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#Post#: 4856--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: rp Date: March 16, 2021, 2:15 am
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I wanted to elaborate on this post:
[quote author=rp link=topic=262.msg4855#msg4855 date=1615878348]
HTML https://youtu.be/hmg3P8dgv_A
[/quote]
There are tons of these types of comments
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmg3P8dgv_A&lc=Ugwk_Niupa4a2HEzCb94AaABAg:
[quote]
My friend who’s a Vietnam vet is sleeping in his car. How come
he doesn’t get the needed help while illegals takes Priority?!?!
[/quote]
Maybe tell your bum friend to get a job instead of going to
other countries to murder "non-Whites" lol
#Post#: 8773--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 13, 2021, 9:51 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Our enemies think this is an argument against accepting Afghan
refugees:
HTML https://vdare.com/posts/afghan-evacuees-filling-hospital-beds-in-northern-virginia-americans-turned-away
So let's scale this down. If I set fire to my neighbours' house,
should I then complain if my neighbours get access to the first
aid kit in my house before I do?
#Post#: 8823--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 15, 2021, 11:17 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Our rightist enemies are officially Marxists now:
HTML https://vdare.com/articles/marx-got-it-right-mass-immigration-wrecks-wages-why-won-t-america-s-resurgent-communists-admit-it
[quote]Communist theoretician Karl Marx anticipated a key
economic argument against mass immigration that VDARE.com has
made since its beginning: Unfettered immigration depresses wages
for host-nation workers.
...
On immigration, Marx was on the right side of the debate, if not
necessarily for the right reasons. Oddly, America’s resurgent
Communists don’t seem to have noticed.[/quote]
So why call today's leftists "Communists"? We are patently not!
You have literally just admitted that you agree with Marx more
than we do!
[quote]Yet the Left, which so concerns itself with immigration
and labor exploitation, thwarted President Trump’s modest
efforts to protect American workers with immigration controls at
almost every turn. Where is the traditional patriotic
constituency within the egalitarian Left to resist not only the
exploitation of wage-lowering immigrant workers, but also lobby
on behalf of American workers whom mass immigration harms?
Answer: Nowhere. Now that The Great Replacement is underway, the
Left, almost exclusively focused on race, feels no obligation
for those workers because most of them are white.[/quote]
Those workers too are free to emigrate to look for a job in
other countries. This is the whole point. Letting everyone look
for a job wherever they can find one means more choices for
everyone and thus a greater likelihood of more people finding
the most suitable job for themselves. The existence of
xenophobic "white" workers who would rather not look for a job
elsewhere even though they are allowed to is not our fault.
[quote]Carl Horowitz [Email him] is a veteran Washington,
D.C.-area writer on immigration and other issues[/quote]
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/jews-have-nothing-in-common-with-us!/
#Post#: 8984--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: 90sRetroFan Date: September 23, 2021, 2:41 am
---------------------------------------------------------
More stupidity from our enemies:
HTML https://gatesofvienna.net/2021/09/our-citizens-owe-afghanistan-nothing/
[quote]The following video features a member of the AfD
(Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany) speaking
in the Landtag, or regional parliament, of North
Rhine-Westphalia. His remarks refer to the Green Party’s demand
that Germany admit thousands of new Afghan “refugees”.
...
Video transcript:
00:00
couldn’t have made it clearer
00:06
facing following the upcoming national elections.
00:11
attracted to our country,
00:17
as the hook.
00:21
owe this country something.
00:26
there before our presence
00:33
taxpayer
00:38
Kush, but not only that!
00:44
there.
00:48
think it is sad that none
00:55
ladies and gentlemen.
01:02
crippled.[/quote]
So again, let's scale this down. If I set fire to my neighbour's
house, do I owe my neighbour nothing just because I paid for the
arson equipment and because I suffered burns myself in the
process?
#Post#: 9867--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: 90sRetroFan Date: November 22, 2021, 8:58 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
OLD CONTENT
Here is Laura Loomer (Jew) pretending not to understand what
private property is:
www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/01/laura-loomer-and-illegal-alien-
actors-storm-pelosis-yard-set-up-sanctuary-camp-video/
We get a lot of this, basically rightists claiming that if we
are opposed to a wall to keep out immigrants from the country,
we should "similarly" be opposed to walls to keep out immigrants
from our own homes also. This is, of course, nonsense. Being
opposed to a wall to keep out immigrants from the country merely
means we want immigrants treated with the same standards that we
treat natives in terms of freedom of movement. And, in general,
we do not let natives into our own homes either.
This is one of many false equivalences that in intellectually
healthier days used to be considered so stupid that it was
unnecessary to debunk them, but the problem with rightists is
that they do not stop using an argument because it is stupid,
instead they keep using it regardless. And because of the
absence of debunking, some people actually end up getting strung
along. So it falls upon us to debunk every rightist argument we
encounter. If you have come across a rightist argument on the
subject that you want debunked, please post it below. Our aim is
to gradually build up a comprehensive list of debunked rightist
arguments here.
---
I want to eventually collect every anti-immigration argument
currently floating around the internet, and debunk them all
here, so that leftists can use this topic as a one-stop
reference. Ultimately we can make it into a numbered list, and
thereafter every time we see the argument posted elsewhere yet
again, we can just quote the number and link to the appropriate
debunking. This will save leftists a lot of time when debating.
---
"They're taking our jobs!"
Immigrants, just like everyone else, are consumers as well as
producers. Immigrants may take jobs, but will also give custom
to local businesses for the products and services that they need
for daily life. These businesses, in turn, will have to employ
additional staff in order to effectively provide these
additional products and services. In short, jobs are taken, but
jobs are also created.
(Additionally, freedom to migrate applies to everyone. It
doesn't just mean that people from A, B and C can look for jobs
in D, it also means people from D can look for jobs in A, B and
C! All it really means is more opportunity for everyone.)
"They broke the law!"
In saying this they expose only their own disregard for the
fundamental principle of law that the only people obliged to
abide by any given law of any country are those who receive
protection from the same law in return. For example, we are
obliged to not steal because in return the state will protect
our property. We are obliged to not run red lights because in
return we get to use the safer roads that result from traffic
lights. And so on. This principle breaks down when it comes to
immigration, because those who abide by a so-called “law” that
prohibits them from entering are not in any way protected by
this same so-called “law”. On the contrary, they are simply left
outside where the state need not care about them at all (and can
even bomb them)! Thus so-called “laws” prohibiting immigration
are not really laws at all, but tyranny.
"They're voting for big government!"
"They're leeching off of welfare!"
It is a valid political position to oppose welfare in general
(for anyone). It is not a valid political position to oppose
welfare for immigrants while supporting it otherwise.
