Invisible Immigrants

[ouij]

The immigration debate continues to swirl around Washington. In the Senate, the debate seems to have stalled on what sort of "guest worker" program they are prepared to implement as a result of the McCain-Kennedy language.

For those of you not familiar with the debate, the bill [S. 1033] sponsored by Senators McCain (AZ) and Kennedy (MA) would

Comments

[stdanmark]

I found your journal through the WashingtonDC community, and I was sucked in by your I66 Nutley Street icon, which is my once and future exit :) I thought this post about Guest Workers had a lot of interesting debating points. But I don't pick intellectual arguments in strangers' journals. However, if you wanted to friend me, you can pick as many arguments in my journal as you want if I can debate a few points in yours :)

[ouij]

you've been added.

[stdanmark]

As for the guest worker program being a caste system by statute abd middle America closing its eyes behind the guest worker label, this legislation represents a monumental discarding of American myth. That myth being that our national economic success is built on the hard work of Americans, who work hard because they enjoy American freedoms and American social justice. The guest worker program is a open admission that the truth does not stack up to the myth: The American standard of living is in large part based on the availability of cheap labor abroad and in the form of illegal immigrants at home, who are willing to work for less than minimum wage and forego all of the benefits, such as health care and a modicum of security in retirement, that Americans are coming to veiw as basic rights. Until now America has pretended that this class of people, who produce affordable fruits and vegetables and keep the costs of construction low, simply did not exist. America told itself lies that the reason natural born Americans were

[ouij]

I didn't mean to be so monocausal.

I understand that there are particular circumstances about the German Turkish situation, but I can't help but wonder whether their non-integration is entirely of their own making.

Certainly, the German nationality law might have been reformed, but not before the German state and society had ghettoized their Gastarbeiter. I can't help but think that a society and polity that considered the immigrants as new citizens that were to be integrated, rather than a problem to be dealt with, might have influenced the development of the immigrant community.

My main concern in writing this piece was this: the dominant discourse in American immigration is eventual integration, inclusion, and assimilation: the immigrant assimilates America as America assimilates the immigrant. The rhetoric surrounding "Guest Workers," it seems to me, might signal a change: America might not really be willing to assimilate the immigrant. Why should the immigrant then reciprocate?

Re: ¡Si, se puede!

[ouij]

you know, the UFW was formed with the merger of two labor organizations: one was largely made up of Latinos; the other was largely made up of Filipinos.