I invite you to read this Guardian article and think about what your reaction to it is.
I’m guessing your reaction to this article is something like, “Oh, what ICE is doing is cruel and horrible and we must stop it now!”
While I agree that what ICE is doing is cruel and horrible and that we must stop it now, my reaction to this article is different from what I’m guessing yours was. My reaction is this:
Why the hell doesn’t this article refute the false narrative about WHY there are so many illegal immigrants, the false narrative about the illegal immigrants on the basis of which ICE gets sufficient support from the American public to be able to get away with its cruel deportations? Uh?
Why doesn’t the Guardian or any other progressive media publication refute this false narrative the way the poster, below, does? It was created by the Brighton Assembly of Egalitarians (click here to go to the article the poster’s QR code goes to):
UH?
I’ll tell you why not. These progressive “anti-ICE” media publications (and politicians like Governor Pritzker) are NOT trying to stop the cruel ICE deportations. If they did have that goal then they’d be shouting from the rooftops that the widely-believed narrative about the illegal immigrants is false, and in this way they’d deny ICE the support it absolutely requires to continue its cruel deportations.
These progressive “anti-ICE” media publications are working to make the ruling class’s divide-and-rule-strategy work to maximum effect. This requires the liberal media to ramp up anger against ICE among the approximately half of the have-nots who focus on the cruelty to the illegal immigrants. And it requires the conservative media to ramp up anger against the illegal immigrants among approximately half of the have-nots who focus on the cruelty to American working class people caused by the massive wave of illegal immigrants (which cruelty is ALSO a true fact discussed in this footnote.1)
If the truth about WHY there are so many illegal immigrants were widely known (instead of censored by both the progressive and conservative media) then virtually ALL of the have-nots (those who currently support ICE as well as those who oppose ICE) would be sympathetic to the illegal immigrants and would direct their anger against the ruling billionaire class that has been deliberately forcing huge numbers of poor people south of the border and in Haiti to illegally immigrate to the United States just in order to survive.
This is why I (and I suggest you join me) react to so-called “anti-ICE” articles in progressive newspapers such as The Guardian with ANGER at how they are working NOT to stop ICE but rather (by censoring the key truth) to prevent the growth of a movement that really can stop ICE.
Please post the “Why Are There So Many Illegal Immigrants?” poster with the truth anywhere you can. You can download the PDF file of it here. Also go here to see how this poster has been posted on small shop windows in Brighton.
The huge wave of illegal immigrants does in fact harm American working class people cruelly. It does this in two main ways.
First, it forces municipalities to divert tax money from things that citizens need or very understandably want (such as hospitals that are adequately staffed and recreational facilities and vital city utility services) to taking care of the influx of illegal immigrants.
There is a huge added burden on U.S. taxpayers caused by the wave of illegal immigrants, discussed in detail here:
Second of all, because illegal immigrants fear deportation if they do anything to fight for higher wages and better working conditions, they typically provide extremely cheap labor to American employers, thereby forcing American citizen workers to have to compete with this cheap labor and suffer the cruelty of working for very low pay with bad working conditions or not having a job at all in the given industry. Anger at this is not bigotry.
The Myth That It is “Bigotry” When American Citizen Workers Express Anger at Being Forced to Compete Against Lower-Paid Illegal Immigrants
To those who refer to American citizen workers who oppose illegal immigration as “bigots,” one might ask: Who are you referring to as “bigots”?
One might ask this question because the ruling class wrongly portrays working class opposition to illegal immigration as just bigotry. While there are no doubt some working class American citizens who are bigoted against illegal immigrants, this is not the realistic way to understand opposition to illegal immigration. Here’s why.
To start with, Cesar Chavez--the famous organizer of a farm workers union whose members were mainly Hispanic--opposed illegal immigration. Read about this in an ABC NEWS article that reports:
For a significant period of his storied career as a labor organizer, Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration.
He encouraged union members to join “wet lines” along the Arizona-Mexico border to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing into the U.S. He accused immigration agents at the border of letting in undocumented immigrants to undermine the labor efforts of Latino farmworkers.
If anybody was NOT bigoted against illegal immigrants from Mexico, it was Cesar Chavez! Chavez’s opposition to this illegal immigration had absolutely nothing to do with bigotry; it was opposition to the employers bringing in strike-breakers.
The fact is that there are about 1.1 million illegal immigrants working in construction jobs in the U.S. Read this article about how the residential construction industry in Massachusetts, for example, is based on illegal immigrants--paying them much less than would be paid to American citizen construction workers and forcing the citizen workers to compete for jobs against the lower paid illegal immigrant workers. Citizen construction workers have every right to be angry at this attack on their livelihood.
The point is that the ruling class does in fact use illegal immigrant workers to lower the wages of citizen workers, and not just agricultural workers, and it is not bigotry for citizen workers to express anger at having their wages lowered this way.
The other point on this topic is that the sensible response of citizen workers to illegal immigration is to join with illegal workers in fighting against the ruling class’s practice (both political parties, for many decades) of doing things in Latin and Central America to FORCE people there to have to illegally immigrate to the United States just to survive. Thus Cesar Chavez responded to the problem wrongly. He should have required the illegal immigrants to join the farmworkers union, and only opposed their entry into the United States if they refused to join it.