Woe to the young conservatives
In today's Texan, there's an editorial denouncing the people who swarmed the YCT table on the West Mall on Tuesday to denounce the organization for the ridiculous cry for help that was "Capture the Illegal Immigrant Day", run by the North Texas branch. The UT Austin branch, no doubt after carefully considering what it means to be tainted with the racism of their fellows, decided the best thing to do was set up a stand celebrating Texas Independence Day. We hope they refrained from putting any anti-Mexican sentiments in their signage as they celebrated kicking some Santa Anna ass in 1836.
Well, according to the editorialist, it was a violent nightmare of Latino supporters with crazed looks in their wily eyes attacking innocent conservative Texas-lovers with projectiles. Or something like that.
At one point, I managed to wrestle my way to the front of the crowd and was hit in the back of the head by candy. Yes, candy. The "peaceful" protestors who will simply not stand for violence or hate had taken YCT's candy and baked goods and were literally pelting the members with them. I even got to hear one charming girl yell at the YCT chairman, "Why won't you fight me? I came here to fight. I want a fight."
Okay, okay. Throwing candy and yelling isn't right. They shouldn't have done it. And that girl should have remembered to be charming above all else. Ack. The sarcasm took over again.
Apparently, the anger that was building up in the crowd was due to a rumor that the UT Austin YCT was planning on having their own illegal immigrant hunt. Instead, they got a display on our state's founders, the guys who moved to Mexico and then decided that they'd really rather just own Texas themselves and revolted.
So, the lunacy continued. Conner arrived midway through and answered questions for the better part of two hours. I listened to her patiently engage six people simultaneously in a discussion that had veered off into a debate as obscure as historical racism in the Catholic Church. Come again? What happened to Texas independence?
Indeed. Racism and Texas Independence have nothing to do with each other, well nothing more than lingering issues between Mexico and America that come out in battles over immigration would have anything to do with each other.
The Mexican laws banned slavery, required the Texans to become Roman Catholics, and forbade further settlement by Americans in Texas.
The Texans requested changes from Santa Anna, but he ignored their requests. The Texans then defied Santa Anna, revolted, and declared Texas to be independent.
I wish that people who would come out to protest the YCT would hold their tempers, I really wish they would. But because a few people threw candy does not, by any stretch of the imagination, absolve the YCT of indulging racist displays and then playing dumb about it.
posted by Amanda Marcotte at
4.3.05
67 Comments:
"Group members also argued that illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans, don't pay taxes and hurt the economy
Yeah, the businesses that hire them aren't paying taxes on them either... Oh, sorry, were we not supposed to mention that part?"
Actually, most of those who oppose mass uncontrolled immigration acknowledge that a lot of the problem is corporations who are addicted to cheap labor. They pay illegal aliens (and even low-skill legal immigrants, but to a slightly lesser extent) dirt wages and no benefits. Illegal aliens and low-skill immigrants in general pay little to nothing in taxes. The taxpayer is then left to deal with the costs of education, health care, criminal justice, and transportation.
So while corporations do play a big role here, the Texas conservative group still has the basic point right: illegal immigration is horrible for the economy. While important to the economy, low-skill jobs don't tend to lead to economic growth--this comes largely from science and technology. Indeed, having a larger underclass that is working for increasingly less pay (think supply and demand) is a major drag on the economy. Contra Marx (who at least had a point back in 1848), it is not the poor who are doing the "real" work--it is middle and upper-middle class professionals helping to create new innovations who are truly driving the economy forward.
3/04/2005
Any border that is open to capital should be open to people.
3/04/2005
"why is there always so much opposition to things like raising the minimum wage? Or supporting education? I know that these things are expensive, but if they pay off, why don't we do them?"
Actually I'm not sure raising the minimum wage somewhat is such a bad idea--BUT it would have to come with strict enforcement; otherwise, raising the minimum wage would simply encourage more under-the-table practices and more illegal immigration to get around the minimum wage. I think the bottom line here is really that we have an oversupply of low-skill labor--that is why low-skill jobs pay so little, in fact so little that education, housing, health, and other costs have to be subsidized by the taxpayer for those in low-skill jobs. Like nearly all other commodities, unskilled labor tends to become less valuble as it becomes more common. I'd say it's even worse for unskilled labor than other goods/services, because even though we have been flooded with low-skill labor for the last 20-30 years, we probably need less of it (proportional to the population) than we did 20-30 years ago as the U.S. economy becomes increasingly tech-based.
As for education, I am more skeptical. Trillions have been poured into education since the 1960s. Overall low performance, as well as income and ethnic gaps, have constantly been decried and rallied against. Yet, in spite of all the spending, all the reforms, and the constant talk and lobbying regarding all the problems in the schools, none have gone away. Most schools don't perform that well and ethnic and income gaps are as almost as bad as they were 40 years ago. In any case, I am skeptical that simply throwing more money at education is going to do much of anything. Can education be improved? Probably. Will the Santa Ana (California) school district ever become anything like the Irvine school district? Not going to happen. I guess I should be frank here: the average kid going to an upper middle class suburban school is significantly brighter than the average kid going to a rural or urban school, and there is no going around that--certainly not the NCLB, and certainly not spending 14 grand per kid per year as Washington DC does.
