The debate on illegal immigration between Republican hopefuls Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani has been getting enough press that I’ve even been forced to know about it over here in the UK where I myself am a recent immigrant. It’s essentially a tit-for-tat: “you let illegal immigrants in your city,” vs. “oh yeah? Well you let them work in your mansion.” The Republican argument rests on the general creeping American xenophobia that the GOP has found more useful than the NRA or Saddam Hussein: Illegal immigrants (aka, brown people we haven’t documented).
It’s all based on fake statistics, but that fact is likely to be missed on the majority of Americans. It’s another example of my thesis on the progressive movement, “Why We Fail.” This installment: the undocumented immigration issue.
Google this statistic: “25 Americans every day,” and you’ll get where the major fear mongering is coming from. Change it to 12, and you’ll get the hits that came later, after the previous number was debunked. However, this dirty dozen also is false. The “study” was done a while back, but being that election campaigns heat up early thanks to New Hampshire’s lack of patience, these figures are being trotted out again by the boo-scaries of the rabid right, most recently NewsMax.
To see the flood of immigration fear-mongering sweeping the U.S., google this out: “killed by llegal immigrants.”
Like most things taken for granted, the notion that illegal immigrants are likely to commit more violent crime is false. That they take our jobs is false and that they put our country at any increased security risk is also false.
NewsMax is among a host of sites trying to scare the crap out of people in the American midlands regarding a flood of criminally minded illegals out to kill, rape and steal jobs (though somehow simultaneously remaining unemployed and on benefits?!?) Aside form this and the presence of advertisers that try to ply the gullible to invest in oil exploration in Israel and take America back to the gold standard, the other similarity is that all these stats are just wrong. As one blogger with a calculator pointed out, for the numbers to work, every single person arrested would have to be an illegal alien. Colorado Media Matters (in discussion state political debates) also did the math and found the holes here, here, and here.
In the end, the majority of people are coming to the U.S. for economic reasons rather than some political ideology. These people are showing up to get a piece of their financial security back, and so long as its set up this way, they really have every right to do so. Stopping the flow of illegal immigration is simple: Stop corporate praying on weak economies and propping up the dictators who maintain them. Done.
Let’s just remember one thing about illegal immigration. There was once this group of boat people who flooded the country. Most of them were poor, uneducated, lacking in any permission to enter these borders. They didn’t speak the language, didn’t really want to integrate into the current society and knew little in the way of skills to survive. And now we have Thanksgiving, which celebrates their arrival every year. And their arrival led to some much bigger, true crime statistics.
And yet still we fail.
For all Colorado Media Matter’s work, and the good works of other organizations for that matter, no one is really going to see it. CMM’s argument is scattered all over the website, requiring one to read each article following the turn of the screws about Republicans few of us know or care about in an election race that isn’t exactly this year’s news. Why not cull all that info into a table or easily digestible report and then link all previous articles to that, instead of all this “here, here, and here” business?
Crime amongst illegal immigrants is the leading argument for keeping the U.S. servant class servile, and yet the “studies,” mostly compiled by the close-the-borders crowd themselves, are fraught with analytical and mathematical flaws. But it’s going to win, because it’s A) easier to find; B) cleanly and clearly laid out in digestible chunks, written with tight, sound-bite headings and paragraphs; C) parroted in the free-for-all echo chamber of the InterWeb; D) speaks to the basic fears and concerns of Middle America and preys upon known phobias and stereotypes.
What do we have working for us?
The enemy is a well-organized coalition that is in message, bending both Republicans and Democrats to its will. On our end, well, we have a hodge-podge of bright bloggers and some grassroots movements that combine into one very disjointed, unconnected and mostly unheard lobby.
As an example, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is a blogger who has some great statistics and use of argument in the post, “more stupidity in my in-box. And over at No More Deaths, we have some very fine examples of direct action in assisting those who are making the dangerous journey across the desert into the U.S. The League of United Latin American Citizens is one of the few movements that has a public face in the lobbying battle, but how many of you knew about it before reading this? What each of these different organizations, internet activists and direct-action groups could use is an actual, cental source for valid demographic data. At its heart, the immigration war is a chart war.
The progressive argument needs to be reorganized. Conservatives are using numbers to inspire fear. They’re weak numbers, but fear is a powerful vote getter. Another way to turn out the vote is to cal out corruption, and many of the sources behind the scare tactics on the immigration issues are most certainly guilty of that. Keeping labor illegal keeps it cheap, free of existing labor laws, workers’ rights, etc. One can’t really argue that undocumented immigrants are “stealing our jobs” because the jobs aren’t set up to be desirable to anyone but desperate, undocumented workers. Many of companies are fiscally conservative, run by bottom-line people eager to see a work force that will work for less. An amnesty program puts those jobs in the light.
Allowing those undocumented workers to demand equal rights for equal work raises the benefits and income levels of those jobs, and suddenly makes them more appealing to the citizen work force in the U.S. and raises the total potential job market. It raises salary, increases demands for goods and service and quality of living, which then drives further economic opportunity. And then the argument becomes one about increasing prosperity. Fear is an effective short-run strategy, but its exhausting for people over the long haul. In the end, if you want a successful argument, it’s about what can bring people. Either that or big dumb wall in the desert.
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