I (Elena) used this information in a letter to the editor I wrote after the appearance of the KKK in Manassas. Why, we should be asking ourselves, is it possible for the KKK and Neo-Nazi groups to build membership by using illegal immigration as their marketing tool ? You can see from this blog, that there are plenty of reasonable people with legitimate concerns, so how are these groups exploiting citizens concerns? How did their extremist rhetoric become mainstream and how do we address this very troubling development?
New York, NY, February 6, 2007 … The Ku Klux Klan, which just a few years ago seemed static or even moribund compared to other white supremacist movements such as neo-Nazis, experienced “a surprising and troubling resurgence” during the past year due to the successful exploitation of hot-button issues including immigration, gay marriage and urban crime, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The League, which monitors the activities of racist hate groups and reports its findings to law enforcement and policymakers, has documented a noticeable spike in activity by Klan chapters across the country. The KKK believes that the U.S. is “drowning” in a tide of non-white immigration, controlled and orchestrated by Jews, and is vigorously trying to bring this message to Americans concerned or fearful about immigration.
“If any one single issue or trend can be credited with re-energizing the Klan, it is the debate over immigration in America,” said Deborah M. Lauter, ADL Civil Rights Director. “Klan groups have witnessed a surprising and troubling resurgence by exploiting fears of an immigration explosion, and the debate over immigration has, in turn, helped to fuel an increase in Klan activity, with new groups sprouting in parts of the country that have not seen much activity.”
WhyHereWhyNow, my contempt for McCain and Bush is SO HUGE … I will try to contain it as I respond to your post.
If Bush and McCain wanted to make reasonable arguements, and put them to a vote, I could accept that.
But that’s not what they did. They attempted to pull wool over everyone’s eyes. McCain especially was very active in trying to define a false vocabulary for this debate, trying to make it seem that we had absolutely no choice but amnesty. he put so much effort into making it sem that the only alternative was bus roundups.
These men are and have been about not enforcing laws they swore to uphold, that were ratified through our democratic process, for the gain of the wealthy. And trying to bamboozle people with false arguements. Much as Bush did with the Iraq nonsense. His real goals are hidden and his ostensible reasons are transparently nonsense.
The perfect storm that I see is some conservatives in America being held in sway by greed, some by the pseudo-Christian charity stuff Bush and McCain propogate, and liberals by a reflexive lean towards multi-culturalism and non-whites as victims.
Corr: who would BUILD these homes……
TWINA we need the labor? Really? And they don’t need labor in other countries? You think this is a status quo to keep building on? Abjectly corrupt South American governments and an America splintering into castes?
I don’t want to compete with people eating on 2 dollars a day. I don’t want to import poverty, and set my countrymen up to compete with it.
absolutely agree with you 100%…this is not a line of bull crap. We DO need the labor, Not Me, there are simply not enough workers to fill ALL the roles in the country. You can’t honestly sit there and hope that your children will grow up to deliver the furniture from the Room Store or the appliances from Lowe’s do you?! Or to provide home services such as grass cutting etc? Our kids are in school to get better jobs than those. We need our children educated to be prepared to take the jobs that are well paying and require skills…even those jobs are now going to people who are not Americans because we don’t have enough highly skilled or low skilled workers! ”
Gee, every single one of those jobs you listed was once done by Americans. And our kids are in school to get better jobs than those? Are your kids above cutting grass? Flippipng burgers? Gee, I may not want them working at MCD’s for life, but I’d rather those industries be staffed by Americans than illegal labor.
“I have said before…I know MANY undocumented workers and none of them make less than $12/hour and most of them make between $15-$20 an hour and pay taxes. The argument that “they send all their money home” is absolutely NOT true.”
ORLY??? And FYI – nobody said they send ALL their money home, but a large portion of it they do.
Have you read this?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003685704_mexremit29.html
Or maybe this?
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-remit1-2008may01,1,2578808.story
And here’s THIS GEM…
http://notapundit.wordpress.com/2006/04/07/mexican-finance-minister-immigration-crackdown-would-hurt-us-economy/
And I quote:
“Mexico receives between $18 billion and $20 billion in remittances from workers in the U.S. each year. Though a portion of this money is sent by Mexicans legally working in the U.S., a drive to deport illegals would cut into this important source of funding for Mexico’s poorest regions.”
18-20 BILLION DOLLARS????
Uh-huh…
“The perfect storm that I see is some conservatives in America being held in sway by greed, some by the pseudo-Christian charity stuff Bush and McCain propogate, and liberals by a reflexive lean towards multi-culturalism and non-whites as victims.”
THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE, Rick!!!!!
