Thread: Talking points worth remembering!

Excerpt:

Propaganda Reality

A. Mexicans do jobs that Americans won't, therefore there is no harm to Americans. Incorrect for two reasons:

This claim wrongly assumes that Americans never desire or even need to do landscaping, restaurant work, or any other of a large number of jobs that Mexicans are taking. Of the jobs that Mexicans are taking that Americans no longer flock to, very often Americans avoid those jobs simply because US employers refuse to pay them enough to live, i.e. to provide what is called a Living Wage. (This is the amount of money needed to provide for just the basics, i.e. shelter-food-clothing-transportation.)

It has been reported that many illegal Mexicans actually stay with relatives while in the USA, surely paying little or no rent. Many retail businesses in the USA are also now conspicuously staffed by teenagers for the exact same reason. Low pay, but no rent to pay. Note also that there are surely jobs where American workers are simply locked out because of the presence of people who will work below the Living Wage level, be they Mexicans, local teenagers, or others.


B. Illegal Mexicans workers are good for the US economy.

This is very much a lie. They are good only for the profits of the businesses that hire them. Everyone else suffers, including legal immigrants.

The role Mexican workers play in the labor market is to help business owners reduce costs, increase profits, and drive down wages for all US workers, which is bad for the economy.

They also transfer large amounts of wages outside of the USA to Mexico and other countries, which is also bad for the economy. In 2004, the amount sent was $30 billion (link).

Because they are undocumented, they also often do not pay taxes, which is bad for the economy.

Illegal Mexicans are bringing diseases into the USA at high rates, including drug-resistant TB. The impact of their diseases on the USA means a real monetary loss for the nation.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) says TB incidences among foreign-born hispanics increased from 1986 to 1995. Info here
And yet they and their children receive free services from the government including welfare and education in return for helping out US businesses, which means higher taxes for American workers who are harmed by their presense.

Lastly, in the case of retail business, profits suffer when customers become frustrated with people who often speak broken English or no English at all (which I've personally witnessed).

C. "We aren't terrorists" (so don't persecute us). (Source: NPR interview during April/May 2006 protests.)

This mantra deliberately misconstrues the concerns of American citizens and tries to lay a guilt trip on them. It trivializes the concern (which is a serious one) of citizens that actual terrorists are coming over the border, by implying that the incomplete and porous Wall exists solely to keep out Mexicans, which is not true. It distracts from the actual wrongs that immigrants commit, such as driving down wages, and the real risks that they pose, such as bringing diseases into the USA. It's a kind of negative self-referential Strawman, useful in warding off criticism. It's also a fallacy of the form "denial of the antecedent".

D. Mexicans can become model citizens.

A bogus generalization. This is often heard as part of the ethnic cheerleading that the pro-Mexico camp engages in. The truth is, Mexicans often are disrespectful toward Americans in general, and are renowned for their pettiness even toward one another. They bring with them a raft of emotional issues and destructive behaviors.

If Mexican president Vicente Fox is an example, we should be very concerned indeed. He recently made a disparaging statement about African-Americans as being lazy, and later he referred to women as two-legged washing machines.

Witness how Mexicans consider it normal to torture or hit their children.

Mexicans seem to generally support a racist extremism that goes largely uncriticized by the US media.

In 2002, a Zogby poll found that 58% of Mexicans believe the Southwest USA belongs to Mexico. Such an attitude would not make them model citizens but rather: if they became citizens and has that attitude, they would be traitors.

Perhaps most offensively, Mexicans are known for their intolerant Catholicism, which is not something the secular USA needs more of.

E. All Mexicans work hard in the USA therefore they deserve citizenship via amnesty. (Argument type: Argumentum ad misericordiam)

Not all Mexicans work hard or do the same quality of work, or work at comparable jobs.

Question: If one Mexican green-card holder is earning his citizenship by working as a soldier in the US military, which shows real commitment, bravery, self-sacrifice and the ability to speak English, why should we put him on the same level as an illegal Mexican flipping burgers at a McDonalds who refuses to learn English?

Thus, some are hardworking, and some are hardly working.


F. The American Southwest was once a part of the mythic Aztlan, therefore it must be "reconquered" for dark-skinned people.

