Divide and Conquer

Another good post on illegal immigration from Greg Saunders over at This Modern World:

So the findings seem to suggest that there’s a nugget of truth in the xenophobic “they’re stealing our jobs” line in that unskilled workers are forced to compete with their immigrant counterparts, but the only “stolen” jobs are taken by greedy employers who want to skirt our labor laws and make a few extra bucks. The total lack of price reductions additionally supports the fact that there is no great economic incentive for this shift in the workforce. Sure, immoral businesses are saving money, but those savings are being put into their pockets, not passed onto consumers.

And

The struggle in the streets of Los Angeles and elsewhere isn’t one between immigrants and Americans, but between the working class and the business/government entities that are looking for new avenues to cheap labor, even if it means exploiting ethnic tensions to turn people against each other.

Click here for the rest.

This echoes both what I and Mike over at This is not a compliment have been saying the last couple of days: the illegal alien issue has been constructed by businesses trying to make more money by exploiting the poor, both American and foreign. American because these businesses refuse to pay US workers what they're actually worth; foreign because they're preying on desperate vulnerable people. When you get right down to it, the interests of American xenophobes and the foreign nationals they hate are exactly the same. They both want to earn a living. It's the greedy and corrupt US capitalists, and the politicians who support them, that are their enemy, not each other. Classic capitalist exploitation; classic race baiting. They walk hand in hand.

Also, just for good measure, don't forget the US plays a role in the dire economic circumstances abroad that send so many people here illegally for work: our government supports both corrupt governments south of the border and the pirate capitalism which thrives in those countries. It's quite a good thing that so many socialists are coming to power in South America. It sounds like they're sick of this shit, too.

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