"Taking A Bite out of the ANTI Argument" is going to be a new regular feature on my blog. Every time I see a good response to the ANTIs typical rhetoric, I am going to post the response on my blog. I will compile this in a booklet I am creating called "Taking a Bite out of the ANTI Argument!"I came across this response to the ANTI's standard argument in a comment section of a blog I visited today. I thought I'd share it with my readers !
ANTI: I am pro-rule of law. If someone wants to immigrate here legally, from Mexico or otherwise, by all means let them. What I am opposed to is illegal immigrants crossing our borders and essentially giving a slap in the face to those who took the time to immigrate here legally and do things the right way. Are there people who are opposed to immigration in any form on racial grounds? Of course. Are there Hispanics who want a better life in a better country? Absolutely. Does that mean the US should open their borders completely? In my opinion, absolutely not. That's not xenophobic, ignorant, or racist at all. That's the law.
"Taking a bite out of the ANTI Argument" Response:
Except that the number that we will allow to legally immigrate is absurdly low. The number of guest worker visas available to all of Mexico is a few hundred per year and its even lower for Central and South American countries. Meanwhile, we let people take jobs and provide fake social security numbers without verification.
In other words, the law is a complete joke. It ignores the basic economics of a region filled with unskilled workers, right next to a nation that needs about twenty million unskilled workers - and I believe in free markets, do you? because illegal immigration is the free market trumping government.
Oh, and please go and find for me some legal immigrants who are outraged that others came here illegally, because I've never met a single one. In my experience, the only people up in arms about illegal immigration are the ones who suffer no direct harm from said illegals, and are benefiting from the cheap labor when they buy food, dine in many restuarants, stay in many hotels, etc.
You like people to obey the law? Me too. I also like the law to make sense, and some laws are just unbelievably stupid. I'm not going to drive 55 on a stretch of freeway where everybody is going 70, and I'm not going to expect people who see good paying (by their standards) jobs readily available, with no law enforcement stopping the employer from hiring them, when they are very poor and need the work to feed their family. I guess they could respect our law, even though we ourselves are hypocrites about it (enforcement is a joke), and they could starve, on principle.
But that's expecting a little much, don't you think? Since we need the workers, we employ the workers, and have for decades, how about we change the law to reflect reality? Create a guest worker program similar to the old bracero program (but without the corruption).
Or we could just keep complaining about these darn law breakers, while we keep hiring them and enjoying the fruits of their labor. The law as it is, is a farce. You don't have to be racist to be upset about illegal immigrants and wanting the current laws obeyed, but you do have to be a hypocrite.
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15 comments:
Anonymous, Did this post raise your blood pressure? You are rambling on in all caps for paragraphs. I will respond to you one point at a time.
Anonymous said....WE DESIRE IMMIGRANTS WITH SKILLS AND AN EDUCATION. IS THAT A BAD THING? MEXICO DOESN'T FIT THAT DESCRIPTION.
Anon, SHAME ON YOU! And you say you are NOT Racist! What proof do you have that immigrants from Latin America (yes, I know you assume that all Latin Americans here are from Mexico) what proof do you have that they do not have or are unable to obtain skills or education? My family originally came here from Mexico. I was a migrant worker as a child. Do you want to compare my educatability and skills to yours? Bring it on!!
Anonymous said...WE DON'T NEED AN ECONOMY SO BLOATED THAT WE HAVE TO HIRE MILLIONS OF UNSKILLED FOREIGNERS TO FILL JOBS...WHERE IS YOUR PROOF THAT WE NEED 20 MILLION UNSKILLED WORKERS ABOVE AND BEYOND LOW SKILLED AMERICAN WORKERS?
Anon,
We are talking about the 12M here.We cannot possibly Mass Deport them without creating massive havoc. To prove this, all one needs to do is look at Postville, IA. Last year, ICE Raids removed 600+ workers from their Agriprocessors plant and sent them to detention centers. Agriprocessors tried their best to staff these jobs, but was unable to fill them. They had to close. Small businesses catering to the workers went out of business. All the tax revenue these workers were paying was lost and the town went bankrupt.