---
vdare.com/articles/bernie-s-past-common-sense-on-immigration-wil
l-haunt-him-in-2020
[quote]“If poverty is increasing and if wages are going down, I
don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this
country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than
American workers and drive waged down even lower than they are
now,” Sanders said in an interview with Lou Dobbs in
2007.[/quote]
I want to address this very common rightist argument that
"economic migration lowers workers' wages". What they are saying
is migration adds workers to the labour market in the
destination country, which causes a reduction in the value of
labour there (as supply increases relative to demand). None of
this is untrue. But by the exact same reasoning, migration
raises workers' wages by subtracting people from the labour
market in the origin country, which causes an increase in the
value of labour remaining there (as supply decreases relative to
demand). Every immigrant is also an emigrant. If a worker
migrates from A to B, any wage decrease in B caused by this
migration is accompanied by simultaneous wage increase in A.
Thus it is false to say that economic immigration lowers wages.
Only adding new people *coughOrbancough* to the labour market
can do this. People already in the labour market moving around
inside it can never do this.
(What rightists really mean, of course, is that they prefer
others whom they do not care about to be the ones suffering
lower wages. This is tribalism.)
Another similarly common rightist argument that "migration by
criminals will increase crime" is similarly faulty. Again, every
immigrant is also an emigrant. The total number of criminals is
unchanged. Only the location of crimes are changed.
(And again, what rightists really mean, of course, is that they
prefer others whom they do not care about to be the victims of
crime. This is tribalism.)
---
I wonder if it might actually decrease the global amount of
crime. If criminals move to a country with a better police
force, they're more likely to be punished, right?
---
Yes!
HTML https://i.imgflip.com/115zmi.jpg
(By the way:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier
Warmbier's family were advised to maintain silence about his
Jewish heritage while he was under arrest )
---
Here is really stupid rightist "environmentalist"
anti-immigration (or, more precisely,
anti-"Third-World"-immigration) argument: supposedly,
immigration from the "Third World" to the "First World" is bad
because it results in more people consuming resources (and hence
damaging the environment) at the "First World" level.
The problem with this argument is that it contradicts rightists'
own other claim about "Third World" immigrants: that they will
not start living like "First Worlders" just by immigrating, but
will instead transform the "First World" country to which they
have immigrated into another "Third World" country.
Both cannot be true. (As a True Leftist, I am hoping for the
latter to be true, which will help the environment.)
Oh, well, at least rightists implicitly admit that "Third World"
countries are better for the environment than "First World"
countries.
---
Here’s another one: “Africa for the Africans, Asia for the
Asians, White countries for everyone!”
Circa Bob Whitaker
---
Short answer: what "white countries"?
Bob Whitaker basically thinks that when "whites" should get to
keep for themselves the lands they stole. But why should they?
(Answer: the same reason Jews should get to keep Palestine for
themselves.) Our response is:
[img]
HTML https://rlv.zcache.com/no_one_is_illegal_on_stolen_land_yard_sign-r43fef91c193841ea89fd7d8933c76015_fomuz_704.webp?rlvnet=1[/img]
More importantly, if it's OK for "whites" to live outside of
Europe (as hundreds of millions currently do), it's OK for at
least the same number of "non-whites" to live in Europe. (We
need a graphical version of this latter point.)
This pretty much highlights how it is flat-out logically
impossible for WNs to win the ethical debate. If they go with
the position that migration is wrong (which they need for
criticizing migration by "non-whites"), then they cannot avoid
the conclusion that "whites" wronged "non-whites" first, and
hence have no authority to complain. The only logical way to
avoid incriminating themselves is to go with the position that
migration is not wrong, in which case they have no reason to
complain. Either way they are screwed.
Their only recourse is to declare that it is OK when "whites" do
it but not OK when "non-whites" do it ie. ingroup/outgroup
double-standards a.k.a. "It's OK to be white!" In other words,
to declare that they do not care about ethics.
#Post#: 9868--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: 90sRetroFan Date: November 22, 2021, 9:10 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
OLD CONTENT contd.
Some anti-immigration arguments I've heard recently:
[1]: Prevent cartels from getting in.
As if they won't just come up with new ways to smuggle in drugs,
which is something they've been used to doing for decades now.
[2]: Save billions of taxdollars.
Which is stupid because I can't imagine how building one of the
longest walls in human history and consistently MAINTAINING IT
would save billions.
---
"new ways to smuggle in drugs"
E.g. drones. And who invented drones?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle#History
[quote]Israel developed the first UAV with real-time
surveillance.[/quote]
"Save billions of taxdollars."
Which they can then give to Israel so that Israel can invent
even more advanced machines that we never asked for.
---
A weak version of my longstanding line of argument has finally
gone mainstream:
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/opinion/immigration-reparations.html
[quote]Why Should Immigrants ‘Respect Our Borders’? The West
Never Respected Theirs
...
There is a lot of debate these days about whether the United
States owes its African-American citizens reparations for
slavery. It does. But there is a far bigger bill that the United
States and Europe have run up: what they owe to other countries
for their colonial adventures, for the wars they imposed on
them, for the inequality they have built into the world order,
for the excess carbon they have dumped into the atmosphere.
...
Before you ask them to respect our borders, ask yourself: Has
the West ever respected anyone’s borders?
...
Immigration quotas should be based on how much the host country
has ruined other countries. Britain should have quotas for
Indians and Nigerians; France for Malians and Tunisians; Belgium
for very large numbers of Congolese.
And when they come, they should be allowed to bring their
families and stay — unlike the “guest workers” who were enticed
to build up the postwar labor force of the colonizers and then
asked to leave when their masters were done exploiting them.
...
Just as there is a carbon tax on polluting industries, there
should be a “migration tax” on the nations who got rich while
emitting greenhouse gases. The United States is responsible for
one-third of the excess carbon in the atmosphere; Europe,
another one-quarter. A hundred million refugees fleeing
hurricanes and droughts will have to be resettled by the end of
the century. The United States should take a third, and Europe
another quarter.
...
What is good immigration policy for the United States is
separate from what is just and moral for the peoples whose
destiny America, past and present, has affected. It might make
economic sense for the United States to let in more skilled
Indians and fewer unskilled Latinos, but America owes them more,
and it should open its doors more to its southern neighbors.
History is what has happened and can never un-happen; history is
happening right now. Attention needs to be paid. So does the
bill.[/quote]
www.suketumehta.com/
[img]
HTML https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1624/4117/products/51SUiVUQt8L._SX288_BO1_204_203_200_f5b80e05-df66-4d66-a9b2-c3853b87dc34.jpg?v=1605664910[/img]
HTML https://www.amren.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/7-1.jpg
HTML https://www.amren.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/9-1.jpg
[quote]When today’s immigrants are asked, “Why are you here?”
they can justly respond, “We are here because you were
there.”[/quote]
Compare with my version:
[quote]A distinguishing feature of leftism is a strong vision of
poetic justice. The wish to see victims of oppression redressed
and their oppressors finally held to account for their unfair
gains is among the most intense of leftist emotions. One
development that many sincere leftists thus long to see realized
is the demographics of each former Western colonial power coming
to resemble the demographics of its historical colonial empire
as a whole at the height of its power, in other words the people
from the former colonies at last receiving compensation for
their past labour for the benefit of the colonial base, by
recovering their fair share of the colonial base.[/quote]
And don't forget my wallet analogy and air conditioner analogy
for dealing with rightists:
HTML http://aryanism.net/blog/aryan-sanctuary/anti-zionist-harvest-2018/comment-page-2/#comment-178416
Wallet analogy:
[quote]“But why would the Refugees want to come to the West, if
indeed it is the West that has caused their misery?”
