Marc Cooper and undocumented workers
Posted to www.marxmail.org on October 10, 2005
Marc Cooper is a liberal journalist rapidly shifting
rightward who writes for the Nation Magazine, the Los Angeles Weekly (an
'alternative' newspaper that shed its radical politics over a decade ago) and
the centrist Atlantic Monthly. Over the past couple of years, he has been
poised to break with the left in the same fashion as his colleague Christopher Hitchens. Like Hitchens, Cooper
pours vitriol on advocates of immediate withdrawal from
For the past couple of years at least, Cooper has been
covering the "illegal aliens" beat for the Nation and L.A. Weekly. I
hadn't paid much attention to what he was saying until it came up in the
context of a discussion on his blog, which is rapidly turning into an American
version of left-bashing British blogs like Harry's Place and Norm Geras's.
It seems that Cooper was miffed that the American left has
not taken the "terrorist threat" seriously enough. While most New
Yorkers viewed the terror alert for the subway system as manufactured to shore
up Bush's lagging poll ratings, especially since they were timed to coincide
with his latest speech on terrorism, Cooper viewed the threat as real:
"When ordinary Americans worry that their cities, ports or subways might
be bombed by suicidal fanatics, it's laughable and insulting to tell them that
if they would just help put an end to U.S. imperialism the whole problem would
go away." (http://www.marccooper.com/)
Politically, Cooper was trying to pull off the same thing as
the British 'decent left' (ie., prowar) bloggers after the
subway bombings there. When radical critics of the war in
Tim Frasca was head of
Now I have heard all this nonsense before so I didn't really
pay it much attention. But what really caught my eye is how the "illegal
immigrant" question got dragged in. Cooper wrote, "Policy wise, we
need real and immediate comprehensive immigration reform. The flow of human
traffic across the border must be legalized and regulated…I have always
supported more Border Patrol agents." Flow of human
traffic? More border agents? Odd formulations from a
progressive journalist, to say the least.
Although Cooper's dispatches from the Mexican border are
filled with muckraking touches about deaths occurring in treks across the
desert, the policy he favors is a draconian bill put forward by Senators
Kennedy and McCain. In a Nation Magazine article, Cooper enthuses over the
legislation, supposedly the product of a right-left consensus over the need to
deal with an emergency situation:
And Senator John
McCain allies with Kennedy to sponsor legislation that has been
enthusiastically endorsed by both corporate and working
Full: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050606/cooper
Contrary to Marc Cooper, this legislation is hardly anything
to cheer about. Growing out of Bush's "guest worker" proposal, it
requires a $2,000 fee from anybody who came here without papers, a figure that
is simply beyond the reach of the most desperate immigrants. It also requires
passing an English language exam, an obvious concession to nativist
prejudice. The bill includes an "Essential Worker Visa Program,"
something that will allow 400,000 workers in each year to take low-skill jobs.
They would be able to quit an unsatisfactory job, but would be deported if they
don't find another within 60 days. This sounds very much like a way to chain a
worker to a shitty job.
Contrary to Cooper the real problem in the final analysis is
the flow of capital across borders, not the "flow of human traffic."
Because of NAFTA and increased multinational penetration of