The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
by Emma Lazarus
I don’t think I ever read the full poem before, but after reading Paul Krugman’s latest, I thought I should.
Three weeks ago ~300K marched in the streets of Chicago in protest of HR 4437: Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.
On April 10th, ten cities across the United States will take part in a National Day of Action on Immigrant Rights. Philadelphia, San Antonio, Chicago, Denver, Las Cruces, LA, Milwaukee, NYC, Tuscon and Washington and maybe more cities will hold rallies/marches. I’m thinking about taking a half day to make it out to take some photos of the events here in Philly.
But how relevant is that poem in 2006 and beyond? How relevant should it be? I think that a 700 mile long fence is a hasty and ill-advised “solution” if you could even call it that, but what to do? Krugman’s concluding thoughts:
Realistically, we’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants. Mainly that means better controls on illegal immigration. But the harsh anti-immigration legislation passed by the House, which has led to huge protests — legislation that would, among other things, make it a criminal act to provide an illegal immigrant with medical care — is simply immoral.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush’s plan for a “guest worker” program is clearly designed by and for corporate interests, who’d love to have a low-wage work force that couldn’t vote. Not only is it deeply un-American; it does nothing to reduce the adverse effect of immigration on wages. And because guest workers would face the prospect of deportation after a few years, they would have no incentive to become integrated into our society.
What about a guest-worker program that includes a clearer route to citizenship? I’d still be careful. Whatever the bill’s intentions, it could all too easily end up having the same effect as the Bush plan in practice — that is, it could create a permanent underclass of disenfranchised workers.
We need to do something about immigration, and soon. But I’d rather see Congress fail to agree on anything this year than have it rush into ill-considered legislation that betrays our moral and democratic principles.
Man Eegee has a diary on the Senate debate on immigration reform.
thanks for the linkage, albert. More from the article:
Krugman recognizes that the immigrant population is being scapegoated for the disasters wrought by the Republican-led Congress: medicare, tax policy that encourages outsourcing, and failed trade policies that are uprooting economies across Central and South America.
I basically opppose the passage of any law that comes out of this Congress, or I ask for its immediate repeal in the next Congress.
There is no area where this Congress is likely to pass good law.
Immigration is only one of many areas where pending legislation should be vigorously opposed.
I agree with Krugman…stall. Stall this out.
I agree. This congress has shown itself uniformly incompetent, corrupt, and harmful to the body politic. Any law they pass is likely to make things worse than they are now. I think we should throw sand in the gears at every opportunity.
There is no “bill” that the politicians can pass that will keep even one food insecure family in Guerrero from crossing.
If there is a large strike, it is the strikers who will write any “bills,” not the politicians, nor even their corporate sponsors.
This is just one of those independent orbits, only this one just happens to have some real relevance to events and what occurs in peoples’ lives.
Think of it as a more effective kind of “voting.” 😉
I think it’s fatuous to claim (as so many in the pro-immigration camp do) that nothing the U.S. government could possibly do, no matter how expensive, would even put a dent in illegal immigration. What’s more realistic is to point out, as certain observers have, that you could close the border just as was done along the Iron Curtain (or as is done in Israel and the occupied territories today).
The question is not whether we can do it–as long as it’s phrased that way, it only eggs on the Minutemen types that (somewhat understandably) get annoyed by this kind of defeatism. The real question, rather, is whether we should do it. There is of course a moral argument against doing it, one with which I sympathise. There’s also a pragmatic question of whether Americans truly want to spend that much money and reap the PR disaster that would accompany prison-style fencing and guardposts along the border. Not to mention, of course, the economic shock waves that would hit our economy if we actually got rid of the black market in Latino labour.
-Alan
The US border with Mexico is 2000 miles long, and the number of miles that parents whose children are hungry is significantly longer.
People do not risk their lives to come to the US to work 90 hour weeks, live in deplorable conditions, and eat as little as they can and still work a 90 hour week because they have a lot to lose.
These are people who are desperate, they have nothing to lose.
Once you are convinced that you will die whether you do what I say or not, I have lost all my negotiating chips.
On the subject of the US mainstream’s tolerance for spending their tax dollars on crimes against humanity and increased suffering of the poor, events and conditions give a much more eloquent answer to that than I ever could.
Darn, DF, you got it said in less than a screen!!!!
And you said it WELL, too.
Kristofferson got it shorter, though:
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
The only way we’ll be able to effectively cut back on immigration is to make the US such an unpleasant place to live that no one will want to live here… except the Taliban Baptist types. I’ve kind of wondered if perhaps part of the plan isn’t to make things work out that way so all the liberals and educated intellectual types will leave and the narrow and greedy can have it all to themselves.
And in twenty years there’ll be a HUGE coalition of the willing to come in and disarm and dismantle the greatest rogue state in history.
Eastern Europe had desperate people too. And they still didn’t get across (aside from some celebrated cases using balloons or tunnels) in large numbers until the governments allowed the border to open. It can be done, I feel sure of that–it’s just a question of whether it should be done.
As for all those jobs that immigrants do that Americans turn their noses up at, I’m not sure we should have jobs like that. I have a feeling the economy could be okay, and be more oriented around higher paying work (with fewer golf courses and fast food joints to be sure) if the supply of cheap labour were cut off.