3/04/2005
http://sideshow.me.uk/sfeb05.htm#281406
Read that link. The idea that schools are sliding downhill fast was one trumped up by power-mongerers who want to implement programs like NCLB that are part of a long-range strategy to dismantle education completely. Public education works, way too well for the comfort of the rich and powerful who most definitely do not like bright kids from public schools competing with their own children for seats at Harvard, jobs, you name it.
3/04/2005
"Any border that is open to capital should be open to people."
I see this cliché all the time (from both corporate welfare loving righties and by lefties who think we can save the world through immigration) but it is just that: a cliché. There is no equivalance between people and goods. For one thing, goods can be destroyed, resold, or stored away if there is a surplus. Goods cannot vote and have no rights. Goods cannot go on welfare, or need health care or education, or for that matter, commit crimes as Hispanics (I'm using Hispanics as a crude proxy for low skill immigrants in general) disproportionately do (see these stats from California, for instance).
3/04/2005
"The reason that public education is under attack is this: our young people have more talent and intelligence and ability than the corporate system can ever use, and higher dreams and aspirations than it can ever fulfill. To force young people to accept less fulfilling lives in a more unequal, less democratic society, the expectations and self-confidence of millions of them must be crushed. Their expectations must be downsized and their sense of themselves restructured to fit into the new corporate order, in which a relative few reap the rewards of corporate success-defined in terms of huge salaries and incredible stock options-and the many lead diminished lives of poverty and insecurity.
If my analysis is correct, it means that you - public educators, every person in this room, and all the staff and colleagues you have worked with these many years - you are under attack not because you have failed - which is what the media and the politicians like to tell you. You are under attack because you have succeeded-in raising expectations which the corporate system cannot fulfill.
[...]
There is a world of difference between raising our "expectations" for students and raising "standards." Raising our expectations means raising our belief in students' ability to succeed and insuring that all the resources are there to see that they do. Raising standards means erecting new hoops for them to jump through.
[...]"
Oh my, it looks like we've hit conspricacy theory central here. The statement above may be the stupidiest thing I have ever read. OK, if there is such a surplus of high-tech workers (or potential high-tech workers), why do high-tech jobs pay so much? And why are we importing so many people to do high tech jobs? Yes, we are importing people to do quite low tech jobs, but look what these jobs are paying--crap. With low-skill jobs corporations just want to pay as little as possible. Yet in the high-skill area, employers are trying to import as many high-tech workers as possible, *and these jobs are still high paying,* very much unlike say, picking strawberries.
Advancement in science and technology is the driving force behind economic growth. *Intentionally* holding back American students as we import high-tech workers from elsewhere would make absolutely no sense. The kind of talk in your amanda's link is just outright conspiratorial thinking.
3/04/2005
Didn't you just state that one reason illegal immigrants are hired is that you can pay them less? Well, that's why we're sourcing out tech work and American tech workers are routinely underemployed.
The reason that a border open to trade should be open to people is really quite simple. It means that you can't sequester a population and keep their wages artifically low so that you can outsource work there instead of paying fair wages in your own country. If everyone beats feet to live here where they can make more money, then something has to give.
I assure you that anyone with two eyes and a brain who works anywhere near education can see that the powers that be are trying to starve the educational beast. They really do think they can get all the work that requires education done outside of the country to lower wages and maximize profit and the plebians here can flip burgers or starve.
3/04/2005
By the way, that "wacky" conspiracy theory, in case you didn't read the post, was a keynote address at the Mass. Association of School Superintendents. Not really the Alex Jones crowd there.
I assure you that BushCo full well intends to start rolling back even more programs that have done worlds of good for helping exactly those schools you seem to think have students that cannot get ahead. Of course they can, but not if they have the power people working against them.
3/04/2005
"I assure you that BushCo full well intends to start rolling back even more programs that have done worlds of good for helping exactly those schools you seem to think have students that cannot get ahead. Of course they can, but not if they have the power people working against them."
Bush isn't rolling back anything--and I really wish he were. He's spending like a drunken sailor, and not just on getting ourselves entangled in Iraq. Bush is one of the biggest spenders we've ever had-- and perhaps his biggest long-term spendfest, the massive prescription drug plan (which the costs estimates seem to be going up on every day) isn't really going to hit us for ten years.
The standards in the NCLB are nuts, and there's going to be a lot of fraud and games played to meet its ridiculously unrealistic standards. But the NCLB certainly is not going to do much to the education system, other than spend a little more money on it and saddle it with a little more bureaucracy.
3/04/2005
"By the way, that "wacky" conspiracy theory, in case you didn't read the post, was a keynote address at the Mass. Association of School Superintendents."