If you steal my wallet and I chase you, would you ask me why I
am chasing you if indeed it was you who stole my wallet? (What
else do you expect me to do? Chase someone else who didn't steal
my wallet?)
...
“Many times, throughout history people have lost their homes and
livelihoods but they did not flee, they stayed and rebuilt…Is
this not more noble?”
If you steal my wallet, it would be slavish for me to stay
(hence letting you get away with the theft unpunished) and
merely re-earn the money (so you can steal it again later?). It
would be more noble for me to chase you down, kill you and take
back my wallet.[/quote]
Air conditioner analogy:
[quote]“you have said that the Whites are more cruel then say
Africans, if that is the case then why would the Africans want
to go to the cruel place from which the Whites came from?”
Let me offer another analogy. Suppose you live next door to me,
and you install an air conditioner that cools your room by
blowing hot air into my room. That is cruel. In this case,
should I not want to move into your room? (What else should I
do? Install an air conditioner of my own to blow the hot air
back into your room and see whose air conditioner is more
powerful, which wastes even more energy?)
...
“If Western Civilization is inferior than why would refugees
from superior Oriental cultures want to go to the West to be
Westernized and become inferior?”
Installing an air conditioner that cools your room by blowing
hot air into my room is inferior behaviour. Your room is cooler
as a practical consequence of your inferior behaviour, so of
course I want to move into your room. I do not become inferior
by moving into your room because I wasn’t the one who installed
the air conditioner. (I especially do not become inferior if I
intend to demolish the air conditioner after entering your
room.)[/quote]
As well as the gun analogy:
HTML http://aryanism.net/blog/aryan-sanctuary/anti-zionist-harvest-2018/comment-page-1/#comment-178341
[quote]“you will probably say that the violence and or poverty
is cause somehow by the West, then if that is the case why would
you want to invite them to the West which has caused the
violence and the poverty in their own countries?”
people living in any country which is within target range of
another country’s WMDs, but which itself is not equipped with
WMDs sufficient to launch a matching counterstrike, are
automatically justified in moving into the WMD-armed country as
a self-defence measure, no differently than how if someone from
across the room points a loaded gun at you (who are unarmed) and
you run towards him to grab the gun, you are not attacking him
but only defending yourself; if the gunman is injured as a
result, it is entirely his fault for pointing the gun at you in
the first place.[/quote]
---
More from This Land Is Our Land:
www.cnbctv18.com/buzz/meet-suketu-mehta-the-balladeer-of-immigra
tion-3971771.htm
[quote]In his stunning new book, ‘This Land is Our Land – An
Immigrant’s Manifesto’, Mehta recounts how in the 1980s his
maternal grandfather in London was accosted by an elderly
British man who lashed out: “Why are you here? Why are you in my
country?”
‘“Because we are the creditors,” calmly responded his
grandfather, who was born in India, worked all his life in
colonial Kenya and was now retired in London. “You took all our
wealth, our diamonds. Now we have come to collect.”
...
It is indeed almost a karmic tale of epic proportions, the end
result of hundreds of years of colonial exploitation and abuse
by the Masters which stripped the home countries of wealth and
jobs - and now the exploited are once again on their doorstep,
looking for justice, for retribution. As Mehta writes, “This
book is being written in sorrow and rage - as well as hope. I am
angry: about the staggering global hypocrisy of the rich
nations, having robbed the poor ones of their future, now
arguing against a reverse movement of peoples – not to invade
and conquer and steal, but to work.”
...
“The rich countries have always claimed the freedom to move
around the planet, not just to sightsee or seek employment, but
to invade, conquer,” he writes. “At airports around the world,
the holders of Indian and African passports line up miserable in
hours-long lines while their fellow passengers holding American
and European passports, gilded passports, swan through
immigration.”[/quote]
I agree. Also:
[quote]Even the terms differ for the rich and poor: brown
people, often working in menial or service jobs are called
‘migrants’ while white people, often working as executives or
professionals get the exalted title of ‘expats’.[/quote]
I noticed this long ago too. There actually exist accurate
business-language definitions of these terms. If you are an
employee of a company in A, and your company sends you to work
for them in B, you are an expat. If you move from A to take up
employment with a company in B, you are a migrant. But few
people use these definitions anymore. Exactly as Mehta writes, I
have encountered countless "whites" (almost always Homo Hubris
types) fitting the latter description (e.g. ESL teachers) who
nevertheless call themselves "expats" (which alone should
disqualify them from teaching English!). They also don't like it
when I correct them.
---
Another vocabulary point I want to clear up is the difference
between human smuggling and human trafficking, which many people
nowadays often use interchangeably. Our enemies in particular
like to call human smugglers "human traffickers", for example:
news.yahoo.com/salvini-dismisses-eu-migrant-ship-proposals-emerg
ency-talks-224118678.html
[quote]"While France and Germany continue to want Italy to be
one of the very few landing countries, we are working on a solid
Mediterranean axis which wants to change the rules and crush
human trafficking," Salvini tweeted.[/quote]
Of course Salvini is subhuman bullshitting.
Human smuggling involves people who themselves want to migrate,
but who are violently prevented by one or more states from doing
so openly, voluntarily seeking out the smuggler to transport
them under the radar in exchange for money. This is a
contractual agreement of mutual prior consent between the
migrant and the smuggler, therefore wholly non-violent. Of
course there exist greedy smugglers who take advantage of
migrants' desperation (and lack of options during an emergency
refugee crisis) by charging extremely high prices for the
service, but if states were concerned about protecting migrants
from smuggler greed, their best response should be to allow
migrants to enter/leave openly (and indeed offer state-run
transportation as necessary during emergencies), thereby
obviating the need for smuggling.
Human trafficking is a different phenomenon entirely. It
involves people who themselves never agreed to migrate, but who
are violently kidnapped by the trafficker and moved into a
different country without their own consent (often threatened
with death for non-compliance), and in effect become slaves
owned by the trafficker, unable to ever choose their own
occupation/residence/etc. and instead permanently restricted to
work/habitat permitted by the trafficker, often involving
unhealthy/dangerous conditions that the victims would never have
voluntarily subjected themselves to.
In case you haven't noticed by now, deportation = human
trafficking done by a state. Salvini, who talks about crushing
"human trafficking", is the actual trafficker.
---
New Mehta piece:
www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-am-an-uppity-immigrant-dont-exp
ect-me-to-be-grateful/2019/08/02/321d9b60-b483-11e9-951e-de02420
9545d_story.html
[quote]I will not bow and scrape before my supposed benefactors.