Multiply Postville by 10,000 towns and you will see how devastated our country will become.
Anonymous said...FREE MARKET HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. IT DOESN'T TRUMP OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS NOR SHOULD IT.
Anon,
The Immigration Laws, as they stand, are broken and wrong, much like the Jim Crow laws were wrong and needed to be changed. And they were via the Civil Rights Act. The Immigration Reform Act of 2010 will fix them and allow those here who have no felonious crimes to apply for legal status.
I doubt you have ever studied the history of immigration into our country. We did not establish our first immigration laws until the Chinese Exclusion Act. You see, these laws were xenophobic and racist since their inception. Back then, the ANTIs were racist against the Chinese. They demonized them in the newspaper and in posters/ads. They pictured them as boogey men! whhhhhoooohhhh!!! You ANTIs have not changed much.
Then the various Immigration Acts began to separate those we wanted to enter vs. those they did not want to enter. Take a look at the Immigration Act of 1924. Exclude the Germans, Eastern and Southern European and the Asian. But here is what you don't know. That bill left the southern borders wide open. That was the start of the agreements between the US and our Southern neighbors to import workers into our country to nation build. The U.S. loved the Latino workers because they worked so hard and had good Christian values. Plus, at the end of the working season, they went back home. Hence, the start of the Bracero Programs and Guest Worker programs. That is why the borders have remained open and virtually unenforced for over 100 years. Sure the xenophobes raised their racist little heads from time to time, but the work was still there, needing to be done, and the door was always open.
Racist/Xenophobe John Tanton, grandaddy of the ANTIs, warned the powers that be in the 70s that at one point, the rate of Latinos and Blacks and Asians would soon outnumber the Northern Europeans. He used your same argument, that Latinos were uneducatable, etc. He was wrong about that. He was/is wrong about a lot of things.
Here is what you are missing my xenophobic, racist friend:
Education is the great equalizer. Promote Education.
Anonymous said...DON'T NEED TO FIND ANY LEGAL IMMIGRANTS FOR YOU. I HAVE READ THEIR COMMENTS ON OTHER BLOGS AND FORUMS. YOU PROBABLY HAVE ALSO BUT WOULD NEVER ADMIT THAT THEY FEEL AS WE DO.
Anon,
Now this is a silly statement. You read all of your ANTI blogs and some anonymous commenters "say" they are legal immigrants, and YOU use THAT as your basis of argument! You remind me of Glenn Beck. He leaves a message on his Voice Mail and then he references that as a validation! Silly!
Anonymous said..ALL LAW ABIDING AMERCIANS ARE UPSET ABOUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AND YES WE HAVE ALL BEEN IMPACTED NEGATIVELY IN SOME WAY BY IT.
Anon,
You read too many ANTI blogs. Most Americans want all the fighting to STOP and want Immigration Reform.. something that makes sense to fix our broken policies.
And most LOGICAL Americans realize that MASS Deportation will DEVASTATE our country.
And how have YOU been negatively impacted. Oh give us some phony sob story. Cry a few little crocodile tears. PROVE. email me your PROOF and I will protect your identity. PROVE IT. and I will post it! But you can't. You and that little crybaby Beck NEVER have any valid proof of anything they cry about!
Anonymous said..WHAT ABOUT THAT OUR IMMIGRATION POLICIES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FAIR TO ALL POTENTIAL IMMIGRANTS ACROSS THE GLOBE BUT MEXICANS IN PARTICULAR
Anon,
My gosh Anon, you continue to prove yourself to be a xenophobic restrictionist against Latinos. Why is everyone a Mexican to you? What do you have against Latinos?
Don't you realize we have 50M Americans of Latino ethnicity? We are Americans whose ethnicity is Latino. We come in all colors. We are American. We are here to stay. Take a step back. Take a deep breath. Understand we are a beautiful, multi ethnic, multi racial society. This IS AMERICA in the new Millenium!
