Thread: Alfredo Martin Bravo Rueda Espejo against NumbersUSA again

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/ ... toryPart-I

0. A last note on immigration, NumbersUSA and affirmative action before getting into the subject of this entry

Sometimes I have found people letting them be tempted by the mermaid singing of xenophobic groups like NumbersUSA. To sell discrimination against Third World skilled immigrants, they have used the ludicrous idea that if we let Third World immigrants come to America, Third World countries would never have the human capital to develop. This idea is deeply immoral as it implies making of Third World immigrants a kind of subhuman entities because while we are people, free to pursue our happiness and to move freely around the world, those immigrants would be pretty much appendixes of their countries whose lives should be perpetually plugged to their place of birth, as if they peasants of the Middle Ages.

This idea is also deeply dishonest because it would require making of scientists, doctors, economists and engineers not skillful but extraordinary politicians because they would have to deal with the ultraconservative societies, submerged in widespread political illiteracy, that have excluded them in the first place. This idea is also deeply dishonest because rejecting these immigrants for the reasons invoked by NumbersUSA would require providing them with properly funded projects so they could have a chance to transform the societies of their birth. The same way as many conservatives swallow the ideas of the Right that tax cuts are moral because it puts money back on those who have earn it, some at the left them NumbersUSA to seduce them with the idea that if those brown immigrants magically disappear, suddenly the American dream will come back to them without further hard work to change America.

The idea I wanted to add on this end of the debate is, especially for those who do not see anything unfair or racist on the whoppers delivered by NumbersUSA, is this: If you consider that NumbersUSA is right and that is moral to discriminate in favor of the native born and First World skilled immigrants because forcing them to stay in their places of birth is necessary to develop those places, then you should also agree with the idea of forcing South Dakota or those born in states with little opportunities to stay there, banning them from moving to other states because otherwise those states would never have the human resources to develop.

Likewise, following the same criterion, we should have forced skilled residents from the areas of Louisiana affected by Katrina to stay in the devastated areas because otherwise those areas would always lack the human resources to develop. No funding, no support would be necessary to develop those areas; only forcing these people to stay there. Likewise, following the same criterion, to develop inner cities we should force skilled children to stay there, even erecting walls to be sure that they won’t affect the development of their communities by escaping, and, as affirmative action could put this goal in danger, we should penalize the families of those recipients of affirmative action help if they escape of the projects. This way no reforming inner city schools would be necessary, any community development spending could be saved to the taxpayer. If we can determine a person’s fate using his place of birth, why not using also his family of origin? Relatives of skilled citizens born in depressed areas could be legitimately used to force them to stay in those communities.

The only difference between one stupid derivation of prejudice and the other is that in the NumbersUSA-sponsored discrimination we deal with external migration and in the cases I use to make evident the absurdity and immorality of such position we deal with internal migration.

This idea is also deeply dishonest because rejecting these immigrants for the reasons invoked by NumbersUSA would require providing them with properly funded projects so they could have a chance to transform the societies of their birth.

It is not up to us to provide the financing for these projects as Americans our primnary concern should be for the poor among our own. The people who come here as illegal aliens generally can not afford to come here on their own. They are financed usually by their friends and family members from the same hometowns whose higher income here allows them to use their savings for a variety of purposes. The financing of illegal immigration competes directly with the funding of economic development projects. The money spent on the coyotes could have gone to productive assets for that area instead.

This idea is deeply immoral as it implies making of Third World immigrants a kind of subhuman entities because while we are people, free to pursue our happiness and to move freely around the world, those immigrants would be pretty much appendixes of their countries whose lives should be perpetually plugged to their place of birth, as if they peasants of the Middle Ages.

This is about having a social conscience not fealty to feudal landlords. Besides having relatives in the Dominican Republic and Mexico I come from a part of the United States with a lower per capita income than North Dakota (North Dakota is poorer) or New Orleans. I am on the internet and phone every week trying to instigate and further economic development projects because I have friends and family still living there. I do not expect to solve their problems by bringing them to the city where I live. I certainly would not do it in contravention of our nations democratically derived immigration laws. There is no place where the average American citizen can go and gross ten times their current annual income. If they could the primary responsibility for improving the economy where they came from would be on them not the people they were living among.

