la lucha continúa ... (portions x-posted)

[saavedra77]

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators turned out in support of immigrant rights in over 140 U.S. cities, Monday--perhaps as many as 500,000 in Washington, D.C. and 200,000 in Phoenix, AZ.  The demonstrators included undocumented immigrants and their supporters, with Latinos everywhere the overwhelming majority.  

Monday's marches and rallies have reportedly increased the pressure on Congress to rethink the "get-tough" immigration bill the House passed in December.  Some Republicans are already regretting how the House bill may be shaping the party's image with Latinos (now the nation's largest minority), and with immigrants in general.  (Pointedly, demonstrators on the National Mall on Monday chanted "Today we march; tomorrow, we vote.")  Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) commented on Monday: "I think everybody sees the immigrant community as an emerging force. I think everybody is quite sensitive that they don't want to be on the wrong side, politically, of this group."  

But it may not be just Monday's marchers who are driving politicians to reconsider: A Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 63% of Americans support letting immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for a certain number of years apply for legal status and eventual citizenship; only 20% backed the House plan to declare undocumented immigrants felons.  

Despite President Bush's own plummeting poll numbers, this is an issue on which he is closer to U.S. public opinion than many of his fellow Republicans, since Bush's proposed guest-worker program would legalize many undocumented immigrants.  Some Republican Senators--notably including Brownback, John McCain, and Arlen Specter--also seem to be more in tune with popular opinion.  

Then again, the Democratic Party is publicly perceived as more trustworthy on the immigration issue: in the Post-ABC poll cited above, 50% of respondents said that they trust the Democrats more than Republicans on the immigration issue; 38% felt more trust for Republicans.  What's particularly interesting is that the Democrats haven't had to do anything lately to win this trust, beyond just opposing the House bill (although the Dems have a long history as "the party of immigrants," going back to the early nineteenth century ...).

Here in Seattle, about 15,000 people marched through downtown and rallied in front of the courthouse. I walked down after work to check it out, and kind of got sucked in: It was enthralling to be in the midst of thousands of people chanting "¡Sí, se puede!" I had no idea there so many Latinos in Seattle ...

Comments

[schmallturm.livejournal.com]

The number is 12 million last I saw it. Do you plan on amnesty for the next 12 million too? Is there a point at which there are too many immigrants? Or is any number ok as long as they speak spanish? And why am I supposed to be happy about hack politicians, subsidized farmers, and labor organizers turning my country into Northern Mexico for their own benefit? I don't want to live in a Latin American country. These guys are marching around waving the Mexican flag and shouting in spanish that I don't have a choice. I say they're wrong.

(And how many Latinos in America actually want to live in a Latin country? It's a lot better to be a Mexican in America than a Mexican in Mexico.)

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

If it's "a lot better to be a Mexican in America than a Mexican in Mexico," if you're right that Latinos don't necessarily want to live in countries with Mexico's problems, then you don't have to worry about Latinos "turning" the U.S. into "Northern Mexico."

But let's be serious: if current U.S. immigration laws are meant to prevent or discourage illegal immigration, 12 million undocumented immigrants means that these laws have been a crashing failure.

To what can we attribute this failure?

We certainly can't attribute it to the migrants, alone. If elected officials really wanted to keep illegals out, surely they would have done a better job of enforcing these laws over the decades that this problem has grown?

Since Latinos have historically had low voter turnout, I certainly don't think that it's been the Latino vote that has caused elected officials to neglect this issue.

Rather, I suspect that the underlying explanation for their inaction has had something to do with economics: with the employers who depend on these workers, and with consumers' dependence on the cheap goods they produce.

Meanwhile, there are people who want these jobs so badly that they'll risk death in the desert or in shipping containers to get here.

If we seriously mean to address this issue, then we have to stop kidding ourselves: Any solution has to take into account the fact that there are 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country, that many of these immigrants now have children who are (per the Fourteenth Amendment) U.S. citizens, that some of these migrants risk death in remote desert crossings and cargo containers just to work in menial jobs here, and--last, but far from least--that there are politically influential industries that rely on the presence of these low-wage workers.

So how, seriously, how do you propose to a) reduce or eliminate the political influence of the industries that rely on these workers; b) deal with the economic consequences of losing this low-wage workforce (presumably either higher prices for the goods they produce, lower wages for some Americans, or lower profits for those politically influential industries, or some combination of the former); c) deport 12 million people (I spoke about the logistical nightmare that this would likely involve, above); and d) keep yet more desperate people from slipping in? Sounds like kind of a tall order.

The advantage of a guest worker program, as I believe that the President has pointed out, is that it provides a legal avenue for these people to participate in our economy. And I strongly suspect that migrants will prefer having a legal avenue for coming to this country to risking their lives trying to get here as freight or at desert border crossings. It also avoids having to overcome the considerable obstacles outlined, above.