Illegal Immigration and Revolution: What's the Connection?
French rulers feared that the huge May 1968 General Strike might lead to a revolution, and that French citizen-soldiers might not obey orders to attack it, and only foreign ones would.
As I show in my “Illegal Immigration to the U.S.: Myth vs. Reality,” U.S. rulers for decades (both major parties) have been doing things south of the border to force poor people to have to illegally enter the United States just in order to survive. The reason U.S. rulers have been doing this is a) to get cheap labor that is afraid to go on strike for fear of being deported, and b) to pit U.S. citizen have-nots against illegal immigrant have-nots, and also to pit citizens who want to deport the illegal immigrants against those who don’t (as discussed here) for divide-and-rule.
But there is another possible reason why our rulers are doing things to get a lot of illegal immigrants to enter the United States. Our rulers may view some of these illegal immigrants as a solution to two related problems:
The first problem is this.
The U.S. military is having a hard time recruiting, in large part because of what the military itself says is “the declining propensity for young Americans to serve.” The U.S. Defense Department says:
The Air Force failed to make its requiting goals for the first time in 24 years, Amrhein said during his testimony. The Air Force recruiting chief specifically mentioned the declining propensity for young Americans to serve. "We've seen a steady decline in the military even being an option for our youth as they contemplate the future, with propensity dropping from 13 percent four years ago to 10 percent."
The top ruling class think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, likewise reports:
The U.S. Armed Forces are facing an unprecedented recruiting crisis. The inability of the military to fill its ranks is an obvious national security issue that every American should care about. There is divergence on the cited reason for declining recruitment numbers, varying from propensity to serve, access to interested audiences, the temperament of Generation Z, and physical and mental fitness to serve. All of these are worthy discussion topics, but exceptionally difficult to resolve.
Read here about how Great Britain’s rulers have the same problem.
The second problem is this.
The U.S. ruling class has good reason to fear that a truly revolutionary movement may develop in the United States like the one that developed in France in May of 1968 because economic inequality is extreme and growing more so, and that U.S. citizen-soldiers might not obey orders to repress it, just as French rulers had good reason to fear that French-citizen soldiers might not obey orders to repress a revolutionary uprising in May of 1968.
Here are some extracts from the Wikipedia article about the May of 1968 almost-revolution in France:
Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, and the occupation of universities and factories. At the height of events, which have since become known as May 68 (French: Mai 68), the economy of France came to a halt.[2] The protests reached a point that made political leaders fear civil war or revolution; the national government briefly ceased to function after President Charles de Gaulle secretly fled France to West Germany on the 29th….
On 30 May, 400,000 to 500,000 protesters (many more than the 50,000 the police were expecting) led by the CGT marched through Paris, chanting: "Adieu, de Gaulle!" ("Farewell, de Gaulle!"). …
Not knowing that the Communists did not intend to seize power, officials prepared to position police forces at the Élysée with orders to shoot if necessary. That it did not also guard Paris City Hall despite reports that it was the Communists' target was evidence of governmental chaos.[18] The Communist movement largely centered around the Paris metropolitan area, and not elsewhere. Had the rebellion occupied key public buildings in Paris, the government would have had to use force to retake them. The resulting casualties could have incited a revolution, with the military moving from the provinces to retake Paris as in 1871. Minister of Defence Pierre Messmer and Chief of the Defence Staff Michel Fourquet prepared for such an action, and Pompidou had ordered tanks to Issy-les-Moulineaux.[11] While the military was free of revolutionary sentiment, using an army mostly of conscripts the same age as the revolutionaries would have been very dangerous for the government.[7][18] A survey conducted immediately after the crisis found that 20% of Frenchmen would have supported a revolution, 23% would have opposed it, and 57% would have avoided physical participation in the conflict. 33% would have fought a military intervention, while only 5% would have supported it and a majority of the country would have avoided any action.[11]
Note that President de Gaulle secretly fled to West Germany. Some suspect that one reason he did so was to line up GERMAN soldiers to use against the French working class, since he did not trust that French soldiers would obey orders to shoot fellow French working class people, for the reasons spelled out in the last two sentences of the Wikipedia extract above.
Oppressive ruling classes often rely on soldiers of one nationality or ethnicity to attack people of a different nationality or ethnicity. The fascist General Franco, for example, relied on Moroccan soldiers to attack the Spanish egalitarian revolutionaries in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9. U.S. rulers rely on Americans to attack foreign people in places such as Vietnam and Iraq, but worry they may not attack fellow Americans at home when ordered to do so. When U.S. rulers had to attack Americans to put down the great Seattle General Strike of 1919 (read about it here) they had to call in federal troops (read about it here) who felt no loyalty to the people of Seattle.
Are U.S. rulers thinking of using illegal immigrants to solve these two problems, by recruiting them into the U.S. military?
It would seem that some of them indeed are. Here are some of the indications:
A document authored by “MARINE CORPS COMMAND AND STAFF COLL QUANTICO VA” says:
The US military has been recruiting foreigners to serve in its military forces since the country was first formed. Prior to the Civil War, about half of those serving in the US military were immigrants. During the Civil War, 1 in 5 Union soldiers was an immigrant and today, of the 65,000 foreign-born men and women serving in the US military, approximately 29,000 are noncitizens green card holders. While these legal immigrants are allowed to serve in the US military, undocumentedillegal immigrants are not allowed to serve. Nevertheless, undocumentedillegal immigrants should be allowed to enlist in the US military because doing so would ease the current difficulties in recruiting an all-volunteer force, many of these individuals already possess the qualities needed for military service, and the trend in current and proposed legislation is moving toward allowing both illegal immigrants and foreigners to enlist.
The Senate majority whip proposes doing it:
So does this representative:
Even FOX NEWS gives a thumbs up to it:
Even with a reduction in its numbers, the American armed forces will be stressed to fill their ranks with volunteers in the years to come. Should we become embroiled in another war, as we most surely will, those stresses will be even greater and could jeopardize our national security. Let those who do not wish to be American soldiers, sailors, Marines or airmen, or to fight in the defense of their country, serve elsewhere. But allow all of those who do, the opportunity to serve their adopted country, as they have done so honorably and faithfully for hundreds of years, in the ranks of its armed forces. That they do so to become U.S. citizens is nothing new. And they will have paid for that honor with their blood and sweat and tears. The same cannot be said of the vast majority of Americans, who take their citizenship for granted. It is time to allow undocumented immigrants to serve in the U.S. military. It’s good for America and the American people.
They also want to recruit illegal immigrants into the police forces, for the same reason:
When we build an egalitarian revolutionary movement of, by and for the have-nots of the world, it will gain the support of ALL people—including ALL military personnel—who support egalitarian values, regardless of their nationality or ethnicity.
Our rulers know this, which is why they love it when good anti-establishment people frame their aspirations in a non-egalitarian way such as saying they are defending the United States Constitution, which is a thoroughly anti-egalitarian document as I discuss here.
A very legitimate concern for us all.