The Blue Voice

Monday, March 27, 2006

Immigration demagoguery

David Neiwert is one of the most perceptive observers of the far right in America today. He has a particularly good eye for ways in which radical-right and racist ideas (in the truest sense of the word) get mainstreamed into today's Republican Party. Which makes his expertise particularly valuable in today's environment.

Karl Rove has decided that waving the terrifying menace of gay marriage in front of the white folks' faces may not be enough to hold on to the House. So he's ready to let loose the nativists to save the white folks from the Mexican Peril. Neiwert spells it out for us (The immigration conundrum Orcinus blog 03/26/06)

The Republicans in Congress who spearheaded these measures - particularly Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin - represent a resurgent Cro-Magnon wing of the party, one that is threatening to swamp the genteel grip of corporate conservatives whose approach to immigration is decidedly different, if equally poisonous.

The Cro-Magnon approach, embodied by vigilantes like the Minutemen, is to blame the pawns. Their policies are predicated on the laughable idea that we can build a fortress wall around the country and just keep people out, a pretty notion that quickly runs aground on the reality that no wall can contain the larger forces driving illegal immigration. They consistently scapegoat the emigres while ignoring - and indeed abetting - those same larger forces.

Mind you, this is an easy issue to whip up public sympathy with majority whites. Latino immigration is creating huge demographic shifts across the country, and as with all such waves of immigration, it's creating real cultural frictions, especially as assimilation bogs down in the sheer mass of the wave.

So what the American far right is doing is appealing to white Americans' base racial instincts: associating the immigrants with crime and disease, accusing them of being part of a "conspiracy," complaining that they're polluting white culture. These are all significant features of the rhetoric used by both the Minutemen and their supporters in Congress.

The "Cro-Magnon" wing of the Party. It's probably not quite fair to the Cro-Magnons. But I'm officially making that one part of my vocabulary right now.

He also nails the approach of the Halliburton wing of the Party:

The Cro-Magnon approach is repellent enough on its own merits, but the other side of the Republican coin on immigration is the Bush plan to create a "guest worker" program that is nothing less than the realization of corporate America's wet dream of having a labor force that cannot vote. It would create a permanent underclass of disenfranchised workers, and would forever change the very nature of immigration as we have historically known it in America, severing it from citizenship.

This two-headed approach to immigration is like being given a choice of refreshing beverage: arsenic or strychnine. You pick.

Yep, that's how it works in the Christian Republican White People's Party these days.

The Republican immigration scam is that, like Neiwert says, they want the cheap immigrant labor. But they want their rights as workers to be distinctly second-class (or less). The theory is that illegal immigrants are less likely to organize unions because they can be intimidated more easily by the threat of jail or deportation.

One key feature to watch as the nativist crusade unfolds this year is "employer sanctions". Effective sanctions against employers who hire illegals are entirely feasible. But, oh gosh, their lobbyists say, it would hurt profits, and raise prices, and damage the shareholders, and we would never want to see anything done to gouge consumers or chisel the shareholders! And, oh, what about Small Business? Those virtuous Mom-and-Pop stores, and the good Christian white folks running repair services, and so on. Why, it would just be a terrible burden for them!

For instance, in this Business Week article, the no-employer-sanctions mantra is pretty clear (A Body Blow To Illegal Labor? 03/27/06 issue):

Meanwhile, Congress is embroiled in an acrimonious debate about bills requiring employers to validate workers' Social Security numbers, as well as demands by Senator John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and others to extend some kind of legality to the nation's illegal workforce. State legislatures are considering their own laws. "We are close to passing an enforcement-only regime that seeks to solve the illegal immigration problem largely on the backs of employers," says John Gay, senior vice-president for government relations at the National Restaurant Assn.