Likewise, following the same criterion, we should have forced skilled residents from the areas of Louisiana affected by Katrina to stay in the devastated areas because otherwise those areas would always lack the human resources to develop. No funding, no support would be necessary to develop those areas; only forcing these people to stay there. Likewise, following the same criterion, to develop inner cities we should force skilled children to stay there, even erecting walls to be sure that they won’t affect the development of their communities by escaping, and, as affirmative action could put this goal in danger, we should penalize the families of those recipients of affirmative action help if they escape of the projects. This way no reforming inner city schools would be necessary, any community development spending could be saved to the taxpayer. If we can determine a person’s fate using his place of birth, why not using also his family of origin? Relatives of skilled citizens born in depressed areas could be legitimately used to force them to stay in those communities.

It is the people you support who are so spectacularly unconcerned about conditions where they come from and try to solve the problem by billeting themselves, friends and relatives on our American backs. There are only so many dollars in the public budget and each poor Third World family which comes here and needs to support themself by competing in jobs against our poor in our higher cost environment makes things worse. The presence of the illegal aliens lowers the amount that our own poor can charge for work and leave many of our own unemployed. Since these "immigrants" can not afford to cover their own health and education they also compete for the transfer funds from the American middle class.

I am for more United States corporate investment in the Third World like Mexico and US government investment if the projects we fund help us but the real driver needs to be investment by the people living there and coming here from there themselves. If it is mostly corporate the educated elite gain disproportionate benefit. If the investment is driven by the US and Third World government the beneficiaries will be the politically connected. If it is to assist the Third World working poor it has to be driven by their own investment. I am willing to bet a dinner that even in the case of Mexico I spend more time trying to improve economic conditions there than you do.

Wow I would have expected the knee jerk anti Mexican element within the broader base of ALIPAC to chime in against me here.

I am willing to bet a dinner that even in the case of Mexico I spend more time trying to improve economic conditions there than you do.


That's great Richard , how about going down there to do it .

Dear Richard:

You have been polite in your discrepancies and it is my duty to answer them with the same courtesy:
1. I agree that our main concern should be our own poor. What I criticized was the empty, fake compassion of those who expect to be taken seriously when they say that their contribution to the Third World would be banning the immigration of skilled immigrants because if these are forced to stay attached to the countries were they were born, magically progress will come. If they were wrong but serious, they would support funding projects in which those banned immigrants could work because empty handed, in the middle of uncompetitive labor and financial markets (what pushed them to emigrate in the first place), such fake compassion leads to sadistic results.
These same people say that they should be a factor of change in their countries. This is unrealistic to sub-intelligence levels. Should an engineer or a doctor become an extraordinary politician to transform an ultraconservative and fragmented society or pay with the destruction of his talent?
It’s true that illegal immigrants’ attempts to come here are funded by relatives and friends but you have no realistic way of channeling those resources to development projects and you can’t condemn an immigrant to be attached to the country of his birth like a Middle Ages peasant for having been born in the wrong country like White Supremacist condemned black people for having been born in the wrong race during the Jim Crow.

2. A social conscience in America should be that our immigration system be based on character, not on caste (whether country or family of origin, race or sexual orientation). The current system awards more than 90% of the resident visas based on country and family or origin and has no waiver for you if your only asset is your character.
You may have your reasons for not encouraging your North Dakota friends and relatives to come to the state where you live but would you accept a system that bans them for the right to pursue their happiness somewhere else?, would you have denied that right to Katrina survivors? If not, why to deny it to immigrants if they are also people. The labor market and economic regulations (including environmental and labor regulations) will take adjust the labor demand and so the number of immigrants so expecting hordes of Mexicans in infinite numbers is not realistic either.
Laws have to be morally congruent with the juridical tradition of a nation. Our juridical traditional decries caste and prefers character instead. Otherwise, the “democratically deliveredâ€