Common Dreams xenophobia
Posted to www.marxmail.org on March 30, 2006
On today's Common Dreams website (a pro-Democratic Party
outlet founded by nonprofit foundation entrepreneur Don Hazen), there's a
completely rancid article on immigration written by Thom Hartmann, an Air
America radio host and author of such groundbreaking books as "Focus Your
Energy", which is described on his website (http://www.thomhartmann.com/focus.shtml)
as a way to succeed in business even if you suffer from Attention Deficit
Disorder. Just what suffering humanity has been waiting for.
Although I lack the patience to do a thorough study of Hartmann-thought, he
strikes me as a combination of New Age hustler and woozy-headed liberal.
He basically describes "illegal immigration" as a
corporatist plot to keep the wages of
"The reason why thirty years ago United Farm Workers'
Union (UFW) founder Caesar Chávez fought against
illegal immigration, and the UFW turned in illegals
during his tenure as president, was because Chávez,
like progressives since the 1870s, understood the simple reality that labor
rises and falls in price as a function of availability."
Actually, as Hartmann acknowledges in the very next
paragraph, the actions were taken against scabs:
"In 1969, Chávez and members of the UFW marched
through the Imperial and
At any rate, given the sad state of the UFW as documented in
the recent LA Times series, the last thing one would want to do is build a
progressive politics based on uncritically accepting whatever Cesar Chavez did.
Hartmann believes that the elevated status of the American
working class is attributable to some degree by its ability to exclude
immigrants from the dining table. "[T]hey limited labor-hours by
supporting laws that would regulate immigration into the
Hartmann cites a wikipedia article
to back up his argument: "The first laws creating a quota for immigrants
were passed in the 1920s, in response to a sense that the country could no
longer absorb large numbers of unskilled workers, despite pleas by big business
that it wanted the new workers."
This dingbat doesn't seem to understand that this
"sense" was driven by racism and xenophobia and not out of any desire
that native workers get a better life.
"The eugenics movement persuaded policy-makers in the
"The Johnson Act turned out to be one of the most
lethal bills ever passed. Fifteen years after its passage, Jews trying to
escape from Nazi Germany were refused asylum in
Full: http://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap04.html
Continuing along in his racist and ignorant fashion,
Hartmann writes:
"At the same time, there are between seven and fifteen
million working illegal immigrants diluting our labor pool. [Don't you love it
how he is so fixated on "dilution"? Somehow I am reminded of Jack D.
Ripper and his worries about "precious bodily fluids" in Dr.
Strangelove.]
"If illegal immigrants could no longer work, unions
would flourish, the minimum wage would rise, and oligarchic nations to our
south would have to confront and fix their corrupt ways."
Excuse my profanity, but this is unvarnished bullshit.
Unions can only begin to flourish when they understand that
all working people have the same class interests. Some of the most positive
steps taking place in the union movement today are the direct result of the
participation of "illegal immigrants" as this 3/15/2001 Christian
Science Monitor article demonstrates:
Jerry Dominguez can
often be found wandering the streets of
"How much do you
make here, amigo?" he asks. "How many hours do you work here?"
It turns out the
worker, whose name is Elias, earns less than the minimum wage, but doesn't
complain out of fear of deportation. He is exactly what Mr. Dominguez is
looking for.
The founder of the
Mexican-American Workers' Association, Dominguez is on the front lines of an
unusual union-organizing campaign. His recruits are the largely invisible
people who work long days and nights for meager pay and no benefits - the
estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Mexican immigrants like Elias who work in
After decades of
seeing undocumented immigrants as the enemy of working-class Americans - taking
valuable jobs - unions are beginning to embrace small organizing initiatives
among foreign workers in a quest to expand union ranks.
Last April, more than
8,000
Simultaneously, the
powerful AFL-CIO - long one of the groups most vociferous about the threat
posed by illegal immigrants - reversed its position on key issues involving
foreign workers. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has called for an amnesty for
Now, some unions are
trying to organize undocumented workers by launching
neighborhood-to-neighborhood campaigns like the one here in
"They're now
going back to the model of making coalitions in communities," says Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor expert at