Such is the claim of (for example) the rightwing racist group La Voz de Aztlan, based in Los Angeles and appropriately enough being tracked by those who track hate groups. Such is also the claim of the racist Mexicana group. Voz de Aztlan unsurprisingly advocates for Mexicans' taking over the American Southwest, very similar to Hitler's Nazis seizing "Lebensraum" (room to live). They also call for genocide of Whites. But like Hitler's bogus claims about a great Aryan past and vast Aryan territorial control, the sad truth is, the Mayan and Aztec Empires never reached the territory that is today the USA. (Native Americans should be outraged by this kind of talk coming from Mexicans.)

But why worry about a small extremist group? Because their nutty rhetoric is not so different from everyday Mexicans' views.

In 2002, a Zogby poll found that most Mexicans believe that the American Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico, and that they have a right to enter it without US govt permission. This is in line with the Voz de Aztlan call to arms. In many US universities there are student chapters of a racist group called Mecha, which supposedly takes La Voz's ideas to heart.
Essentially they have devised their own Manifest Destiny, which in our culture is debunked but in their backward, tribalistic view is vital.


G. US workers are just too lazy to take hard jobs.

False at best, racist at worst. This claim is deliberately used to obscure a terrible predicament: Namely, that as more and more American workers are finding themselves laid off due to downsizing and globalization and the mass importation of foreigners, Americans are having to take any work they can get and those jobs are often low-paying.

Sadly, it is exactly now that more Americans need those low-paying jobs that foreigners are indirectly locking out Americans and/or bringing down wages.


H. Americans don't even apply for jobs that Mexicans take.

Deliberately misleading. Illegal Mexicans get jobs because they illegally accept lower wages while illegally in the USA. The mere presense of illegal workers causes US businesses to lock out American citizens (whites, blacks, asians, native hispanics, etc.) Unethical employers will always take the cheapest most exploitable worker, and that is often the Mexicans. If employers could get free labor, they would. (In fact they do, just look at the Girl Scouts.)

I. Mexican workers are hard workers.

This is an empty claim. No justification is ever provided, and the existence of a few hard working people does not prove that all of them are hard-working. Furthermore, any desperate person will work hard, especially if mafia types have taken their passports in order to force them to work, which in some cases is known to happen to illegal aliens of all ethnicities and origins. Yet the fact is that a person being desperate doesn't mean their work is good quality.

Also, this claim conceals the fact that while working, a Mexican may pass on any diseases he or she has to coworkers, managers, or customers. Mexican border towns are rife with TB and other serious diseases and illegals are bringing them into the USA. Drug-resistant TB is on the rise along the border.


J. Mexican workers are innocent pawns.

Illegal Mexican workers know very well that they affect American workers negatively, but they largely don't care or are too busy to care. Just by being here they are siding with management and never do they accept culpability for their actions.

K. Illegal immigrants work hard and therefore deserve free health care and their children deserve free education and citizenship (upon birth).

Firstly, the burden of proof is on the illegal immigrant to prove he or she works hard. I have encountered many who do not work hard and who make zero effort to learn English. Secondly, they're here illegally. Lawbreakers of this type deserve punishment, not perks.

Regarding healthcare: if 50 million US citizens don't deserve free healthcare, according to whores in the pro-business US Congress, why oh but why would illegal non-citizens who often pay no taxes deserve this either?

Although I believe basic health care is a human right, and is precisely the kind of service that republics were created to provide, the word republic (res publicum) indicates it is "a thing of the people", specifically of citizens. Citizenship is the key development of the Enlightenment that converted serfs into people who have rights and should not be dismantled now.

Remember also, illegals are working for unscrupulous businesses such as Walmart who gladly outsource the extra costs of having cheap labor onto society. This practice of "externalization" of costs is a characteristic of unethical businesses, and the solution is to ban that practice and/or shut down such businesses.

The irony of the free-services issue is that the services in question are paid for primarily by US workers who are the primary ones harmed by illegal immigration. US workers should not be asked to economically assist Mexicans in harming US workers' prospects.


