factory/agricultural type jobs. H1-B visas in the US are for university graduates or those with postgraduate degrees in highly specialized and skilled positions. In the US the jobs at the low end that are still here are ones that are resistant to outsourcing. The next "low hanging fruit" in terms of moving jobs away from the US are those requiring higher skilled labor. Major research and science companies couldn't care less where in the world their research facility is located.

[reply]
4/01/08

clioandme

Daniel, aren't you yourself an immigrant? Perhaps you just see yourself as a temporary resident of the U.S., but that's the way a lot of immigration happens. People come for a limited period of time and end of staying. Kind of what happened to me in Germany for a while. Could happen again too. And no corporations have been involved. How about you? Are you the servant of some evil corporate policy? I'm guessing no.

[reply]
1. 4/01/08
  
  daniel23
  
  In a fair world, I wouldn't have been let in the US. In a fair world, the North of England wouldn't have been decimated by Thatcher. It's a vicious circle enit? But you're correct -- I was more talking about the UK situation tho, rather than the American one.
2. 4/01/08
  
  clioandme
  
  I almost asked myself if you were thinking of Great Britain, but that gun rights group you started had me convinced you had gone native. Anyway, the question of migration is an international one, and it's not limited to the major Western democracies either.
4/02/08

daniel23

No, I'm interested in bringing gun rights activism back to England with me!

[reply]
1. 4/02/08
  
  clioandme
  
  You're even more on the fringe than I thought.
2. 4/02/08
  
  daniel23
  
  What was that Malcolm X quote about extreme situations making extreme people?
3. 4/02/08
  
  Anok
  
  Is he really though, Mark? What is "fringe" in your opinion?
4. 4/03/08
  
  daniel23
  
  Anok, sure I'm "fringe." But seeing what the centre is nowadays, I'm proud to be fringe!
5. 4/03/08
  
  clioandme
  
  @Anok: Wanting gun rights in England says enough I think.
4/02/08

aningeniousname

I agree with you Daniel on immigration It's a way to push down working class wages and if you complain you are a racist. I'm not a racist I don't see us English as better than eastern Europeans.
They are cynically using immigration against us, I feel just as sorry for the poles that are forced to make the journey over here. We are all being exploited and told that that is the modern world deal with it.

[reply]
1. 4/02/08
  
  daniel23
  
  Exactly. Immigration is bad for immigrants and bad for natives. Everybody suffers except the ruling elite.
4/03/08

acousticguitarist

It's interesting how things happen globally at the same time.

In Australia the headline today was about blaming immigrants for housing problems here.

[reply]
1. 4/03/08
  
  clioandme
  
  Yes, globally. The thing is, though, lots of poor countries have these issues too. But we wealthy countries think we're the ones pulling all the weight.
2. 4/03/08
  
  acousticguitarist
  
  But have you ever noticed, and I guess you'd have to see international news, that the same things are covered across the world almost to the same day.
  
  Ok this week biometric id.
  
  Next week, nuclear issues...etc
  
  And they often look like local issues but it seems to be like there is a central global media realise for each thing. But each country sees it as a local issue, when really it's not.
3. 4/04/08
  
  clioandme
  
  I've noticed similarities with what's going on in the German press. I imagine there is a lot of natural feedback across national boundaries.
4. 4/04/08
  
  acousticguitarist
  
  I notice it in Australia because we get the US, Euro, Asian and Australian and it's like 'ok this weeks global agenda is....' all the same
4/03/08

rightcommentary

I am not in favor of Amnesty... didn't work in Simpson-Mazoli... won't work now.

However, bring them all... and melt them down in the Melting pot... I'm with Layla on this one:

"We are a nation of laws, yet we do not enforce them when it comes to immigration. It is too bad because now we really have a melting pot and the cast iron has worn thin."

www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/the-hill-chronicles.html

I say turn up the heat and melt them in...

"Unc"
www.rightcommentary.com

[reply]
1. 4/03/08
  
  MadameX
  
  I would suggest that "we are a nation of laws" is one of those pretty leftover fictions that no one has noticed has fallen by the wayside. We live in times when the people charged with creating and enforcing those laws are arrested for violating them on such a regular basis that it's hardly newsworthy, and in which many of those same people are NOT arrested for openly violating them. Corporations that can afford good lobbyists violate the laws in ways that kill people and enjoy the protection of our highest officials. Juries refuse to convict because they disagree with laws. Violating controversial laws can make one a celebrity, like Dr. Jack Kevorkian. I cannot think of a single fact to support the theory that we are presently a nation of laws.
2. 4/03/08
  
  clioandme
  
  RC, did you read any of the discussion here. Most of it is not centered on the U.S., so the conservative American slogan "amnesty" has little relevance. (Just love that capital "A" too . . . er . . . Not.)
4/04/08

jackpayne

Sanctuary cities throws the "Nation of Laws" belief right out the window.

[reply]
4/04/08

clioandme

I hadn't heard the phrase "Nation of Laws" before. Kind of a strange formulation, since a nation with no laws at all probably wouldn't be called a nation, but a failed state. The phrase seems like alarmist rhetoric to me.

[reply]
1. 4/04/08
  
  daniel23
  
  The concept "a nation of laws" just exists because them others are to be supposed to be without 'em.
2. 4/04/08
  
  clioandme
  
  Oh right. So this is part of that whole "exceptionalism" thing?
3. 4/04/08
  
  daniel23
  
  Yep.
4/04/08

urikalish

What was that lady saying...? "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

[reply]
1. 4/04/08
  
  daniel23
  
  That's all very well for the rich to say. It's more like "give us the masses we've made huddled by globalisation and we'll increase the labour pool to screw domestic workers as well."
4/04/08

LisaT

I am on the fence on this one. However, I'd like to comment about the economic arguments for immigration. While I use the US context, it can also apply to certain parts of Europe and other similarly situated regions.

There are many non-immigration alternatives to the economic arguments for immigration:

Argument = cheap immigrant labor is needed for agriculture
Counterargument = NAFTA allows US agribusiness to leased massive amounts of land in Mexico and export to the US. This raises local wages in rural areas of Mexico, provides lower food prices in the US, and causes less of the issues that social critics of immigration keep harping about.

Argument = immigration is needed for US agriculture
Counterargument = Japan does not have an open immigration policy, its agriculture industry remains intact due to better crop management--selecting crops that make for easier machine sowing and harvesting. Agriculture zones are managed and planned to provide for easier transport and processing.

Argument = immigration is the answer to the US' dwindling birth rate
Counterargument = If the focus is on the economic impact of less US-born Americans having children, part of the answer lies in investing more in a) bringing down the walls of discrimination that keep out talented and otherwise productive minority group members from participating more fully in the economy b) aggressively enforcing laws against disability and age and other forms of discrimination and c) integrating areas of the US that have traditonally been depressed--Appalachia, the Deep South, etc.

These arguments proceed from the assumption that immigration and border policy are sovereign rights of a country. There is a (rapidly growing) school of thought that immigration is a fundamental human right since humans have the right to go to any resource regardless of borders. This is based on the assumption that global goods are created by a global society and are not the product or property of any one particular country or society. For the latter school of thought, my arguments would be moot since they believe in open borders for all and universal citizenship.

[reply]
1. 4/04/08
  
  daniel23
  
  One World Government!
2. 4/04/08
  
  acousticguitarist
  
  Oh yes I've been watching that monster since 1979
  
  'By 1980 we will have the loose framework of an OWG'
  
  I'll just keep swiming in the ocean and playing guitar because it hurts my head when I think too hard