I am entitled to be here.
In June, I published a book (“This Land Is Our Land: An
Immigrant’s Manifesto”) arguing that immigration is a form of
reparations. It drew forth a fusillade of hatred — on Twitter,
in my inbox, under the rocks of 4chan and Reddit — suggesting
that I return to India. One reviewer on Amazon called for me to
be “skinned alive” and to go back to my “turd-world country.”
Someone else tweeted, “This cockroach needs sent back to
whatever s--- hole he crawled out of.”
Meanwhile, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, in
a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, said I had
argued that “immigrants should not join the mainstream or try
and preserve and protect what makes America great, but should
just take over from the ‘white power structure.’” (I’ve said no
such thing, of course.) Wax accused immigrants like me of being
culturally inferior: “Most inhabitants of the Third World don’t
necessarily share our ideas and beliefs . . . Our
country will be better off with more whites and fewer
nonwhites.”
I’ve been told to “go back” ever since 1977, when I enrolled in
an extravagantly racist all-boys Catholic school in Queens, N.Y.
— birthplace of President Trump, who recently became the
biggest, loudest mouthpiece for this line of rhetoric when he
tweeted that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to the
“totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
The idea is: White Americans get to decide who is allowed to
come in and what rules we are to follow. If you come here, don’t
complain. Be grateful we took you in. “Go back” is a line that’s
intended to put immigrants in our place — or rather, to remind
us that our place in this country is contingent, that we are
beholden to those who came here earlier.
To this I say: No, we are not. I take my place in America — an
imperfect place — and I make it my own; there’s a Constitution
that protects my right to do so. I will not genuflect at the
white American altar. I will not bow and scrape before my
supposed benefactors. I understand the soul of this nation just
as well, if not better, than they do: a country that stole the
futures of the people who are now arriving at its borders, a
cacophonous country, an exceptional country, but one that seems
determined to continually sabotage its journey towards a more
perfect union. Nobody powerful ever gave the powerless anything
just because they asked politely, and immigrants don’t come
hat-in-hand. I am an uppity immigrant. I am entitled to be here.
Deal with it.
Should today’s migrants be “grateful” to the countries that
caused them to move in the first place, the ones that despoiled
their homelands and made them unsafe and unlivable? For example,
in Somalia — birthplace of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — the
United States sent $1 billion to the dictator Mohamed Siad
Barre, and the ensuing civil war quite literally blew up Omar’s
childhood. She should be grateful that her family had to escape
their land and their people, and live in a tent in a refugee
colony for four years? Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) should be
grateful that her parents had to leave the West Bank and seek
shelter in the country principally responsible for backing (and
sending billions annually to) the government that occupies their
hometown? Central American immigrants, too, should be grateful
to the United States? An American banana company, for instance,
owned 42 percent of all the land in Guatemala, and for decades
Washington replaced democratically elected Latin leaders with
dictators more malleable to its will. Now, at our southern
border, we turn away people seeking asylum from the consequences
of those policies.
The West has despoiled country after country through
colonialism, illegal wars, rapacious corporations and unchecked
carbon emissions. And now their desperate migrants are supposed
to be grateful to be let in by the back door at the mansions of
the despoilers, mansions built with the stolen treasure of the
migrants’ homelands?[/quote]
Of course, contrary to what Mehta says, the Constitution does
not protect anyone from anything. If it could, you could just
paste a copy of it on your door and any ICE agent who arrives
will be zapped dead by it. The only thing that will protect
immigrants is owning a firearm and being willing to use it.
#Post#: 9869--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: 90sRetroFan Date: November 22, 2021, 9:28 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
OLD CONTENT contd.
"Here’s one: “Immigrants have strong in group preferences!”"
Ironically, this enemy blog supplies evidence against this in
the very same post that they make the claim!
www.eurocanadian.ca/2019/08/canadian-politics-controlled-ethnic-
hustlers-jagmeet-singh-kenny-kwan.html
The claim:
[quote]Singh is an ethnic Sikh and Kwan is an ethnic Chinese.
Their primary loyalties are to their ethnic groups[/quote]
The counterevidence (proving rightists are idiots):
[quote]Kwan went even further. She spoke in favour of a new law
that establishes every April as Sikh Heritage Month.[/quote]
If the claim of ethnotribalism were true, Kwan should only treat
Canadians of Chinese ancestry with empathy, and perceive
Canadians of Sikh ancestry as a threatening rival ethnotribe.
The behaviour we see here in reality is not ethnotribalism. but
folkism: solidarity between formerly colonized peoples based on
empathy of common victimhood at the hands of the same
oppressors. This is what we need to promote, in order to dispell
the rightist "Everyone is ethnotribalist!" narrative that they
hope becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.
HTML https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qEyel_aANn0/XWZwcrDzn4I/AAAAAAAAA9k/ok3AoV0BwSodtthdCpu4KU4jWYHk3SxwgCLcBGAs/s1600/jagmeet_and_jenny.png
older example (repost):
www.univision.com/univision-news/united-states/photo-of-brown-be
rets-standing-with-black-lives-matter-in-los-angeles-goes-viral
[quote]A photograph of two Latina women wearing matching brown
berets and standing in formation alongside two black members of
the Nation Of Islam was shared thousands of times on social
media within hours of being published on July 11.
The women, who are dressed in paramilitary-style uniforms— brown
shirts, army belts, and brown cargo pants tucked into army
boots— are members of the East Los Angeles Brown Berets, a civil
rights organization that says it is “in solidarity with all
oppressed people of color who struggle for a better tomorrow.”
...
“I always hear about black and brown people clashing, but this
scene captured the Brown Berets and the Nation of Islam standing
side by side,” said photographer John Garcia, a Chicano artist
who lives in East Hollywood.
...
Shifting demographics in South Los Angeles have traditionally
caused tensions between black and Latino gangs and elected
officials, but on the community level both sides have come
together to fight police brutality in the past. That’s why this
photo has captured the attention of so many people across the
city—it shows the two groups as allies standing together against
a repressive force that has targeted both communities
disproportionately.
...
The story behind the photo is also interesting. Black Lives
Matter protest organizers asked the Brown Berets if they could
help with security and crowd control at the protest. The Brown
Beret activists say they were happy to lend a hand.
“When people see this picture I hope they recognize that we need
more of this unity between the black and brown struggle,” said
Cindy, 23, one of the women pictured in the photo. “We also need
to show that it’s not just men who are strong. I love how the
picture plays that part. Both struggles are coming together to
be upfront.”[/quote]
Further reading:
www.kut.org/post/how-black-lives-matter-valley
[quote]Eromosele, who’s black, lives in a community that’s more
than 90 percent Hispanic – a community that showed up by the
hundreds at McAllen’s Arch Park for the protest.