Thank you, thank you.
I have, in a permanent way, lost faith in both political parties. I’m a Democrat no more.
Rick,
I’m sorry, but I disagree. Yes, we need labor. And not just labor for building/construction. This area is STARVED for home services. People don’t pressure wash or stain their own deck anymore, or want to edge and mulch their planting beds. They don’t have time and if they do have the time, they don’t want to do that!
The fact is that there are millions of undocumented people here, the vast majority working and earning a paycheck. There is no good reason to NOT allow them to go through a background check and become documented. If they can’t pass the background check and can’t show they have been a contributing member or society, then fine, they won’t qualify. But there is no good reason to deport millions of people who HAVE been working and contributing, only to have to turn around and let another wave of people that HAVEN’T been here for 10 years to come in and have to have employers start all over again with new people. There has to be some kind of path for people that can meet the requirements (background check, fine, etc.).
Yes there is a good reason. Integrity. Not rewarding people for breaking the law, for deliberately smuggling themselves in and engaging in identity fraud. And pragmatically, if you reward that, expect 50 million more within a short span.
Did it occur to you TWINAD that there are people in America who would be glad to come live here and do those jobs?
Rick,
But they don’t! They don’t want to leave their home towns. There are towns in Virginia that have 13% unemployment rates, but they don’t come here to get a job because they don’t want to!
Well your arguement is compromised by the fact that the illegals have corrupted the price of labor.
“There is no good reason to NOT allow them to go through a background check and become documented.”
Yeah, because Amnesty worked SO WELL when Ronnie Raygun did it in the 80’s. Making all the illegals, legal solved our job worries. Everyone was paid fairly, benefits were doled out to the neglected, our manufacturing base grew, labor was spread evenly amongst the classes…
Make the illegals legal – and watch the cheap labor proponents keep on keeping on with importing labor. The newly legals won’t be teated fairly – they’ll have to compete with their comrades who just crossed the border and are willing to work for even less than they were.
“But they don’t! They don’t want to leave their home towns. There are towns in Virginia that have 13% unemployment rates, but they don’t come here to get a job because they don’t want to!”
And you KNOW this how?
Considering that our area has a MUCH higher cost of living than other parts of rural VA, packing it up and moving here may not be an option because #1 – they’ll have to compete with illegal labor who undercut their wages and #2 – they cannot afford it. I’ll bet there are some who don’t want to leave – sure. Where I’m from there are plenty who wouldn’t dream of leaving “home” and sit and stew in the reality they have made for themselves. And then there are those who do want to leave and CANNOT because packing it all in, moving and starting anew costs $$$$$. And if you have a family….
“And then there are those who do want to leave and CANNOT because packing it all in, moving and starting anew costs $$$$$. And if you have a family….”
Let me just add to what I said here…
Before one moves, one usually has a job (a job worth moving for). Unique is the person who moves without a job in wait. It seems as if the illegals who have come to this area did so because work was promised to them, or they KNEW they would be getting it. Same cannot be said for someone from SW VA who knows no one here and has no prospects in wait.
There is a network amongst the illegals, whereby there isn’t one amongst job-hungry US residents for low/medium skilled labor.
Rick Bentley, I agree with you that Bush/McCain are wrong about the war. And it’s true that some manufacturing jobs are being sent overseas. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a labor shortage here. The two things are completely independent.
Even if you never studied economics, or if you don’t care to read reports from the U.S. Department of Labor, just think about it for a moment. We have are short 10 million workers today (even with all the undocumented workers here). Over the next 10 to 20 years, one third of our workforce will be retiring. This means there will be a labor shortage even worse than we have now. Unemployment is at 4 percent, that’s a lot less than 33 percent. We need workers, period.
Bush and McCain are trying to solve this problem by fixing the process by which we get workers. It’s not fair to deride them for trying to steer our economy in the right direction (and deride the teachings of The New Testament and the basic American value of equality while you’re at it). Those qualities are good qualities. Bush gets less credit because he is not his own man. But McCain is anything but a puppet and he stands on principle even when his views our outdated (as with Iraq). Republican voters know this, otherwise Tom Tancredo (who is an anti-immigrant bigot) or Mitt Romney (who is willing to say he is to get elected) would be the nominee.
What you have on your hands is the intolerant wing of the Republican party trying to take advantage of the leadership void left behind when Bush basically abdicated after the 2006 election and went into “run out the clock” mode. It’s like the kid sitting in the corner with the dunce cap on taking control of the lesson plan because the teacher is sick and no substitute was called.
Moderates in the Republican party like John Warner and Tom Davis are retiring rather than deal with these clowns. But if you care at all about the Republican party, it’s time to stand up and fight.