Business groups acknowledge that some kind of crackdown is inevitable. For years, lax federal and state enforcement of existing laws has given employers virtual carte blanche to hire illegals. Just four notices of intent to fine employers of unauthorized workers were issued in 2004, down from 417 in 1999, according to the Government Accountability Office. If that now changes, the result would be a catch-22 for employers that want to stay in the U.S. but have grown dependent on cheap, illegal labor as a way to remain globally competitive. A Mar. 8 report from the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that undocumented immigrants account for 24% of the country's agricultural workers, 14% of construction jobs, and 9% of manufacturing occupations. (my emphasis)

The trick for the Halliburton Republicans in these periodic rounds of immigrant-bashing is to get some kind of anti-immigrant law passed. But they want to make sure that they can still get their illegal workers, and they don't care how hard the cayotes (people smugglers) are on their human cargoes, as long as enough get through.

And a cosmetic enhancement of employer sanctions are okay, too. As long as that "lax federal and state enforcement of existing laws" continues. As long as they can keep on making these sorts of excuse (from the BW article):

Federal legislation requiring Mohawk and other U.S. employers to scrutinize the Social Security numbers and immigration status of all workers could add to companies' hiring woes. A voluntary program operated by the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) known as the Basic Pilot, has garnered little support from business. Only 2,900 of the nation's estimated 7 million employers participate in the program. And the government is ill-prepared to handle more. Of 73,000 employee checks referred to USCIS last year, a third required case officers to investigate further because the agency lacked sufficient data about employees' status.

Companies that have volunteered for the pilot say the reporting mechanisms are flawed. Giant chicken processor Tyson Foods Inc., which joined in 1998, says the program helps verify Social Security numbers, but it cannot identify immigrants who may have assumed other people's names and personal data. "We believe companies should not be placed in the role of policing who has proper work documentation," says Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson in a statement. Tyson was able to defeat a RICO suit brought by the Justice Dept. similar to the one Mohawk is fighting. (my emphasis)

It's an ugly, cynical game. But there are risks for the Reps when they Cro-Magnons start running loose on the immigration issue. Because the bottom line for the Halliburton Republicans is that their wing of the party is expected to go to the wall to avoid the dreaded employer sanctions.

Steve Gilliard (optimistically) sees the latest nativist push as the death rattle of the Republicans Southern Strategy begun by Nixon, which was to bind a large majority of Southern white voters to the Party through exploiting white racial fears and resentments. He writes:

The other side of the Southern Strategy was to appease white abti-Castro Cubans, and support white landowners in the Southwest and California. But since the GOP has the inability to learn, they forgot the last time immigrant bashing became an issue. Remember Prop 187? The law that made California blue. What they wanted to do was bar illegals from all services. Which was unconsititutional.

Now, like a fat, Western Jesse Helms, here comes Tom Tancredo.

He doesn't care about the fate of the party, he just wants them brown people gone. Only problem, they're the fastest growing group of Americans. And Chicanos with 200 years in the US don't like anti-immigration laws any more than the most recent fence jumpers. And as Prop 187 proves, they vote.

Oh yeah, the Catholic Church opposes this as well.

If Bush was smart, he'd call Tancredo out on his racism. But he won't, because the base will go nuts.

The smart Dem play is to offer a moderate bill, along the lines of Bush's, and the the GOP go to war.

In another post, Gilliard puts it this way:

As we call this: the GOP's race problem.

On one hand, they want to keep the fundies happy, on the other, they have to deal with reality, which is that our economy thrives on low cost labor from Mexico and Asia. This idea that we can turn millions of people into felons and build a wall to keep the brown people out is insane.

But, we're watching the GOP become the minority party in the US. Blacks are outraged after Katrina. Now, Latinos will be enraged over this.

What we learned this week and will learn over the next couple of weeks, is that the GOP base is crippling their ablity to grow, and cultural issues will not trump economic issues for minorities. I feel for Ken Mehlman. He's trying to save the GOP and Congress is killing his efforts. You can't say vote for us because we protect babies, but we want to jail your cousin Sergio for trying to make a living.

posted at 1:08:00 AM by Bruce Miller

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