Before the march started, Danielle Lopez of Pharr burned sage to
cleanse and bless the protest. That’s a practice by curanderas,
faith healers in Hispanic culture. Lopez was at the protest as
part of the Carnalismo National Brown Berets – a pro-Chicano
movement that first emerged in the 1960s.
"Historically we have always been very united,” Lopez says. “The
Brown Berets and the Black Panthers and the American Indian
Movement have actually been involved with each other since the
civil rights movement.”
Rosa Vidal from Pharr echoes the need for minorities to speak
out against social injustices facing other minorities.
...
"The Mexican-American community also faced violence by the law
enforcement especially in Texas by the Texas Rangers,” De La
Trinidad says. “So there is documentation of police brutality
and law enforcement brutality against Mexican-Americans, not
only in Texas, but Arizona, California."
George McShan has lived in the Valley for more than 40 years. He
grew up during segregation and later became the first
African-American man to be elected to the Harlingen School board
in 1988.
"What has happened now, the children and great grandchildren of
the fathers of the ‘60s began to realize that the plights are
very similar,”[/quote]
---
A good review of Mehta's book:
www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/08/15/jill-lepore-suketu-mehta-rea
l-americans/
[quote]The Mehta family immigrated from India to the United
States in 1977, when Suketu was a teenager. He has been a US
citizen (and a New Yorker) for thirty years: “Here was my home.
Here I belonged, because everyone else belonged.” Then came the
2016 election and the extraordinary, and ongoing, Republican
assault on “shithole” immigrants and immigration. Mehta—author
of the modern classic Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found—was
moved to act: “This book is being written in sorrow and rage—as
well as hope.”
...
Mehta’s book is filled with arresting human particulars, but its
theoretical thrust can be compressed into three main
propositions. First, catastrophic climate change, global
inequality, and the ruinous aftermath of colonialism have
ensured that “mass migration is the defining human phenomenon of
the twenty-first century.” Not since the end of World War II
have there been as many displaced persons as there are now. By
2050, up to 30 percent of the planet’s surface, home to 1.5
billion people, could be desert; the population of Africa will
double to 2.4 billion; in Bangladesh alone, 20 million could be
displaced by rising sea levels. By the century’s end, land
populated by 650 million people could be underwater. Mehta has a
lot more stuff like this, none of it reassuring.
His second proposition is that migrants from the poorer parts of
the world have a right to settle in richer parts of the world.
This right is essentially restitutionary: societies that
unjustly enriched themselves at the expense of other societies
are obligated to make restitution. The argument is most familiar
to Americans regarding slavery reparations, with one difference:
Mehta expands its scope to include victims of colonial or
hegemonic exploitation. The expansion is significant. There are
about 42 million Americans of African descent, but there are
further millions in the Central American states that, as Mehta
demonstrates, the US has destabilized, traumatized, and
plundered for its own gain. There are billions of people in
postcolonial societies. If you believe, as Mehta does, that
restitution is also due to poor countries suffering from the
impoverishment and environmental damage caused by rich countries
and their predatory multinational corporations, the scope for
reparations grows even larger.
Mehta deals with the problem of infinite liability as follows:
Poor countries aren’t seriously suggesting that the rich send
sacks of gold bullion or bitcoin every year to India or Nigeria.
They’re asking for fairness; for the borders of the rich to be
opened to goods and people; to Indian-made suits as well as
Nigerian doctors.
And:
Fair immigration quotas should be based on how much the host
country has ruined other countries. Thus, Britain should have
quotas for Indians and Nigerians; France, for Malians and
Tunisians; Belgians, for very large numbers of Congolese.
...
It could also be said, of course, that Mehta is dismissive of
the cultural and economic anxieties of the host population. But
that is precisely his intention: to dismiss the concerns of
white natives about having brown foreigners in their midst.
Either their concerns are racist and accordingly without merit,
or their concerns have some merit, but not as much merit as the
concerns of migrants.
...
Meanwhile, disaster looms ever larger; self-examination begins
to seem beside the point. A valuable feature of Mehta’s argument
is that it is procedurally radical. It rejects the programmatic
self-doubt that is central to American liberalism—and, arguably,
central to its defeat by its Republican adversaries, who without
hesitation embrace self-righteousness, domination, and the fait
accompli. If Lepore is right and the nation is indeed the fight,
liberals must understand what a fight involves. That is, you
can’t fight performatively when the other side is fighting to
win: that kind of fight simply won’t go on for very long. You
have no option but to fight to win, too. You want to win because
you are right and they are wrong; because you have a moral right
to power and they don’t; because you are real Americans and
they’re not.[/quote]
Or as we put it, Westerners cannot be Americans and Americans
cannot be Westerners.
---
One of the most common pro-immigration arguments in mainstream
discussion is that immigrants will help pay for the pensions of
retirees.
Rightists, who never bothered to understand elementary
economics, idiotically retort: "But the immigrants will
eventually retire and need pensions themselves! So this is just
a Ponzi scheme!"
So what is the rightist solution to paying pensions? "Have lots
of offspring!"
As if the offspring won't, by the same token, eventually retire
and need pensions themselves?? So how is reproduction any less
of a "Ponzi scheme" than immigration??
The actual economic advantage of immigrants over offspring is
that immigrants arrive ready to work at once, whereas offspring
require investment for roughly two decades before they start
contributing economically. The money saved from the first few
decades of dependency by using immigrants instead of offspring
is the same money that can be redirected towards funding the
last few decades of dependency a.k.a. pensions. This is what the
pensions argument actually means! What immigration is about is,
in simple terms, cutting costs from the front to supply the
back.
This is another one of those (countless) arguments that I used
to presume was so obvious that it should not even have to be
explained.....
---
Good critique of the points-based system:
www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/12/points-based-system-gives-cov
er-naked-prejudice-against-migrants
[quote]A few months after Adyan bin Hasan came into the world,
his parents realised he was having trouble trying to lift his
head. After a series of tests, they were told he had mild
cerebral palsy, which was most likely caused by a stroke just
before or after his birth. Before he was even three years old,
this would decide whether he and his parents would be allowed to
stay in Australia, his country of birth.
After finishing a PhD in Geelong, a city southwest of Melbourne,
Adyan’s father, Mahedi Hasan Bhuiyan, was nominated by the state
government of Victoria for a permanent visa. But Mahedi, his
wife and son were rejected under Australia’s “one fails all
fail” criteria. One family member didn’t meet the health
criteria; everyone was denied a visa. Is this the
“Australian-style points based system” so many of our
politicians dream of?
Australia’s points-based system is revered in the UK immigration
debate. It has become a symbol of an alternative system that
would still allow the UK to maintain “control” over who crosses
its borders. During what would be his final general election
campaign in 2005, Tony Blair promised that he would “put in
place strict controls that work”, which would “include the type
of points system used in Australia”. Ten years later, UKIP’s
manifesto proposed introducing “an Australian-style points based
system to manage the number and skills of people coming into the
country, treating all citizens of the world on a fair and equal
basis as a welcoming, outward-looking country”. Australia’s
system was also repeatedly referenced during the EU referendum,
so much so that during a series of twelve focus groups with
Leave supporters, one group of researchers found that
participants in eleven groups mentioned Australia as somewhere
with a good immigration policy – entirely unprompted.
