Predatory Capitalism and the Issue of Illegal Immigration

Los Angeles, Ca- Behind all the smoke and mirrors, the illegal immigration debate is really all about predatory capitalism running amuck and our economy is sinking becuase of this.

By creating this environment, it allows a larger concentration of Americans to slip into poverty & all of a sudden SOCIALISM seem like not a bad idea to the droves & droves of Americans who are falling victim to this thing called Predatory Capitalism.

It's true that changing governmental policies towards immigration could have a significant impact on the economy. No one denies this. But it's also quite  obvious that there are many, many other ways, and more profound ways, to transform the national economy. 

So why has illegal immigration been made the 'hot topic' right now? Well, it's because it is a very convenient way for the people who control public discourse to merge two things - on one hand we have ordinary working people feeling incredibly insecure and uncertain about the future, a situation really only made worse by the increasing concentration of wealth, and resources, and power into the hands of the already wealthy; you know, this is what you get under PREDATORY CAPITALISM. 

On the other hand we have these very effective tools for controlling public opinion - racism, scapegoating, manipulation of data for the purpose of fear mongering. So the illegal immigration debate is the bringing of these things together. Americans are being told that we are in danger of losing not only our jobs, but we're also in danger of losing our language, losing our culture, our security, everything. And it's all the fault of these people who are 'not us'. 

They are the Other, and we should be fearful of them. We need to protect ourselves, our country, against them, the aliens. Right?

This is the identity aspect of this issue that draws our eyes away from those Americans who are responsible for systematically creating policy that allows  this continuous concentration of wealth, and resources, and power into the hands of the already wealthy.  This also allows people like you and I to rather focus on those who public discourse disseminates into our heads are the real problem, "the Others who are not US, the illegal aliens".

What I'm saying is that this is basically a smokescreen. It's an act of misdirection. You get your average American workers all riled up that their jobs are being 'stolen' by these illegal immigrants.

Supposedly these illegal immigrants are sucking the profits from our economy, they must be getting very, very rich. Of course this is absurd. There are profits, but the big profits are not going to illegal immigrants ! 

And they're also not going to the middle class. 

In actuality a disproportionate amount of the nation's wealth is being systematically funneled towards the pockets of the richest of the rich. Take for example the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts which was an unwarranted extension of tax cuts for people who don't even need the money as demonstrated by their unwillingness to interject their hordes of capitalism into the economy.  Even conservative economists agree on this.

But you know, these self-appointed watchdogs of Americanism, they've actually been very successful in whipping up popular animosity towards these so-called 'illegal aliens'. If you think about it, what they've been able to achieve is actually quite remarkable - they've basically taken a group of people from tremendously impoverished places, living extremely difficult lives, and they've successfully branded them as a bunch of criminal opportunists hell-bent at exploiting America's generosity. 

Which is, of course, totally ironic since First World exploitation of the Third World has historically been the driving force behind creating that poverty they're trying to escape in the first place. The lack of awareness or compassion is extraordinary.

Credits:  The Pinky Show

Hiring Illegal Immigrants is Better than Slavery of Early America.

1853 poster of Negros for sale.

Los Angeles, Ca - Lets compare American slavery & todays illegal immigration from an economic vantage point.  Illegal immigrants can be said to come to the USA for an array of reasons but we all accept the fact that illegal immigrants for the most part are here to make a dollar and the dollar they make in the USA is obviously more then what they make in their Country of origin.  

Lets take a glimpse of early American slavery. Take for example the slave owner had to house, feed,  clothe, and provide medical services for their slaves if they wanted to keep them fix for duty.  Slave owners also had to purchase a slave and hope they were workable, if not this meant the the slave was unsalable and the owner had to get rid of them or care for them which was a loss of money.  Many slave owners had to worry about their slaves running away and hiring posses to find them which was another loss in production and money.  All this in turn ended up being a burden more than a benefit over time.

Predatory Capitalism running amuck.

Now lets get to todays evil doing American tax sucking pesky Illegal immigrants.  These impoverished individuals offer companies a better deal than slave owners in the past ever dreamed of.  

Now employers who hire todays illegal immigrants don't have to deal with any of the issues that slave owners were subject to.  The employer offers a small compensation package that's well known to be a sub-standard livable wage with no benefits such as healthcare. If an employer doesn't like the illegal immigrant all they have to do is fire them and little can be done by the illegal who would fear going to the authorities to inform them about their evil employer firing them.  The illegal immigrant is not interested in a free ride back to their motherland. This means that employers are very likely to make a larger profit by doing what most companies do to make a dollar and that would be cutting corners.  Unfortunately, companies who employ illegals do so at the expense of the very society they live in.  To add insult to injury, illegal immigrants may potentially lower the wages for legal residents doing comparable work. 

Since these employers pay a substandard wage these illegal immigrants are often unable to afford living in the USA on one paycheck thus forcing the American tax payer via our social services safety net to subsidize this difference.  Such services when a child is involved normally include AFDC, food stamps, public housing, and K-12 education including complimentary breakfast & lunches. 

Imagine your neighbor having all the kids they want but you have to pay for them because their job sucks and doesn't pay enough.  Well, thats exactly what's going on when an employer hires an illegal immigrant.