Even if you’re not a Republican, you should thank John McCain for standing tall when it looked to all hell like Lou Dobbs was getting through to more than just the hateful and the gullible. The reformers in the GOP need to win beat back the racists. Otherwise, we’ll be looking at a one party system in ten year’s time.
TWINAD you are right, most of the jobs we need filled do not require a high school education. These guys have their facts wrong because they need to in order to support their cause.
A huge part of the American dream is to work your way up from the bottom. People who have come here were motivated to do the lower paying jobs, sometimes more than one, because they have no choice. It was a matter of survival. If they were exploited because of their skin color, or exploited because they didn’t have legal status, they may have had to work harder for longer, but they always made it eventually, and their children have had it better. That’s how we became the world’s greatest nation.
The real question we’re facing is: do we want more of that (and an expanding economy), or less of that (and a contracting economy)?
Short-sighted and selfish people will always be there — or I should say, unscrupulous demagogues will always be there to scare people and make them short-sighted and selfish. That’s why the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Chinese, etc. all were discriminated against when they first arrived.
In the 21st century, despite the social progress we made in the last half of the 20th, we are actually more vulnerable to anti-immigrant propaganda than ever before.
It used to be that anti-immigrant sentiment was limited to those who lived side by side with new immigrants. Now days, people who never even SEE an undocumented immigrant in their daily life are made to hate them nonetheless by cable “news,” talk radio, and the internet. Websites, email blasts, and blogs are amplifying hate and propaganda much wider than printed fliers and newspapers could in previous centuries.
This era we are in right now is THE MOST VULNERABLE time we will face, because most of our electorate and many of our elected officials are technology illiterate. They don’t understand that machines can generate faxes and emails to make it look like there is a groundswell of support for an idiotic policy like the Immigration Resolution in PWC. People who grew up watching Walter Cronkite
don’t understand that just because Lou Dobbs plays a journalist on TV, it doesn’t mean his “reporting” is fact-checked, vetted, or researched.
But each year, another crop of Americans turns 18, and each year there are more voters who are tech savvy enough to know an email does not necessary represent a real person, who are media savvy enough to know that not all journalists aim for accuracy, and they are so comfortable with the very multiculturalism their grandparents are still resisting… they actually seek it out, rather than hide from it in their adult lives.
Whoever who calls himself Second Alamo (has Tom Kopko admitted it yet) is right in a sense. This is a last stand. Not for White America as he means to imply, but for a 20th century America that is limited by backward views on race, religion, and sexual orientation, and is easily bamboozled by email blasts and cable news propaganda.
If the good ole U.S.A., the Nation of Immigrants, is ever to become the Nation of Anti-immigrants, now is the one and only opportunity.
As John Stirrup said in his Civil Rights Commission testimony, 2008 was supposed to be the year. Who messed that up for him? John McCain. He may or may not be our next President, but history will remember him as a great statesman, and as the winner of the most significant primary race our nation has seen in 48 years.
WHWN, at 2:21 that is the most ethnically biased, racially biased thinking I have yet seen on this blog. You seem to think it is perfectly ok to think in terms of “white privilege”.
How about thinking a little less like the “seperatist”, who is for anyone who is on the other side of “white privilige”, meaning desiring privilege and special consideration for all minorities as long as they are not seeking “white privilige”. You don’t get this racial and ethnic group bias in your own language concept do you?
Here is the problem. The language you MUST use to be consistant with the US constitution and Supreme Court is language that does not classify people according to “race”, gender, religion, or ethnic group. I.e you can’t use the term “white privilige” any more than you can use the term “black privilige”, “brown privilige”, “yellow privilige”, “red privilige” or any other term associated with such racial bias and discrimmination.
You can only think legally in terms of “individual rights” and not group rights. You can neither give privilige to any ethnic group (white, black, red, yellow or brown), or advantage, or special consideration, special laws, special advocacy, and special rules, any more than you can discrimminate against any “individual” regardless of race, gender, religion or ethnic group.