If we followed Australia’s example, the implication goes, we’d
have a better immigration system. Though Australia is regularly
presented as an aspirational ideal, it is only ever discussed in
the most general of terms. Neither its immigration system, nor
how it compares to our own, are well understood.
Australia’s “points-based system” is one of the main routes into
the country. But how it operates is dehumanising; people are
given points according to certain criteria. They are literally
turned into numbers on a sheet. 25 points if you’re 18-25, 15 if
you have eight years’ work experience, 20 if you have a PhD. You
don’t need a job offer, but you do need to hit a certain score
to even be considered eligible to move to Australia.
In 2007, as Blair had promised, New Labour attempted, in a way,
to replicate this system. Leftover as a relic from this time, a
section of UK immigration rules are still called “the points
based system”. But the UK’s version of a point-based system has
never really worked in the way it does in Australia, and it
still doesn’t now.
To enter the UK, many people need to secure the promise of a job
and a visa sponsored by their prospective employer. On top of
that are certain criteria you have to meet depending on the kind
of visa you’re applying for, which can include a certain level
of English and earning a particular amount of money.
The UK’s immigration system is cold and calculated; it treats
certain people as the “right” kind of migrant and others as the
“wrong” kind. From all we’ve seen, the Conservative plans would
mean EU citizens were also included in this system. The Tories
have suggested different visas depending on levels of “skill”,
including short-term visas for people considered “low-skilled”.
They aren’t, then, going to model the UK’s immigration system on
Australia’s.
Australia’s immigration policy is idealised because of what it
represents: control, rationality, and whiteness. Like our
so-called island nation, Australia is a go-it-alone country that
is able to decide who crosses its borders. A steady drip of news
coverage about people kept offshore in detention systems for
months on end amplifies this message. But Australia’s system has
a dark underside. Its seemingly non-discriminatory, objective
treatment of individuals gives cover to policies that are
exclusionary and punitive. You measure people’s right to come to
the country on the basis of this relatively fixed points regime.
You either get the right number of points to come into the
country, or you don’t.
This logic reflects a belief that the skills, qualifications and
the jobs we have exist separately from the world around us. A
points-based system invokes notions of meritocracy and
individual ability, as if it’s natural genius and talent – or a
lack thereof – that lands people where they are. The structural
inequalities that shape people’s lives are erased; so too are
the effects of race, class, gender, sexuality or disability.
This appeal to supposed objectivity is alluring to UK
politicians who wish to claim that ending free movement is at
least partly about ending a discriminatory system that treats EU
and non-EU migrants differently. They can claim to be remedying
this system, while in reality they are stripping away peoples’
rights. Conservative politicians can claim they want “the best
and the brightest” to come to the UK, even though some of the
people the economy relies upon aren’t included in this
illustrious category. They can maintain that “too many”
immigrations of a certain type are bad for the country, while
treating migrants like chess pieces to be moved around at the
whims of politicians and policymakers, discarded when they cease
to be useful.
The immigrant “other” can be measured by what “they” will
contribute to “us”. In this formulation, exactly who is
considered a threat and a potential problem is racialised. As
well as being about economics, the immigration debate has also
become about nebulous ideas of identity and belonging. Migrants
who are seen to posssess certain cultural affinities, or who
hail from particular parts of the world, are imagined as
compatible with the UK. It is people who are supposedly
culturally distinct from Britons that are an issue. In this,
whiteness is still considered synonymous with Britishness.
Here, Australia is relevant again. At the same time as having a
system that’s perceived to be objective, it’s a country – at
least in the popular imagination – of blue skies, luxurious
beaches and a predominantly white population. The promise of an
Australian-style points based system is not only a relatively
meaningless soundbite: it represents the anti-immigration
beliefs that lie at the heart of the UK’s immigration debate. It
is these ideas that must be challenged.[/quote]
I will put it even more tersely: the most obvious
double-standard to the points-based system is that the very
people who demand it for immigrants do not also demand it for
natives, even though every reasonable argument (e.g. promotion
of merit) in favour of a points-based system for immigrants is a
similarly reasonable argument in favour of a points-based system
for natives also.
#Post#: 9870--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: 90sRetroFan Date: November 22, 2021, 9:43 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
OLD CONTENT contd.
One especially stupid argument I have been hearing a lot
recently from rightists is how "open borders only benefits
employers".
If this were true, then why do the immigrants themselves
migrate? Do they have an irrational love for employers that
compels them to move to another country solely to do employers a
favour? Of course not. Open borders most obviously benefits
immigrants themselves, or else they wouldn't be deciding to
migrate!
When rightists say "open borders only benefits employers", what
they are actually doing is trying to condition the listener to
not view the immigrants themselves as people at all.
Do open borders benefit employers? Sure, as it gives them a
larger pool of people from whom to choose whom to hire. It also
benefits workers by giving them - so long as they are willing to
migrate - a larger selection of employers to apply to work for.
Thus the benefit is far from lopsided to the advantage of
employers. Workers can use the available option of taking up
work elsewhere as leverage to persuade an existing employer to
offer higher wages, no less than can employers use the available
option of hiring someone else as leverage to persuade an
existing worker to accept lower wages. It will all sort itself
out given time. The only thing preventing this is in fact none
other than rightists threatening to violently close the borders
and deport immigrants, thereby interfering with the otherwise
straightforward negotiation process between workers and
employers by adding a risk that each might be suddenly
prohibited at any minute from keeping their side of the bargain
towards the other.
---
But when presented with this argument rightists will just accuse
immigrants of being purely driven by economic interests, as
opposed to natives who are supposedly more "patriotic"...
---
Paying taxes is the most basic form of patriotism. Immigrants
are people who make a conscious decision to stop paying taxes to
the state they left in order to pay taxes to the state they have
arrived in over any other state in the world. This goes back to
the following point:
[quote]Even worse are the anti-immigrant propagandists who refer
to immigration as “invasion” for the sake of crude alarmism,
utterly disregarding the actual meaning of invasion. If State A
invades State B, former taxpayers to State B will now be paying
taxes to State A instead (ie. State B loses taxpayers; State A
gains taxpayers). In contrast, if inhabitants of State A migrate
to State B, these former taxpayers to State A who have migrated
will now be paying taxes to State B instead (ie. State B gains
taxpayers; State A loses taxpayers). Thus in fact immigration is
the opposite of invasion.[/quote]
Also, this just in:
www.foxnews.com/media/tom-homan-ice-border-democrat-2020
[quote]"They say they care about these people, they care about
children dying and women being raped... they need to look in the
mirror because if you keep offering enticements... 'sanctuary
cities'... free health care... in-state tuition... people are
going to put themselves in harm's way to come to this country,"
Homan told Steve Hilton on "The Next Revolution."[/quote]
Who would be in harm's way if no one had to fear being deported
in the first place? The reason people rely on dangerous
methods/routes of entry is because they fear Homan & Co.
catching them and deporting them! What people need is the
assurance that no one will be trying to deport them under any
circumstances, and then they will have no reason not to use the
safest methods/routes of entry available.
