Anti-immigrant hysteria versus common sense

By BC Editor Bruce Dixon

Last weekend in Los Angeles somewhere between half a
million and two million legal and illegal immigrants
and their supporters hit the streets protesting the
same federal legislation that brought at least three
hundred thousand into the streets of Chicago two weeks
earlier, and smaller crowds in dozens of other cities.
As this article is written, the U.S. Senate has just
stricken the most onerous provisions of pending
immigration bills which make an instant felon out of
anybody ’illegally present’ in the US, and lay a felony
charge of ’human smuggling’ on anyone rendering medical
care or other services to the ’illegal humans’ among
us.

In Georgia where both Republicans and some right-wing
Democrats like State Senator Kasim Reed of Atlanta
proposed state level measures which echoed and exceeded
the petty viciousness of congressional Republicans,
similar proposals still live on. Reed sent us a letter
defending his indefensible position which we will print
in next week’s BC, but the issue is too important not
to revisit now.

How should black people view the wave of immigrant
labor that has undeniably impacted us? How do we make
sense of the current anti-immigrant hysteria? Can
African Americans benefit from following the lead of
Lou Dobbs and Senator Reed, blaming and scapegoating
immigrants for lowering wages? Or do we help our
people best when we stand up for a living wage and
dignity for everybody? While the answer seems clear
enough to us, some BC readers are not so sure.

Y. Denise asks:

Why should we, of all people, fight for the rights
of immigrants; regardless of the trials they go
through to get here? Why is it that these groups
can hate us, and openly and heinously undercut us
at every turn. I am not just talking about
Hispanic groups; I am also talking about other
blacks. I never see any of them coming to our aid
[UTF-8?] – in anything, and you have the nerve to say that
we have to be on their sides? Many don’t even live
in our communities, don’t support our communities
and they don’t hire from our communities. How much
more self-destruction can we heap upon ourselves?
Their fight has nothing to do with us at all.

Denise raises an unrealistic but oft-heard complaint
about small retail immigrant business people that needs
answering. Why don’t those small businesses in our
community hire more of us?

In the first place, hours are long and income is low
for most startup small businesses, and most fail within
a year of startup. Job One is just staying in
business. For immigrant business people, Job Two is to
hire their own families. Family work is cheap,
sometimes for mere room and board. The business owned
by a family or close friend is also the prime place to
land for newly arrived relatives and close friends with
limited language skills and sometimes with no papers.
For small operations with low profit margins, hiring an
American who expects to get paid a living wage and on
time can be a huge additional expense. And if you do
it, you’ll have to explain to the extended family why
that spot is not available for your sister-in-law or
cousin Isaac. Job Three is to send money home, because
of course everybody back in the old country imagines
you’re rich. You’re in America, after all.

Given all this, it just ain’t realistic to suppose
small immigrant retail businesses will hire a lot of
their American neighbors. Some. But not a lot. We
need to get over that expectation.

Denise seems to imagine immigrants hate and ’undercut’
us. With all due respect, we suspect she may be
projecting in the first instance and misdirected in the
second. There are many voices in the ears of
immigrants. White America teaches everybody to hate
and fear black folks, and immigrants bring along their
own helpful baggage as well. Cultures across the
planet have ancient traditions that put lighter skinned
people higher on the social pecking order than darker
ones. Dark skinned Mexicans and Indians - the ones
from India - are socialized to hate themselves, much
the same as we are.

But immigrants bring other stuff to the American table,
too. In the countries they hail from there are
traditions of working class militancy and solidarity
deeper and more widespread than anything here, and
traditions of broad left wing social movements tougher
and more enduring than we see here in the U.S. In
Mexico, Nigeria, Indonesia and Brazil, in South Korea
and Columbia, farm, factory and service workers join
unions by the millions and fight for their own rights,
often at great personal cost.

These are traditions that black America can use and
learn from, traditions that will raise all our
standards of living if we choose to adopt them. But
they can’t be put into play as long as immigrants don’t
have the same right to live, to organize, to bargain
collectively and to strike that every one of us has.
Immigrant labor only ’undercuts’ the wages of black
Americans when immigrants can be threatened with jail
or deportation for standing up to their employers.
Their fight has everything to do with us. If black
America refuses to make common cause with them, we cut
our own throats.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/177/177_bruces_beat.html