I made what I thought was a kind of anodyne comment on Twitter about how immigrants were demonized for stealing jobs when that wasn't what they did at all: if they were hired for a job, showed up and did the job and got paid for it, they weren't stealing a job, they were working a job. To me, this was just sense. I've said it before right here. Anyway, however I said it, it was assumed I did not know that employers intentionally employed undocumented workers because they lived in fear of being deported and therefore were exploited and damn, I know. It's hard not to be aware of it.
The point I was trying to make is, the immigrants aren't bodying people out of kitchens and off assembly-lines and taking over retail warehouses and starting to collect paychecks by doing nothing at all. They aren't stealing jobs--employers are giving them jobs. Are they legally doing so? Yeah, if they are not checking if they have a right to work, that's illegal. If they are paying them under the table, they know that's wrong. So why are we going to get spun up over undocumented workers trying to feed, clothe, and house themselves over whether employers are complying with the law?
Immigrants aren't stealing jobs. They might have an impact on local wages and employer choices, but that isn't on them. They are taking available jobs because they have to eat. And if you wanted better local wages and better watchdogs over labor issues--you could most certainly vote for pro-labor political candidates and push for labor issues wherever and whenever you could. You should support living wage laws and support strengthening regulatory leverage over abusive employers. Immigrants are just trying to live.
The second thing I want to address isn't the "stealing people's jobs" thing, but the dehumanizing thing. I might not be a labor expert any more than I am a lawyer or a historian, but when people start talking about other people as a "problem" or as a "question" and start talking about transporting them to tent cities, or camps, or ghettos, or reservations, or just thinking "relocating" is the answer to how to ever deal with people--you aren't thinking about people as people, but as some kind of unwanted furniture. That shit is fascism.
I get that people feel entitled to their resentment over the idea that marginalized people occasionally appear to make out from certain insufficiencies in our capitalist moral landscape. But I am fucking harrowed by the penalties human beings face for trying to come here and build a better world for themselves by trusting monsters. How desperate does one have to be to be positioned to sit and be fried alive?
People are not the problem. Our willingness to not see people as people, but as units of labor are. Or as political pawns and props, or as useful targets of resentment-fueled propaganda. Immigration, like resolving the homeless crisis or any other thing where people are deprived of resources, can be an unlocked asset by a wealthy country figuring out where the resources are. We are mean and we suck as people because we don't focus on doing stuff like that. We don't see people as people and useful in their own right and would throw them away rather than invest in their having the lives they should that let them maximize the good they can give in return.
Anyway, that's my $.02.
6 comments:
The powerless are the go-to target of the right wing and the TARGETED immigrants, besides being nearly powerless, are not white. The perfect fuel for your typical fear mongering Faux news hosts.
I finally blocked someone on Twitter, which I never did before, because they came hard at me over whether it mattered whether someone's ancestors came over "LEGALLY". My English, German, and Irish ancestors did, and so did my husband's Italian ancestors an entire minute ago. And so what if the laws were designed in racism? Any bar conceived in race is a human rights' problem in my eyes when asylum status is considered.
Abbott and DeSantis are somehow targeting refugees right down to the nation they are from. It can't get more discriminating. They want an in-country caravan narrative. Even if it is GOP moving the people about.
first of all, it blows my mind that these motherfuckers don't think ny is a border state. canada will be SO miffed.
second, you know... airplanes? ships? FFS, they FLEW the asylum-seekers to martha's vinyard!! FLEW them...
and yet the cognitive dissonance didn't explode their brains.
yeah. JFC, these motherfuckers REALLY don't think so good.
They really seem clueless that eventually, many migrant workers do come to cities/blue states for work as well because they will go where jobs are and where they might find a community. It's really all about "border wall and environs" to them, without considering that many "blue" cities have declared themselves "sanctuary cities" not because they *don't* have undocumented people living there, but because they do. And do not find it a burden, but a situation of mutual oportunity.
https://www.lirs.org/what-are-sanctuary-cities-why-do-they-exist/
i mean, yeah. beyond the idea that we have all sorts of people in nyc, lots and lots of immigrants, i dunno why they think this is supposed to scare us.. i mean, i KNOW they think everyone is as racist as they are, but still.
it's SUCH two-dimensional thinking: aliens only come through mexico, they only afflict the "border states" they only hoof it or are driven, they can be stopped by a wall.
i mean, we're famous here in nyc for that ellis island thing next to the statue of liberty.. when most of our immigrants took ships to get here, and we have these weird places called "airports".
it's just amazing that none of their policies are meant to solve any actual problems and in fact CAUSE many of our actual problems.
You cannot use reason when dealing with unreasonable people. This is performative cruelty and _all_ about riling up the base to make sure they show up in november.
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