Oh, please! The guy is a leftwing hack, and an idiot. And you don't have to be John Bircher to be a wacky conspiracy theorist. The post you cited makes no sense. Corporations may be short-sighted and greedy (the reason they love taxpayer-subsidized illegal alien labor so much), but they're not going to purposely shoot themselves in the foot by stifling technological progress either. Hell, the best way to keep corporations' high-tech labor costs down (at least relative to productivity) would be to improve education and flood the market with high-tech workers, not try to keep the high-tech job market tight by screwing up the education system and limiting their own labor supply.
3/04/2005
I know it's not PC, but I'm glad to hear some of the Tejanos were kicking ass. Sometimes that's the only way to deal with a racist, and make no mistake, Bush's Youth Corp are racists.
3/05/2005
Actually, under the guise of NCLB and just because, BushCo is slashing funds left and right that's only purpose is to help poorer school districts. They are clever as hell in how they are sneaking it past people, but that's what they are doing.
3/05/2005
I read an article yesterday about Wal-mart encouraging their employees to apply for food stamps and government funded health insurance. In other words Wal-mart is probably the biggest user of government subsidized labor, this helps keep prices low and Wal-mart profitable. I am not trying to argue that Wal-mart is evil for doing this, they are smart to take advantage of the subsidies but I think it shows how national health care could help a lot of companies be more competitive.
The point I am trying to make is that if we want low prices we probably have to subsidize wages with with food stamps and health insurance regardless of where the workers come from.
3/05/2005
"I read an article yesterday about Wal-mart encouraging their employees to apply for food stamps and government funded health insurance. In other words Wal-mart is probably the biggest user of government subsidized labor, this helps keep prices low and Wal-mart profitable."
Well this is exactly the problem with seeing low-wage labor, whether immigrant or not, as "cheap." Low-wage labor usually means "subsidized labor," which is why we don't need more of it.
"The point I am trying to make is that if we want low prices we probably have to subsidize wages with with food stamps and health insurance regardless of where the workers come from."
But what good are low prices if they mean low-skill Americans get dirt wages and middle- and upper class Americans get slammed with higher taxes to pay for the low prices? We're going to pay for the goods one way or another, and I think we're generally better off with less rather than more subsidized labor, as subsidies distort the market.
3/05/2005
"I read an article yesterday about Wal-mart encouraging their employees to apply for food stamps and government funded health insurance. In other words Wal-mart is probably the biggest user of government subsidized labor, this helps keep prices low and Wal-mart profitable."
Well this is exactly the problem with seeing low-wage labor, whether immigrant or not, as "cheap." Low-wage labor usually means "subsidized labor," which is why we don't need more of it.
"The point I am trying to make is that if we want low prices we probably have to subsidize wages with food stamps and health insurance regardless of where the workers come from."
But what good are low prices if they mean low-skill Americans get dirt wages and middle- and upper class Americans get slammed with higher taxes to pay for the low prices? We're going to pay for the goods one way or another, and I think we're generally better off with less rather than more subsidized labor, as subsidies distort the market.
3/05/2005
I can't wait for the next revolution, when mexican illegal immigrants make Texas a free state, because the US banned slavery, privileged protestants, and forbade further settlement by Mexicans in Texas :)
3/05/2005
I find laughable the idea that illegal immigrants aren't paying any taxes.I didn't say that illegal aliens are paying *no* taxes--it's just that the taxes they pay are miniscule compared to the services and infrastructure they use, especially if they are paid under the table. Do you think that someone making $10-20K or possibly less a year (the average salary for those legalized under the 1986 immigration bill was less than $9000 in 1992) is really going to be able to pay their way? Education alone costs around $7,000 per kid, pear year, and that doesn't even include health, housing assistance, and additional strains on the justice system and on transportation (more freeway backups, or else greater spending on new roads and/or public transportation).
The state of Connecticut recently did a study in which they discovered that among the people who received public assistance for the working poor, including the Husky health-care benefit, most were working for five very profitable corporations, such as Wal-Mart and McDonald's. Wal-Mart denies that it encourages that sort of thing, but apparently, they hand out information about welfare benefits with their new employee packets.Yeah, this sort of thing is exactly the problem with “cheap” labor—it isn’t really all that cheap; it’s subsidized and often amounts to little more than a backdoor corporate welfare program. More low-skill immigration means more corporate welfare, lower wages for the poor who are already here, and higher taxes for the middle class. Low-skill immigration, and especially illegal immigration, is a raw deal for the vast majority of Americans.
3/06/2005
Major props to BB for points that give pause. Am I as pro-immigration as I thought I am? What I am against, and will always be against, is the inhumane treatment meted out to those who work within our borders but outside of the full protection of the law. And, seeing as we are a nation of immigrants, I will always find those who villify undocumented workers on a personal level distasteful.
Nevertheless, the status quo (which Bush seeked to preserve with his 2 year work-pass scheme) is hard to defend. As BB pointed out, big business is the big winner when they can tap into a pool of bargain priced labor.
The dirt-poor immigrant made good is such a compelling part of the American Dream that it seems selfish and hard-hearted to deny modern day immigrants the opportunities that our forefathers had. But then again, there are no more land-rushes either. Maybe a good way of continuing this tradition of open-ness is to welcome those who are persecuted in their homeland while turning away those who are here for purely economic reasons.
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