*Runs into topic late, as usual*
Some issues that no one has brought up yet:
(1) The number of illegal immigrants that aren't Latino. While most are Latino, there are a significant number of illegal immigrants from other parts of the world--especially Asia. Many illegal immigrants come here legally and overstay their visas.
(2) Why do rich capitalists so often escape the blame? You rarely hear corporations chiming in on the issue for one reason:
illegal immigrants provide an excellent pool of extremely expoitable labor. Rich corporations love illegal immigrants. "Hey, you'll wash my toilets and build my new building for 3 bucks an hour? Cool! And if you complain or ask for healthcare, we'll just deport you."
(3) "Why are so many coming here?" is the tired and oft-repeated inquiry. Better question: "Why are so many
leaving?" I doubt most illegal immigrants are sitting on their second story balcony sipping on another strawberry daquiris, thinking, "Hmm! Let's be illegal immigrants who get pushed around and hated on." On the contrary, as many have noted in this thread, those that are coming are almost always beyond the desperation point, and no wall (or whatever barrier you imagine) between the US and other countries is going to stop them from trying to get here.
We might combine points (2) and (3) to make a related observation: Have US policies helped created the conditions which encourage emigration from countries to the US? Now
that's not a question you're likely to hear from many on either side of the debate. I rarely do. But I cannot help but think of policies like NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement.) The passage of NAFTA in 1993 was disastrous for certain areas of Mexico--especially areas primarily populated by indigenous Mayans, who "lived the land" rather than "lived on the land." Consider the following statement written in 2005 (you can read the whole thing at
http://www.independence.net/chiapas/)Since 1994 and the onslaught of NAFTA, the war against the peasant Mayans has been 'low intensity' enough to be on few people's radars. The government strategy is age-old. The native peoples live on resource-rich land, with petroleum, water, uranium, hardwood, and genetic bonanzas. Not to mention all those archeological sites just waiting for tourist development. The Mexican government, greatly in debt to the US and looking out for its own upper class, betrayed its poor masses with NAFTA. It changed 30 points of law to accommodate it, including Article 27 of its constitution which had protected peasant land for perpetual communal use. Now, if the campesinos find their lives intolerably threatened they can lose their land. And thus the pressure of 1/3 of Mexico's military camping out on their doorsteps, helicopter flyovers, rapes, disappearances, murders. And the devastating effect of the plummeting price of corn to the grower, down 80% since NAFTA's inception.
As a result of the disruptive turmoil wrought by the demands of advanced global capitalism, many sought refuge in America--most illegally. Recalling point (2) above, it was these rich multinational corporations who most supported the passing of NAFTA, as they had much to gain, the indigenous peoples of Mexico be ::Dolphin Noise::ed.
The crucial questions: Who, specifically, is immigrating here illegally? Who
really benefits from all this? There is compelling evidence that middle- and lower-class Americans do suffer, especially blacks, whose jobs often get filled by illegal immigrants. But the corporations love them! So why does nobody get on the case of rich, multinational corporations??? No pun intended, but that's the billion-dollar question in my mind!
In the end, we have to remember that these debates are hardly new. Consider the following immigration exclusion acts:
*1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
*1906-07 Gentlemen's Agreement (Japanese laborers can no longer leave Japan)
*1924 Immigration Act (aimed at Southeast Europeans, such as Jews, Italians, Poles, Greeks, etc.)
*1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act (Filipinos can no longer immigrate here.)
If you study out the debates surrounding each of these, you will encounter chilling parallels between those debates and what we are experiencing now, such as:
*Are they taking our jobs? The above 4 immigration exclusion acts were all about this feeling that the newcomers were taking the jobs that belong to WASP-Americans (below, we'll see they were called "Nordics") and providing a debilitating drain on the economy.
*Is this a
racial issue? Here's one place where today's debates somewhat diverge from the debates of yesterday. I'm not saying that today's immigration debate has no racial dimension (I absolutely think it does). The difference is that back then, nobody danced around the racial issue. That these folks were not white was a major factor in their exclusion.
On this latter point, consider the words of then-Senator David Reed of Pennsylvania regarding the 1924 Immigration Act (the "Johnson-Reed Act"):
Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly the greatest of any nation in the Nordic breed. It is for the preservation of that splendid stock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylum for the oppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfect that splendid type of manhood that has made America the foremost Nation in her progress and in her power, and yet the youngest of all the nations.
In our PC post-civil rights world, what role "race" plays in the current immigration debate is most complex.
Sorry (again) for the long post, and feel free to ask me to clarify anything that didn't make sense.
