Interesting article, as usual. I have one quibble with your admonition that we avoid depressing American wages out of fear of appearing racist. I don't think fear of seeming racist has much to do with immigration policy. Business interests allied with government want to depress wages, and the racism argument is merely one element of the legitimizing discourse that is used to promote the policy. In my hometown of Dalton, GA, business and government have colluded to encourage the in migration of tens of thousands of Mexicans at a time when the native work force was at last in a position to demand higher wages and better benefits. Almost everyone agrees that the migrants themselves are pretty decent folks and hard workers to boot, but there is a lot of resentment toward the business leaders who brought about such a rapid wholesale change in the demographics of the community.
Some of this resentment spills over onto the Mexicans themselves and feeds the idea that opposition to the program is racist (some of it is racist, in fact).
check out a dude named Roger Simmaker from FLA - he does a weekly column on American Buy of the Week. An interesting fellow - though i did not get to really talk to him much during the Reform Ventura years.
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Interesting article, as usual. I have one quibble with your admonition that we avoid depressing American wages out of fear of appearing racist. I don't think fear of seeming racist has much to do with immigration policy. Business interests allied with government want to depress wages, and the racism argument is merely one element of the legitimizing discourse that is used to promote the policy. In my hometown of Dalton, GA, business and government have colluded to encourage the in migration of tens of thousands of Mexicans at a time when the native work force was at last in a position to demand higher wages and better benefits. Almost everyone agrees that the migrants themselves are pretty decent folks and hard workers to boot, but there is a lot of resentment toward the business leaders who brought about such a rapid wholesale change in the demographics of the community.
ReplyDeleteSome of this resentment spills over onto the Mexicans themselves and feeds the idea that opposition to the program is racist (some of it is racist, in fact).
check out a dude named Roger Simmaker from FLA - he does a weekly column on American Buy of the Week. An interesting fellow - though i did not get to really talk to him much during the Reform Ventura years.
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