so apparently political discourse on ILE comes down to bitching about israel and making meanspirited cracks at the right wing

In my case, I had nothing to say. I will freely admit that the immigration issue is one I really don't think about much at all.

That said, I admit I've missed what's been going on with proposed immigration laws.

While I can't say I prefer people enter this country illegally, it's stupid to say that everything will be ok if we just send all illegal immigrants back to where they came from. Southern California would wither, dry up, and die -- period.

not that i have any great ideas about it either -- i think the real answer is, "accept it as an economic fact of life and find ways to minimize its worst abuses" -- but this is all just showboating. and who are these people so freaked out about it all anyway? nobody's actually going jobless because of immigrant labor. xenophobic horseshit.

i would also reckon that in NYC there are as many illegal irish, polish, and chinese immigrants as there are latinos. again, it's doubtful that concern over irish or polish immigrants are what's fueling all of this (though maybe the chinese immigrants are).

just to comment off the top of my head: i have to disagree with gypsy. saying that the guest worker idea is a lame dodge isn't really helpful. it's much better than anything else, or should i say "nothing."

i'm in north carolina now, and we have thousands of latino immigrants. the school system is "swamped," so we hear, with children who need ESL, which -- this being hundreds if not thousands of miles from mexico -- the area is not equipped for (ie, whole schools, not just teachers). my retired father went looking for a part time job, and dunkin donuts gave him a spanish-language application.

i have no problem with immigration per se, but i definitely think people should be expected to try to assimilate, at least in terms of language. and the idea that someone can be in the country illegally yet still get a drivers' license (for example) or free schooling, well, something just seems wrong about that.

We always hear that our economy is dependent on these foreign workers who take low-paying jobs that "other Americans don't want." But just for argument's sake suppose we sealed the border -- wouldn't the wages in those jobs be forced to rise in order to attract workers? Or would those businesses just die because they couldn't run profitably?

Apparently some white Americans did not get the memo: YOUR FAMILIES ALL EMIGRATED FROM SOMEWHERE, SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALLOW OTHERS THE SAME CHANCES YOU'VE GOT OR RISK LOOKING LIKE BLOATED SPOILED BRATS.

Also the government makes a TON of money out of illegals: many of them make up Social Security numbers for the sake of form, the employer pays too, hey presto there's two sets of money coming in and taxes that the worker will not ask to have refunded for any reason.

tom tancredo.

several other folks(e.g. Thom Hartmann) have been talking about this, about the flood of illegales has swamped the labor market, where everything from agriculture to construction has had wages drop significantly.

Also, isn't that fatty CO congressman = Tancredo(sp)? They played a clip of him on NPR today dumping all over Arlen Specter's plan.

Oh yeah, and a word that you US folks should get used to hearing a lot of in the next 7 months = "amnesty".

I wonder how much traction the idea of posting Natl Guard troops at the southern u.s. border will gain, to say nothing of the possible complication of when you have an increasingly latino Natl guard having to shoot at poor-ass mexican folks.

Also, how much of a split will there be, if any, between the pro-cheap labor corporate GOP types(e.g. Dubya) and the more "Build a WALLLLLLL" (xenophobic? racist?) types(Tancredo)?

Still, what to actually do with 11-12 million folks here already?

mitya, i agree that a guest worker program is better than nothing, but it's just a stopgap. it would make people legal workers for a limited amount of time, and then they'd be illegal workers again. to what end i'm not exactly sure. i just think so much of the rhetoric around all this is so dishonest, because it doesn't recognize economic reality. we have money. people who want money will come here looking for it. employers will always hire the cheapest people they can find to do the job. that doesn't mean you can't impose regulations and controls to some degree, but only to some degree. it's not like we have wide-open borders now. it's hard for people to come here from mexico or ecuador or colombia to work, and when they get here it's not like they make millions of dollars, but some of them do it anyway because it's a little better deal than they can get at home.

eventually maybe the differential between working a shit job here and working a shit job in bogota won't be enough for anyone to bother. then we'll all be glad to be working for dunkin donuts. but in the meantime, we're going to have a lot of immigrant labor, legal and otherwise. and of course, the foreign workers who are really taking jobs away from americans aren't the ones coming here to clean houses and deliver chinese food, they're the ones working in factories in china and bangladesh, or call centers in bangalore, etc. and just wait another 20 years or so, and the bangalore call centers will be losing jobs to khartoum and kinshasa.