(Homan & Co. are covered here:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/enemies/ice/
)
---
False Leftist Michael Brooks (Jew) pushing the rightist line on
immigration
Are Westerners willing to work for the same “cheap” rates?
Probably not, given their lavsish standards of living. Then why
criticize immigrants who improve the economy with their
additional labor?
All this talk of migrants being “exploited” is nonsensical and
is a rightist talking point. Migrants who voluntarily choose to
take up a job in another country are not being “exploited”.
What do you guys think?
---
Exactly. It gets even more ridiculous when rightists prefer
outsourcing to immigration. Both are driven by employers seeking
cheaper labour, but the difference is that outsourced labour is
taxed by a foreign state, whereas immigrant labour is taxed by
one's own state. This is why again it is absurd for rightists to
claim to be nationalists. They are identitarians and nothing
else.
---
We have to start with the position that even if immigration were
not economically beneficial, it should still be allowed on
ethical grounds. Economic benefits are merely a bonus.
Immigrants who are a drain on public funds should be treated no
differently than natives who are a drain on public funds. Either
eliminate welfare (libertarian approach) or modify it into a
wage conditional on sufficient labour of the state's choosing
being performed by the recipient to offset it (socialist
approach, which we prefer). Either way, the point is to avoid
favouring natives over immigrants, since none of us choose where
we are born.
With that said, I agree that GDP is not the best measure of
economic health. Instead, we should place more emphasis on
autarky. And the fastest way to achieve autarky is to transplant
all the currently offshore economic activity inside. Basically,
everyone anywhere in the world whose labour serves a country's
economy but who currently lives outside the country should be
proactively invited to immigrate into the country.
By the way:
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKeQg_ztmls
---
Start calling border walls, like the one Trump and Orban had
built, "iron curtains."
Fun Fact: Goebbels used the term in a Feb 1945 article (3rd
paragraph, middle) well before Winston Churchill. Either way,
the ZioWinners of WW2 and their supporters are most enthusiastic
about iron curtains.
---
And Salvini says immigrants do not contribute to Italian
society:
www.yahoo.com/news/italy-nightmare-offers-chilling-preview-05000
9711.html
[quote]That fear has led to a sudden boom in grocery delivery
services. The day after Conte announced the national lockdown,
Rome supermarket entrances were jammed with bicycle couriers,
mostly immigrants from Africa and South America, jostling for
orders. By then Milan had settled into a home-delivery routine
that has left residents waiting more than a week for a slot to
get groceries.[/quote]
Bonus:
qz.com/africa/1806374/nigerian-migrants-in-sicily-build-an-afrob
eats-scene/
---
More immigrants "not contributing to society" (according to
rightists):
www.ekathimerini.com/251023/gallery/ekathimerini/in-images/migra
nts-sew-masks-at-moria-camp
---
And still more immigrants "not contributing to society"
(according to rightists):
www.yahoo.com/news/eight-u-k-doctors-died-184609860.html
[quote]Eight U.K. Doctors Died From Coronavirus. All Were
Immigrants.
...
For a country ripped apart in recent years by Brexit and the
anti-immigrant movement that birthed it, the deaths of the eight
doctors — from Egypt, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and
Sudan — attest to the extraordinary dependence of Britain’s
treasured health service on workers from abroad.
It is a story tinged with racism, as white, British doctors have
largely dominated the prestigious disciplines while foreign
doctors have typically found work in places and practices that
are apparently putting them on the dangerous front lines of the
coronavirus pandemic.
“When people were standing on the street clapping for NHS
workers, I thought, ‘A year and a half ago, they were talking
about Brexit and how these immigrants have come into our country
and want to take our jobs,’” said Dr. Hisham el-Khidir, whose
cousin Dr. Adil el-Tayar, a transplant surgeon, died March 25
from the coronavirus in western London.
“Now today, it’s the same immigrants that are trying to work
with the locals,” said el-Khidir, a surgeon in Norwich, “and
they are dying on the front lines.”[/quote]
By the way, this is what I have been pointing out for ages:
[quote]By recruiting foreign doctors, Britain saves the roughly
$270,000 in taxpayer money that it costs to train doctors
locally[/quote]
---
[quote]California's undocumented workers help the economy grow –
but may pay the cost
With a gross domestic product worth $2.448 trillion, California
has the largest economy in the US, and the sixth-largest in the
world. It's also the state with the most immigrants, more than a
quarter of its population. These two facts are not unrelated —
but the way immigrants build that economy is more complex than
it seems.
Betty Yee, California state controller, said undocumented
immigrants’ ​labor is worth more than $180 billion a year
​to California's economy — about equal to the 2015 gross
domestic product for the entire state of Oklahoma. Labor from
undocumented immigrants is fundamental not just to agriculture,
but to child care, restaurants, hotels and construction.
“This is a workforce, a supply of labor from our undocumented
workforce, that actually does provide just the basic foundations
of these sectors and industries of being able to succeed and
thrive,” she said.
Undocumented immigrants make up an estimated 10 percent of
California's workforce, and the work they do is often at the
bottom rung of the wage scale. That's part of what makes their
place in the economy controversial and keeps the immigration
debate heated. President Donald Trump argues that undocumented
immigrants drain the economy, drive down wages and take jobs
from US-born workers.
For the most part, economists disagree. Major studies show
immigration as a whole benefits the US economy, and that
undocumented immigrants have little to no impact on employment
levels of native-born workers. There is, however, debate about
whether low-skilled immigrant labor puts downward pressure on
wages for low-skilled workers, with some studies finding no
effect and others finding immigration lowers wages for some
low-skilled native workers and prior immigrants.[/quote]
www.pri.org/stories/2017-03-06/californias-undocumented-workers-
help-grow-economy-theres-cost
---
So many immigrants "not contributing to society" (according to
rightists)!
qz.com/1838754/about-280000-essential-healthcare-workers-in-us-a
re-undocumented/
[quote]Imagine being on the frontlines of the fight against
coronavirus—tending to the sick and risking your life—while
anxiously awaiting news about whether you’ll soon be deported to
a country you left as a child, and scrambling to do immigration
paperwork just in case you catch a break.
...
“Right now, we are all dependent on every single healthcare and
essential worker,” says Hannah Siegel, managing director of the
New American Economy (NAE), a bipartisan nonprofit immigration
research and advocacy group. “The DACA community is a part of
that. According to NAE analysis, there are 62,600 DACA-eligible
individuals working in healthcare today. In fact, undocumented
immigrants overall play a huge role in our most critical
workforce, [with] almost 280,000 total in healthcare,” she tells
Quartz.
“Yet worries about deportation persist for many,” Siegel adds,
“and the timing couldn’t be worse.”