Anonymous said...PROVE THAT WE NEED THESE 20 MILLION SO-CALLED WORKERS! I SEE MANY HANGING OUT ON STREET CORNERS BEGGING FOR JOBS. IF WE TRULY NEED THEM, WHY DON'T THEY HAVE A REAL JOB THEN?
Anon,
Now you are getting desperate. I have lived in Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, New York, Dallas, etc. etc. and guess what. There are street people of all colors, of all ethnicities. There are also brilliant people of all colors, of all ethnicities.
As I've said several times, Education is the great Equalizer!
Si Se Puede!
Anon,
All of your dozens of rants are getting tiresome. You may as well stop because I am not posting them. You continue to refuse to keep to topic and respond to my resonses and instead disregard and dismiss the facts. Instead, you, like most right wing extremists, believe your own rants and refuse to listen or acknowledge the history of immigration. You refuse to take into account the rise of Hate Crimes against Latinos/Immigrants, as documented and reported by the FBI. You refuse to acknowledge or recognize the racial profiling being committed by Arpaio, his masked goons, and those like him.
You refuse to recognize the spewing of Hate/Racism by Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and Dobbs against our President and against Latinos. I have posted numerous articles about this. But you and others like you refuse to listen to or accept the facts.
WHY IS THAT? WHY ARE YOU SO FILLED WITH HATE AND RACISM YET YOU REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR OWN SHORTCOMINGS?
The Truth HURTS doesn't it Anon.
My advice to you:
SEEK 1st to Understand, then to be Understood!
Encylopedia Britannica says that England is not Anglo Saxon or Germanic - Debunking the Anglo Saxon and Germanic Myths
Hereditarian ideology and European constructions of race » The Germanic myth and English constructions of an Anglo-Saxon past
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/488030/race/234680/Hereditarian-ideology-and-European-constructions-of-race
Some excerpts :
Hereditarian ideology and European constructions of race » The Germanic myth and English constructions of an Anglo-Saxon past.
In England, from the time that Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant sects emerged on the horizon, historians, politicians, and philosophers had been wrestling with the creation of a new English identity. Indeed, European powers were soon to be caught up in the ethnic rivalries, extreme chauvinism, and intolerance out of which all the nation-states of Europe would be created. The English sought their new identity in the myths and heroics of the past and strove to create an image of antiquity that would rival those of other great civilizations.
They created a myth of an Anglo-Saxon people, distinguished from the Vikings, Picts, Celts, Romans, Normans, and others who had inhabited English territory. In their histories the Anglo-Saxons were a freedom-loving people who had advanced political institutions, an early form of representative government, and a pure religion long before the Norman Conquest. Although in part the English were concerned about the identification and preservation of ancient institutions to justify the distinctiveness of their political and ecclesiastical structures, they also wanted to establish and glorify a distinguished ancestry. The English too turned toward the German tribes and a “racial” ideology on which to base their claims of superiority.
The English scholars and Boulainvilliers derived their depictions of the Germans and their arguments from a common source, the works of Tacitus, a Roman historian born in the middle of the 1st century ce. At the end of the 1st century, Tacitus had published the Germania, a study of the German tribes to the north of Rome. It is the first, and most comprehensive, ethnographic study compiled in the ancient world and remains today a good description of a people seen at that time as barbarians.
Tacitus idealized the simple, unadulterated lives of the German tribes and contrasted what he saw as their positive cultural features with the decadence and decline of the Romans. The German tribes were indeed the first noble savages of the Western world. Tacitus sought to provide a moral lesson about the corruption and decline of civilizations in contrast to the virtues and moral uprightness of simple societies. Little could he have anticipated that his descriptions of a simple tribal people, written for 2nd-century Romans, would form one of the bases for a powerful theory of racial superiority that dominated the Western world during the 19th and 20th centuries.
None of the writers harking back to the German tribes for a depiction of good government and pure institutions noted any of the negative or unsavory characterizations that Tacitus also detailed in the Germania. Among other things, he claimed that the Germans were intensely warlike; they hated peace and despised work; when not fighting—and they loved fighting, even among themselves—they idled away their time or slept. They had a passion for gambling and drinking, and they gave blind obedience to their chiefs.