i would also reckon that in NYC there are as many illegal irish, polish, and chinese immigrants as there are latinos

yeah that was a surprise moving to new york, realizing how much immigration there still is from parts of europe. i've met irish and poles who came here on visitor's visas, made connections in the immigrant communities, got jobs, and stayed illegally.

xpost: let the gop have a schism over it. the democrats aren't going to be able to out-xenophobe the gop, so they might as well paint themselves as the moderates they oughta be on principle anyway.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/national/27immig.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1143435600&en=e658e4f4c207b6d0&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin

long may it continue!

There was a huge march in Chicago on 3/10, a Friday, only workers were encouraged to go on a one-day strike in order to be at the rally. There were somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 people there, the vast majority of them Latino/a.

I teach an adult ESL class on Saturday mornings, and I changed my lesson plans so we could talk about the march in class the next day. Two of my students were fired for going to the march; both of them eventually got their jobs back.

My class is really diverse --40 students, about 20 different countries represented-- and their assignment was to write a letter explaining why they agreed or disagreed with HR 4437 or the McCain-Kennedy bill. I gave them a sheet explaining the provisions of each bill. Normally about 1/3 of them do their homework, but the next week I got at least 25 letters, which I mailed off to my member of Congress and Barack Obama.

Sorry to blather on, but I have a point. There was a lot of unspoken tension between the students in my class who have gone through the belabored process of becoming legal residents and the ones who haven't. I wish I could post their letters here, because they all had good points -- but the overall concensus was that there needs to be reform, it should be humane, the wall between the US and Mexico is stupid and the Sensenbrenner legislation is openly xenophobic bullshit.

I'm pleased to see that the issue is getting more press, but clearly it's not getting enough. I hope that additional demonstrations raise awareness about it with the average Fox-news-watching American yoho.

The reasons why it (potentially) hurts the Republicans much worse than the Democrats all have to do with alienating voters they need in their coalition. This is interesting mostly from the politics-as-horse-race perspective.

The reasons why this issue is a mess and why everyone in power has treated it very gingerly are much more interesting and have to do with politics-as-policy-making. Immigration is a bread and butter economic issue with clear winners and losers and real money on the table, and whichever way the policy turns someone's ox is gored.

The impetus for addressing this issue is not coming from the political strategists, who see it as too problematic to make a good wedge issue. The pressure is coming up from the grassroots. That makes it really interesting. US politics always gets intriguing when it escapes the management of the professionals and reflects the actual concerns of regular citizens.

As with most economics-driven grassroots movements in the USA, this one is driven by pure self-interest and fueled by an overly simplistic and limited understanding of what is happening. This makes the situation very volatile and puts the powerful in an awkward situation. Either they strike political gold and find a simple framework and slogan they can stuff this issue into, or they will have to live with whatever blind resolutions the masses impose on them. The one thing they cannot do is expose the real workings of this issue and how they benefit from it.

This is the closest thing we're likely to see to an anti-global-corporation movement in the near future, but my money is on economic xenophobia carrying the day in the end. Just how punitive this turns out to be against immigrants will depend on just how demogogic and opportunistic the leaders who emerge turn out to be. Judging from history, the biggest demogogues will have a big edge in the odds - although, if anyone measured and sensible is going to emerge, it will have to be from the trade unions. It's hard to see that happening.

UHHHHHHH

The proposed legislation is idiotic IMO.

President Bush asked Congress in a State of the Union address to "reform our immigration laws so they reflect our values and benefit our economy.

I know enough about Bush's "our values" to see whose gonna get the shaft here.

It's funny how the INS is synonymous in the public mind with nabbing poor immigrants and deporting them, and building huge border fences and patrolling them night and day with sophisticated sensors - but the INS apparently spends almost no resources on discovering what employers are breaking the laws. All the recent court cases against employers (like Wal-Mart) have been brought by citizens, not the government. This was equally true under Clinton as it is today under Bush Secundis. Those laws are only sops to public sentiment and not meant for enforcement.