-Alan
making on this issue. It doesn’t seem to be in any other area.
Something to consider though, if you could wave a magic wand and disappear all the immigrants, it would not be realistic to suppose that employers would suddenly offer to double the hourly wage for those jobs “Americans don’t want.”
The anti-migrant faction is a bit schizophrenic on this aspect. On the one hand, they point out quite correctly, that it is not the jobs themselves that Americans won’t do, it is that Americans won’t do the jobs for such low wages.
But notice that the same people who insist that Americans are willing to do these jobs at the legal minimum wage are not suggesting a living wage, a right to housing, or universal health care. So there’s a little bit of a disconnect there.
What their hope, their intention is, that if they get rid of the migrants, that Americans will do all those things for the same low wage!
And sure, as more of the outsourced run out of their savings, proceeds from any real estate or other holdings, and more people are downshifted, then they will be lining up at the Wal-Mart and the fast food places, to get any job they can. A lot of them probably don’t even realize those jobs won’t keep them in housing.
So the plan is not to as you say, not have such jobs, the plan is that the poor should do them, and for the same or close to it as the migrants,
But the wages of poor Americans are already so low that every day, people are priced out of housing, and medical treatment has essentially become a luxury item. And the ranks of the poor are swelling as the middle class is phased out.
What Americans don’t want is to live 12 in an apartment and eat beans and tortillas every day so they can stay alive on the wages currently paid to migrants.
While the meekness of the US poor is legendary, it remains to be seen whether the new poor will downshift quietly, and even whether the “old” poor will cede their Wal-Mart post to a new poor and step meekly down into the onion fields, to be paid by the bag.
Meanwhile you still have these desperate people in the subcontinent downstairs, who unlike their Eastern European counterparts, have 2000 miles of border to choose from.
The border between US and Mexico is unique. It is the longest border that separates such a rich country from such a poor one. Even by CNN’s conservative estimate, 10% of the population of Mexico live on less than a dollar a day.
In Honduras, 20% of the population have a source of income other than begging or stealing.
What kind of fence would persuade you to sit and watch your kids starve while a few miles away your brother’s children grow fat at the groaning table?
Once you are certain that you will die whether you do what I say or not, I have lost all my negotiating chips.
Leaving “should” out entirely, even attempting to fence the US in a la the plans Israel has to wall its citizens into a fortress would be an extremely costly measure, and not just in dollars. It would also have limited effectiveness, and quickly pass the point of diminishing returns for its authors and champions.
I think that’s part of the answer, but not all.
There are some business interests that are very interested in having a supply of cheap labor (read: immigrant labor, documented or not) available. Since I live in Washington, I’m thinking as much as anything of our state’s apple growers. Washington apples are exported all over the country — indeed, all over the world.
Now, what happens when the apple growers of Central Washington can’t hire enough people to pick those apples when they’re ready? They can’t do it by machine, because apple harvesting doesn’t work that way. There’s only so much time to pick the apples, and the number of apples that comes to market is dependent as much as anything on how many people pick them.
So, if there are no migrant workers to pick the apples here in Washington, guess what happens? Supply and demand kicks in The price of apples goes up from $1.00 to $1.50 a pound in the supermarkets here (less if you go to the farmer’s markets, of course) to way above that. $5.00 a pound wouldn’t surprise me. And that, of course, assumes the crop can come in at all. Some farmers will go bankrupt because they have signed futures contracts guaranteeing them a price for apples they can’t deliver, so they have to default on the contract, which means in all likelihood they have to come up with money they’ve already spent on equipment, seed money and debt service to repay the contract.
Remember that bankruptcy bill that got shoved through Congress?
Remember the Dust Bowl? Okies? OK, probably no one under the rank of octogenarian is going to remember the Dust Bowl and the Okie migration firsthand, but it only takes one viewing of The Grapes Of Wrath to get an idea of what it was like.
And that same scenario is going to be repeated in California, Oregon, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana . . . basically anywhere an agricultural crop that requires itinerant labor is needed.
This is my personal opinion, freely offered and worth at least what you paid for it, but the GOP can not afford to let any immigration bill with real penalties pass. This is first, last and all the way down the line pandering to those who can get stirred up by appeals to bigotry, prejudice and xenophobia.
Well guess what, it’s stirring up some other people too, and not in the ways Repubcorp™ intended.
The transition to feudalism is yet another orbit, independent of migration.
As more people are downshifted, they will indeed be “competing with migrants” for jobs that will have some differences with their previous occupation.
However, if some magic wand were waved, and the migrants disappeared completely, this would still occur.
The anti-migrant faction is not arguing for a Living Wage and a Right to Housing, or even Universal Medical Treatment, for people born in the US whose labor the market has priced well below the cost of survival.
And from what we have seen recently, it would appear that people in that situation will likely be helped rather than harmed by the continuing arrival of migrants, in terms of expediting the eventual correction that inevitably occurs, as Frederick Douglass taught us, when serfs become disinclined to serve the lords…
The poem by Emma Lazarus is one of the greatest poems ever. As for immigration — if they really wanted to curb it, they might stop supporting the maquiladoras and GATT and instead require the big corporations to pay the same wages in Mexico (and elsewhere) as they pay here.