Raciality.com
Vicente Duque
Proletarait, the only jobs that most Americans won't or can't do are farm jobs and even then that it only makes up 2% of our workforce.
I agree that some Americans are spending beyond what they can afford but there are still millions of blue collar American workers who do construction jobs and other manual labor jobs. Also, Americans know that moving up to the middle and upper middle class through getting an education will give them a better lifestle. Education is important in this country but not everyone is cut out for a white collar job either. We are all different in what gives us satisfication in a career.
But by no means should illegal labor be used to line the employers pockets for so-called jobs that Americans won't do. Many of those jobs used to done by Americans and still would be if they were available to them at a decent wage. Our youth grew up on manual labor jobs as a starting point in their careers but those jobs have been given to illegals instead.
Anon,
You clearly REFUSE to accept the FACTS or perspectives from others.
The FBI has reported Hate Crimes against latinos have risen over 40%over the last few years, due largely to the xenophobia of the current Immigration climate. All one has to do is study what is happening. Study the case of Marcelo Lucero murder by the Caucacian Crew in LI and the history of Hate Crimes against Latinos in the LI area, the Chilean student murders by right wing extremists in NW Florida and the history of Hate Crimes against Latinos in the NW Florida area, or the history of Hate Crimes against Latinos in Maricopa County. I have several commenters who have sent me several emails about the xenophobia and racial profiling happening day to day in Maripcopa County by Sheriff Arpaio and his hooded henchmen volunteers. Additionally there are numerous hate crimes against Latinos from California through and across the US. It is shameless.
Yet you refuse to listen to the FACTS.
Shame on you!!
How did you suddenly switch from me replying on topic to Proletariat's remarks to Latino hate crimes? Getting off topic are you?
I never said there weren't hate crimes against Latinos. So why do you keep repeating it as if I had? Stay on topic yourself! The topic isn't about hate crimes against Latinos. It wasn't even mentioned in this topic that YOU yourself started. Practice what you preach!
Hello!!! immigrationmexicanamerican.blogspot.com is one of the most outstanding resourceful websites of its kind. I enjoy reading it every day. I will be back.
"My family originally came here from Mexico. I was a migrant worker as a child."
Go figure.
This would, however, contradict your 'About Me'.
Why the lies, Dee?
No nation grants more citizenship's than the United States. It's not even close. So to say "legally immigrate is absurdly low" would be 'absurdly' ridiculous. And it shows your true colors: red, white - and green.
Your uncontested support of Mexican interests is disgusting. I think I've caught the Swine Flu just from reading such nonsense.
In regards to us 'needing' these unskilled workers, that, too, I would disagree with, or at least to some extent.
While I do concede that legal immigrants keep the population base young, an increase in immigration defies logic.
Generally, illegal immigrants - as well as legal - are employed in the service-based sector of the economy. Here in my state, Idaho, legal citizens do these jobs 'Americans won't do'.
We do not need illegal immigrants - they need us; Mexico needs us. Mexico is a parasitic bastard child that is sucking on the tit of the host. We refuse to become the dumping ground for Mexico's social ills.
Idahoan,
If you have read my blog at all you would know that my family has lived in the US for over 200 years, long before yours arrived.
When my father was a young man, during the depression, he worked for the State of Michigan and brought workers from Texas up to Michigan to harvest crops for the Michigan farmers.
My father brought his family to Michigan to work the fields too. Remember, it was the depression. Then in the 1940s, he started working in an auto factory in mid-Michigan. By the time I came along in the 1950s, every summer we picked Cherries and Strawberries in the fields. We and the other migrant workers migrated from Cherry farm to Strawberry fields to pick the crops. My father wanted us to instill in his children a good work ethic, never be lazy, never take a handout. It was a good education for all of his children.
What is sad about you is you make so many assumptions without every knowing anything. You are consumed with hate and anger for people you don't know or even try to understand.
You are filled with Hate and racist attitude. It is really very sad. What is missing in your life to make you so miserable.
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