This “illegal alien” issue, is not about seperating the nation into white groups, black groups, brown groups, yellow groups, or red groups or whatever, it is about the real need to stop “diversity”, and multiculturalism, and “illegal alien lawbreaking” from destroying the country, BECAUSE people (just like you) are still thinking in terms of “group privilege”, especially minority group privileges, just because of their minority numbers being smaller, or not as big as a majority. That concept is “illegal”. The only legal concept is to promote racial and ethnic group cultural blending, making these diverse groups come together under a common (unbiased) culture and national unity, based ENTIRELY on the concept of “individual rights”. No one gets privilege, no-one gets discrimination. The “majority” groups are given every single privilege and protection from “minority” group discrimmination and advantage, as much as any “minority” group is given privilege and protection from “majority group” discrimmination. THE LAW IS NEUTRAL, you need to be neutral too. It must be neutral, and it must work both ways, for all individuals, simply because everyone is given NO PRIVILEGE, unless deserved as an “individual”, based on applying the SAME LAW to all, in the same way. “Illegal alien” is a legal law applied to everyone the same, regardless of whether you are a majority, or a minority, because it just doesn’t matter, it is applied to all individuals equally. You break the law and you will pay the consequence, regardless of your race, gender, religion, or ethnic group.
NO ONE gets special privilege from the law, even if they are not a member of what you are “calling white privilege”, which by the way is a highly racist concept, or “minority privilege”, which is also illegal under the Supreme Court. Everyone gets equal opportunity, under the law, but no special racial, or ethnic group or “diversity advantage” identifying ethnic group membership as getting any special privileges, because that manipulates a concept called “no guarantee of equal outcomes, ruled as a law by the Supreme Court), it is illegal to do numerical racial balancing based on numbers, and advantaging “minority” groups, over “majority groups”, because of seperatist group thinking concepts. The only advantage anyone is guaranteed under the law, is the right to compete with everyone as an “individual”, regardless of race,gender, religion, and ethnic group. The only thing you can’t compete with is allowing some people to break the law (like illegal aliens), and not allow everyone to be protected equally, by the same law (non-illegal, permanent residents and citizens).
Because people don’t understand that “group thinking is illegal”, we still get illegal and ethnic biased rhetoric, like you just spewed, putting people into good-guy, bad-guy, racially and ethnically separated “buckets”.
People who do this (and who form legal entities by race, religion, gender and ethnic group for these groups sole beneficary and advocacy), and who think in terms of self-identifying concepts such as what race, gender, religion or ethnic group you advocate for and belong to) is as racist a concept as anyone in the 60s and 70s ever thought of. This type of thinking and “diversity” advocacy needs to stop, just like it needed to be stopped in the 60s and 70s.
Excellent post WHWN!
Know who is is being put out of a job by “illegal aliens”? Legal workers (of all races, genders, religions and ethnic groups) who can’t afford to live on an “illegal wage scale”. AND teenagers, in record numbers cannot get jobs because “illegal” adults are taking all of them, some taking pay below minimum wage in restaurants, landscaping and construction labor, that typically in the past teens had a chance to compete with, at minimum wage, but now cannot when it is below minimum wage or held by an “illegal” adult.
What law is protecting our legal poor and our legal teenagers? I suppose people here just don’t care about “that group” because it does not fall into a racial, gender, religious, ethnic group class that they prefer, feel sorry for, have family members in, or want to support because it is a minority or desired “privilege group”.
Where exactly are your finding this crisis among teenagers and finding jobs?
The “illegal alien” issue is not about ethnicity (I’ll say it over and over until people get it”).
It is about a simple ethics concept of “abiding by community law”. If there is any hatred it is hatred for people who deny there is a law, and break it whenever they feel like it, specifically so they can better themselves, regardless of how many others they harm by being in the country illegally.
Every single job, taken by an “illegal” person, would be held by a “legal person”, or the job would not be competitive and non-disadvantaged.
People who are upset about this are tired of seeing the law broken, and their community ordnances (also laws) ignored.
This issue is an issue of ethics, not what race you belong to.
Its about stopping the “illegal” flow and bringing it into line with what is allowed by the law. This allows “legal” people to compete for those jobs fairly, and with disadvantage of an “illegal wage scale”.
You just don’t get it.
Any issue about “multi-culturalism” is also about encouraging people to follow a concept of cultural “integration” such as that encouraged by the Civil Rights laws of the 60s, and making it illegal to promote “diversity and dis-integration, seperatism and group racism” as is happening all over the country now, primarily by people of specific ethnic groups who want special laws and priviliges for themselves.
I think people are very upset about that concept happening in our country as a result of outside ethics.
Elena, it was on the news this weekend, record numbers of teens.
I think people are also upset that people in these “ethnic groups” as “managers” and “business owners” are generally only hiring people in the same “ethnic group”. I think that is also upsetting record numbers of people who believed in the 60s civil rights laws, and the laws as defined by the current Supreme Court Ruling. “You are all as individuals guaranteed equal opportunity, but not guaranteed equal outcomes.” You can only compete as individuals.