...
Meanwhile, the many who haven’t been able to apply for the
program, though they would qualify, will have no hope of coming
out of the shadows. Having risked their own health to tend to
Americans and to help keep critical institutions running during
the pandemic, they’ll remain underground, legally speaking,
living in fear not of disease but of immigration
authorities.[/quote]
Not just medical workers either:
www.yahoo.com/news/were-ignored-completely-amid-pandemic-2046115
20.html
[quote]On normal mornings, Maria, an undocumented worker at an
orchard in Washington state, gets up at 5:00 a.m. The
37-year-old immigrant from Mexico puts her hair up in a bun,
wraps it with a handkerchief to keep it out of the way, and
packs a snack for her morning break and a small meal for her
half-hour lunch. Then she sets off on the half-hour drive to the
orchard, arriving so early there’s often frost on the trees. Her
work depends on the season; right now it’s the grueling task of
securing branches to ensure they grow correctly.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Maria is classified as an
essential worker, which means she has to keep going in even as
large sectors of the economy have shut down. She has a letter
from her employer to prove it. Though she says her hours have
been cut in half because of COVID-19, she’s still expected to
show up. It was only last week, Maria says, that her employer
finally gave a presentation about maintaining six feet of
distance while on the job—which she says is impossible to do—and
requesting that workers wear a face cover and gloves, which are
not supplied.
“The fear that we have as immigrants is something whose extent
only we can know. We’re afraid of getting sick. We’re afraid of
dying,” Maria tells me in Spanish. “We’re afraid of complaining
at work, to our supervisors, because we’re not getting adequate
cleaning supplies. We’re ignored completely.”
Maria is one of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants
in the U.S., many of whom are now working the essential jobs the
nation is relying on—in apple orchards and grocery stores, food
processing plants and hospitals. The Migration Policy Institute
estimates that 6 million immigrant workers (a figure that does
not take into account legal status) are in jobs on the front
lines of coronavirus response, while another 6 million are in
industries hardest hit by the pandemic. In normal times,
undocumented labor is a pillar of the U.S. economy. In these
extraordinary times, immigrant advocates say lawmakers must
recognize the contributions that essential undocumented workers
are making.
“At a time of crisis, when America needs a certain segment of
its society to keep functioning so that we can all be safe and
healthy, a significant chunk of that indispensable workforce is
not formally recognized as Americans,” says Frank Sharry,
executive director of America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy
group. Those workers, he says, “are risking their lives in order
to serve the country they call home.”[/quote]
Meanwhile, rightists see no problem with this:
[quote]Yet despite paying billions of dollars annually in taxes,
undocumented immigrants were ineligible for the direct deposit
relief doled out by the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill.
None will receive the cash assistance that millions will get as
a result of the relief package passed by Congress; the payments
were tied to Social Security numbers as opposed to Individual
Tax Identification Numbers, over Democrats’ objections.
Most undocumented immigrants will also not receive unemployment
insurance if they’re among the millions who lose work due to the
pandemic. With few exceptions, undocumented workers are not
eligible due to their immigration status under normal
circumstances. At a time when 22 million Americans have filed
for unemployment benefits, this has left countless undocumented
immigrants in financial uncertainty.
Then there’s access to testing and treatment. According to the
ACLU and National Immigration Law Center, the Families First Act
excluded tens of millions of people (among them, DACA recipients
and Temporary Protected Status holders) from testing and
treatment by not making it available under emergency Medicaid,
which would lift the immigrant eligibility restrictions
currently in place.[/quote]
#Post#: 11535--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: 90sRetroFan Date: February 27, 2022, 1:15 am
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://us.yahoo.com/news/no-kari-lake-going-border-195514614.html
[quote]No, Kari Lake, what is going on at the border isn't
remotely like what is going on in Ukraine
...
In her view, immigrants in search of asylum are apparently the
same as a psycho in search of conquest.
Drugs that are and have always flowed across our southern border
in search of an eager supply of U.S. customers are apparently
the same as tanks rumbling across Ukraine’s border in search of
domination and conquest.
Republican candidates in Arizona have taken to using the word
“invasion” a lot over the last few months.
...
Attorney General Mark Brnovich, in his zeal to rise above the
pack in his run for the Senate, even issued a legal opinion
earlier this month, declaring that Ducey can send troops to the
border to repel the “invasion.”
Today, however, we are seeing what a wholesale, full-scale
invasion looks like: Russian troops attacking a neighboring
country by land, sea and air, with missiles and tanks
...
This, Kari Lake, is what an invasion looks like.
To compare that in any way with what’s going on the U.S.-Mexico
border?
Well, you just look silly.[/quote]
#Post#: 15983--------------------------------------------------
Re: Debunking Rightist Anti-Immigration Arguments
By: 90sRetroFan Date: October 5, 2022, 8:12 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Once again:
HTML https://time.com/6219953/hurricane-ian-cleanup-migrants-desantis/
[quote]Migrants Are Leading Clean-up Efforts in Florida, Despite
DeSantis’ Crusade Against Them
...
Originally from Nicaragua, he is part of a large, informal,
overwhelmingly immigrant workforce that travels the U.S.
cleaning up after increasingly frequent climate-related
disasters. Once a hurricane hits, these crews are bussed in by
contractors desperate for workers, or they drive to the area
themselves and wait in Walmart or Home Depot parking lots to be
picked up for a day’s work. Aburto, a skilled laborer, was in
New Orleans after Katrina in 2005, Baton Rouge after Louisiana’s
floods in 2016, Panama City Beach after Michael in 2018, and
Lake Charles after Laura in 2020. “These kinds of events really
affect people,” he says. “We do our bit to help them.”
...
But these workers—which include a mix of documented and
undocumented migrants, according to labor advocates—face a
strange kind of welcome. Florida’s Republican governor Ron
DeSantis has spent the last year waging a crusade to keep
migrants out of the state.
...
Over the coming days and weeks, thousands of migrants,
originally from places like Central America and Venezuela, will
arrive in southwest Florida’s hurricane-ravaged towns. Since its
staff arrived in the region on Sept. 29, Resilience Force says
it has met migrant workers who have traveled from Miami, North
Carolina, and Louisiana. On Sunday, the New York Post reported
that vans had picked up dozens of migrants in New York City,
with one driver saying he was hired by “a water and debris
company.”
...
Such a hostile environment creates “enormous difficulties” for
migrant workers doing disaster recovery work in Florida, says
Saket Soni, a labor organizer who founded Resilience Force in
2015. (The group advocates directly for around 2,000 disaster
rebuild workers, helping them to find jobs and avoid
exploitation.) In 2018, during clean up efforts in Bay County,
Fla. following Hurricane Michael, Soni says undocumented workers
were “routinely” detained and transferred to ICE detention.
Others were threatened with a call to ICE by their employers
when they demanded payment for work. “Workers have to override
enormous fears to keep doing this work,” Soni says.[/quote]
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