The era of slavery in early America had it much more tougher than todays Companies that employ illegal immigrants and I can assure you that big business in not interested in ending illegal immigration anytime soon.  Not when they have it this good!

Is Bias Ignoring Northern Border Security?

Got Lube?

Los Angeles, Ca - As we all know, illegal immigration is in the national spotlight and the November 2010 elections are right around the corner sparking today's politicians to raise any issue to debate & mold the minds of their respective constituents nationwide. In doing so, it seems that the mainstream sympathy toward illegal immigrants is drawing along cultural lines in America today sparking a culture skirmish that has not been seen in my adult years of life.

Now as a Hispanic-American, I also share much of the mainstream anger toward these so-called illegal immigrants and would like to see our Nations immigration laws transformed into real enforcement or the latter, reform that leads to better enforcement.  What I mean by reform is not granting amnesty & legal status to 10 million illegal immigrants during a recession as a quick fix but rather critically looking at what immigration laws work, don't work, and in a democratic nation, how can we all compromise on such reform while complying with our Constitution. Lately, I've toiled with the famous southern border wall issue.  At a first glance it seems very regal for Americans and a good start to any reform regarding illegal immigration.  

So my question is why no real efforts to build a border wall?

Well, cleaning off the dust of my college history books I found some good information about walls around the world and how they worked & failed.

Berlin wall -  A tourist attraction today, it once did a good job of keeping East Berliners in East Berlin. It failed because the wannabe socialist superpower, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, fell. It rotted from the inside out, much as the United States of America will fail once it reaches the ruling class's wet dream of becoming yet another socialist world empire wannabe. Once the Russians withdrew their occupation troops German citizens simply chipped the wall into rubble and sold the pieces as souvenirs.

Walls of Jericho - According to irrefutable Biblical buzz it toppled with a few choice blues notes blared by a horn blower named Joshua.

Hadrian's Wall - The Romans couldn't conquer and control the land known today as Scotland so they built Hadrian's Wall and, further to the north the Antonine Wall, to keep the clans from attacking their British provinces. The walls didn't work so the Romans resorted to a much better, time-proven method: they bribed the tribes to keep them out.

Great Wall of China - The Chinese rulers spent several centuries, fortunes, and lives (some historians believe one hundred million laborers were simply worked to death) to build the biggest, baddest brick pile in the history of walls. So what did the Mongols do once they decided to get serious about conquering China? They bribed the gatekeepers to let them through.

As far back as 2006 the Washington Post was reporting persistent bribery at the Mexican border. So add greased palms to the ramps, route-around, tunnels, blowtorches, cardboard columns and flooding foundations and what you get is a relentless pattern of failure.

So as we can historically see, a wall can work but it always failed somehow and the common denominator usually resulted in the bribing those who guard the wall in question or the implosion of the entire Nation.

Where's the rest of the family?

Back to this Mexican-American border wall, is it a solution?  America had since the victory of the Mexican-American war to build this monumental feat but only within the last 20 or so years has any real wall been built and as of today Americans only see about 600 miles of wall out of a 2000 mile southern border.  

Pretty self defeating of a Nation when it suddenly demands the wall and the extraction of 10 million illegal immigrants during a recession when governments are being forced to cut cost across the board. Where was this illegal immigrant anger 5-10-15 years ago?

We know building walls is not impossible but as I think about this Mexican-American border wall I suddenly remember that America also shares a northern border with Canada which has been nowhere on the anti-illegal radar or even worth mentioning within both sides of the illegal immigration debate.

The illegal immigration that flows through the southern border is astronomical compared to the illegal immigration that flows through the northern border but is this really an excuse to ignore the Canada-American border and the dangers of allowing it to remain open?

Building a southern wall will definitely reduce the illegal border crossings down south but will do nothing about the illegal border crossings that sneak past a virtually unenforced northern border.  To add insult to injury similar problems and dangers exist along the Canadian border, where environmental regulations have hindered immigration enforcement efforts, according to a statement issued by the House Republican Natural Resources Committee.

According to the Committee, environmental regulations, which do not apply along the U.S.-Mexico border, too often prevent the U.S. Border Patrol from effectively monitoring entry along the Canadian border. 

Over the years , California and Texas improved their border enforcement which began choking many illegal immigrants, human traffickers, and drug smugglers to bottle neck into Arizona which is why we see Arizona ranting & raving and using just about any excuse to attract attention to illegal immigration in Arizona.  Based on this fact we can see that illegal immigrants are just like electricity and more than happy to take the route of least resistance.

If we want to build a southern border wall we must not ignore the northern border.  As we already know, a southern border wall will slow down the typical Latin American illegal immigrant 'just looking for work' or to 'drop an anchor' but it will do nothing about illegal immigrants who don't emigrate via Latin America. I'm talking about the non-Latin American illegal immigrants.  You know, the over looked illegals such as Asians, Europeans, Middle Easterners, and of course Canadians.

If the anti-illegals made more of an effort to address these 'others'  it would paint themselves as more of a non-bias agenda rather than a hate mongering agenda focusing solely on Hispanics & the Mexican border. 

And regarding all those pro-illegal supporter otherwise painted as Reconquista and radical La Raza types, well that's another fish to fry!

credits:

Mexican border wall or speed bump?

What About the Canadian Border?

Racism in the United States Lead By Current Politicians and Immigration Policies