You cannot hire based on numbers and ethnic group loyalties. That is illegal. I think when people clearly see this happening in the restaurant, landscaping and construction business (an many other job markets), it makes them very upset that the laws of the 60s are not being followed, and are simply being ignored. It is illegal to balance numbers, only legal to hire based on talent, skill, performance and ability as individuals (not as ethnic groups).
Everyone who is “illegal” is ignoring the law.
WHWN I agree with you on one thing. Amnesty would be the death of the GOP and propel us towards one party rule. Which is why it’s so amusing that brain-dead idiots like Bush and McCain supported it, despite mountains of polling data and despite common sense.
Really Michael, what news? Besides one or two exceptions, ALL the teens I know are working.
Information only… said on 4 May 2008 at 9:49 pm:
Imagine that….someone calling out Mr. Principi. I wonder why that happened? Could it be over his motion to modify the resolution and article in the Washington Post?
Neighborhood services should be giving the same response to residents regardless of where the resident lives. Perhaps they would have more time to respond to legitimate complaints if they were not being used to single out residents for their political opinions. Fortunately these ‘citizens’ will be ignored in the future because county officials now understand what is happening.
NS should be providing the same service countywide. Unfortunately this is a dept within the county that probably gets it’s fair share of “retaliation” complaints. I would think after enough of these types of complaints the county would then take action against the “false accusers”. NS has it’s work cut out for them this summer with the tall grass and trash left behind at vacant houses (pun intended). The tall grass and trees is sure to bring the rats. These become serious health and safety issues.
“And it’s true that some manufacturing jobs are being sent overseas.”
Oh. My. Friggin. GOD….”some” jobs?????
Ever take a tour of the Great Lakes Region? How about the Northeast for that matter?
Your flippant disregard for the job loss in that one region alone in the US has completely disqualified anything else you had to say on a (supposed) shortage of workers in the US. Apparantly you don’t read the news when major US manufacturers lay off thousands of people – you know “WORKERS” and send operations overseas.
Oh, and lurve the campaign spiel for McCain… I hope you got paid for that plug.
Oops! I meant to say The tall grass is sure to bring the rats. Trees are not in the equation.
Information only…, 6. May 2008, 7:00
Elena, it was on Channel 7 Weather syndicate (Digital HDTV side channel). Can’t find that but here is a CNN report about jobless teens in for a bad summer competing with un-employed adults for jobs.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/04/29/get.teen.hired.ap/index.html
Bubba, I’m not saying McCain understands our economy. He admits he doesn’t know much about economics, quite humbly and quite honestly. The truth is that manufacturing jobs are easy to protect in a global economy and a global economy is what we’ve got. This is a learning curve that Obama will have to go through too. But I’m not sure how the loss of manufacturing jobs can be blamed on immigrants, documented or not. These immigrants don’t come in to start at the top, or even at the middle. They start at the bottom. And, they’re doing jobs for which we have a JOB SHORTAGE. It’s not that Americans “won’t do” them. It’s that there aren’t enough of us TO do them. And, this is as it should be.
Would you be happier if America turned out one generation after another of low skilled laborers? I wouldn’t. Part of the American dream is moving up the ladder. As our economy (hopefully) grows, we will need more and more people who are wiling to come to this country, start at the bottom, and work hard. Their children, often, achieve the American dream, achieve a higher level of education and get higher paying jobs.
This DOESN’T MEAN we no longer need the low skill jobs done! In fact, it means we need more of them. Where do they come from? Immigration.
So, listen. Let’s agree to disagree. You’re angry. You don’t want to look at things from a forward-thinking, informed perspective. I can understand. It’s hard to do that when you’re angry.
Rick Bently,
Amnesty is just a word someone made up hoping it would make you angry. Looks like it worked.
We need to require immigrants who wish to stay in this country to become citizens. This is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. This is an American issue, one we need to solve, and quickly, if we are to compete with nations like India and China that already have the work force they need, and are quickly catching up to us in modernization.
Failure to integrate and Americanize our immigrant workforce will be bad for America.
Having the Republican party collapse would also be bad. But if I have to choose between the two, I’ll let the Republican party collapse, and so will the electorate.
Using the word “Amnesty” and other buzz words and phrases to block progress on this issue is a bad strategy cooked up by the extremist wing of the Republican Party. They’ve only gotten this far because of a string of bad breaks that left the moderates and the realists of the party powerless to stop the surging mob.
If the moderates and realists fail to regain control of the party, yes, we will face a one party system for a while. But listen, McCain already won the nomination. In many ways, the anti-immigrant extremists have already lost the battle. The only question is, are they willing to drag the Republican Party with them. And if so, what are the moderates and realists going to do about it?