I agree that a guest worker program wouldn't be perfect, but perhaps it would at least help cut down on the number of people risking their lives out in the desert every day just to make it across the border. Still, you're right -- if there's no opportunity to jump from guest worker to the green-card/citizenship track, it's not really any kind of long-term solution.

It bothers me that my opinions running along these lines are construed as "nativist", though I certainly understand why the accusation is made. I'm not calling anybody a dupe like that guy.

Now that I no longer believe that people are rational I don't trouble myself believing this. Although I still believe education helps. For the most part people need to SEE THIS SHIT FIRST HAND to believe it, and then MAYBE. That's why the Depression was so effective. :(

anyway -- what is the point of eduction when even a lot of jobs that require college degrees -- and post-grad degrees -- are going to end up in india?

how is this not throwback 1890s style, andrew carnegie? this suggests total passivity on the part of the american workforce that doesn't seem realistic or appropriate.

global econ talk makes my head spin but surely this means either massive deflation or extremely rigid class divisions?

xposts

yeah but as Tracer Hand pointed out on another thread in response to Kunstler romanticizing the same postwar golden age, a lot of that was built with help from women and minorities who were essentially giving up labor for free, or close to it, much like the immigrant situation now, except that the wage gap has now put native blue-collar workers uncomfortably close to the home depot sweating-for-tips gang.

I don't know exactly what the solution is but both minimum "living" wages and strict controls on migrant labor both amount to protectionist subsidies from an economic standpoint.

If we wanted to ease the transition for our workforce I would argue as a Keynes fanboy that it may have been a better idea to put some of that $9T into public works projects for the United States instead of encouraging entrenched guerilla warfare in a shithole on the wrong side of the planet

the unfortunate thing of it is that it will be felt first, and hardest, by those souls occupying the lower rungs on the ladder. As per usual.

DING DING DING DING

esp since so much of our infrastructure is totally crumbling.

Hmm, you saw how far that argument got Paul O'Neill.

i don't think history shows that americans have any kind of genetic aversion to doing jobs that are hard and tedious

Being a CEO is very risky. Boots Riley figured out 5 million ways to kill them. Given those statistics, current compensation trends are very reasonable.

*auto-reply from SEC/FCC/DOJ HQ*:
"The political appointees who head the SEC, FCC, and DOJ would like to respond to your concerns as quickly as possible, but are currently out of the office playing golf. If you require immediate assistance, please contact Karl Rove at (555) 555-1212."

The Management.

for what it's worth, you can find most all the n y t editorials (i only really look for krügman, so i'm not sure about all the rest) here. try not to ruin it.

this is basically setting up as a primary tussle between frist and mccain, frist playing to the base (or a base, the base that listens to rush 'everytime you see a hispanic with a baby you're seeing the death of america' limbaugh) with mccain teaming up with ted kennedy (ie. not playing to that base). i love the rightwing hysteria over people marching with mexican flags in american streets o noes did you think you would ever see the day it's like 9/11 with flags ay carumba. these people sleep thru st. patrick's day every year?

come on dude this is basic logic class

Still, the other bits sound great, with the whole festive atmosphere(e.g. kazoos, kids). I had a philosophy prof who would talk about this kinda thing, about how marches & protests should be lively things, like carnivals, instead of the usual grim-faced/black-masked crowd that compromises most American events.

1) food
2) beer
3) music and/or dancing
4) fireworks (if at all possible)
5) beer

I mean, really. The more, the better.

-- kingfish ubermensch dishwasher sundae (jdsalmo...), March 28th, 2006.

I disagree. And anyway, haven't most of the anti-globalism protests been of that nature? I don't see what good it does them -- protests are a media event and if you don't even appear to take your own cause seriously how do you expect anyone else to?

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008142

maybe

because like with what Tracer said, it can be a sign of strength to yourselves and others that you can all come out & have a good time supporting your cause. And that you do so with ease.

Plus it CAN change the image of who actually comes out to these things than just that of humorless campus activist types.

I love to have fun in foreign looking freak shows.

Mister Dobbs, you may no longer say the names of most states in the United States, because only SEVEN U.S. states have English names; the rest are Spanish or Native American.

Is she counting Louisiana as one of the 7?

English: Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia

French: Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Vermont

Hoax: Idaho

500,000 people, and no one called me?