Janitor Photo: ©2006 Cameron Davidson
Conservative politicians and pundits (and some liberal ones) love to shake their fists about immigration, blaming the influx of undocumented workers for the economic squeeze felt by America's middle class.
If we would only seal the border and keep out those illegals, they say, Americans who now struggle to make ends meet would enjoy newfound prosperity.
There is some validity to the claim that immigration pulls down wages, Harold Myerson writes in today's WaPost, but, he adds, the use of immigration as a rallying cry by conservatives is an attempt to mask other economic factors they do not want to address.
The intensity of the conservative movement's opposition to legalizing the undocumented is the direct result of the movement's doctrinal limitations: Immigration is the only element among all factors, large and small, contributing to Americans' economic insecurity that conservatism can address. American conservatism, after all, is committed to radical, globalized, laissez-faire capitalism at the same time that it is committed to nationalism and traditional cultural values (however mutually negating these commitments may be).
American conservatism defends the right of corporations to ship jobs overseas; it has opposed legislation raising the minimum wage and restoring employees' right to join unions and bargain for higher wages. However valid conservatives' fear of the economic harm from immigration (and for most Americans, it's not very much), the issue itself has become conservatism's surrogate for greater anxieties about globalization and the restratification of the U.S. economy -- anxieties whose very names conservatism dare not speak.
In other words, corporate greed and CEOs, with their obscene salaries, golden parachutes and outsourcing of jobs; pose more of a threat to the American Dream for America's workers than an undocumented immigrant who's willing to work for the minimum wage.
And he adds, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would hold corporations accountable for the illegal firing and harassment of workers and allow workers to freely choose to join a union and have a voice on the job, could do more to alleviate the economic woes of working Americans than the immigration bill before Congress.
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There is an Italian saying:
"The fish begins to stink at the head - not the tail."
Posted by Tom on June 22, 2007 at 10:29 PM
Posted on June 22, 2007 at 10:29 PM