L. Mexico and USA can benefit one another through immigration of Mexican to the USA.

Illegal Mexican immigrants essentially import poverty into the USA and move money (in the billions of dollars) out of the USA.
The Mexican government is well aware of the negative impact on the US workers and does not care. In a real sense, Mexico is still at war with the USA.


M. Mexicans are an unseen benefit, working only in the shadows.

Mexicans increase overpopulation, as does their high birth rate, which leads to more poverty and crime. When Mexicans move in to an area, they do so in large numbers. They are never innocuous.

N. Mexicans are morally upstanding, family-oriented people.

Ethno-salemanship and little else. This claim is intended to appeal to Americans' religiousness. Firstly, if Mexicans were family-oriented, then they wouldn't come here to lower Americans' wages or take their jobs, which is an assault on American families.

Secondly, let us suppose that a Mexican family claims to be morally upstanding because they are very religious. Religion, last time I checked, seems more to be a cause of unethical behavior (intolerance especially) and moral hypocrisy than not. Religion=hate.

Thirdly, nationally 25% of all hispanic families are single-family households (link), more so in California which has a higher percentage of Mexicans. In fact about 40% of California Mexican mothers are unwed.

Fourthly, it has been reported that increasingly in hispanic culture, machismo requires that teenage boys prove their manliness by getting a girl pregnant, then ditching her.

In addition:

Mexican criminal gangs are now everywhere in the USA.
Their religious views are as intolerant as Pat Robertson's.
The Mexican economy's primary basis is the illegal drug trade, as everyone knows, which is disproves any claim that Mexican society has a hold on moralism or family values.
Their predilection for child-beating is mentioned above.


O. Liberals should support the poor of Mexico by supporting immigration. They are underdogs and victims.

Maybe they are victims of rich Mexicans, but we should help them overcome the rich in Mexico, not by coming here and becoming the stooges of unscrupulous businesses owned by the American ruling class or small business owners. Furthermore: Many Mexicans are religious conservatives and they have views which are in line with the US religious right. Such views, when presented by the US religious right, are typically rejected by liberals. So, using common sense:

Why should liberals embrace similarly intolerant people just because they are foreigners?

P. California belongs to Mexico anyway, so Mexicans are right in overrunning it.

The Mexican-American War was decisive and final. Mexicans have no right to come to the USA, and Mexico's brief 30 year period of administering California after the Spanish fled means nothing now. American citizens have inhabited California and the West for 150 years or more. If any group should "reconquer" the Southwest it is native Americans, not native Mexicans.

Q. The argument is put forth by right-wing Mexicans that the plight of Mexicans is like that of the Palestinians, likening the USA to Israel.

Such rightists are typically anti-semitic. This is a lie that is 180 degrees in opposition to actual circumstances. Consider the case of California. The retreating Spanish long ago handed California over to the Mexicans, who administered California for a brief period of 30 years. Mexico's hold over the territory was neither appropriate nor legitimate, as Mexico was and still is a basket-case of a country politically and economically. Nevertheless now some Quixotic radicals, most of them racists, believe they must "reconquer" California. Alas, this attitude is more like that of the Israelis. Interestingly, it is also the same argument that was used by the Nazis to pursue more territory in Eastern Europe, which they termed Lebensraum, meaning "room to live."

R. NAFTA has wrought economic disaster on Mexico, so it is the cause of current immigration, the USA created NAFTA, so it is OK to be a burden on the USA by coming to the USA for work.

NAFTA is only one cause of immigration, and claiming it is the only cause is dishonest. By far the largest cause is that Mexican breed more children than they can support.

Also:

The elites of Mexico helped make NAFTA possible.
Two wrongs don't make a right i.e. NAFTA was wrong, yes, but illegal immigration which is also wrong doesn't make up for NAFTA.
American workers do not deserve to be burdened by illegal Mexican workers because of the behavior of their corrupt leaders.

S. Mexicans are just victims who need our help.

Mexicans are victims of their own tendency to product more children than they can afford, which has caused overpopulation and poverty that no American is responsible for. Mexicans are guilty of perpetrating Tyranny of the Breeders.

T. The best Mexicans are coming to the USA.

Ridiculous lie. Mexico is exporting its poorest, most desperate people. They are also often the poorest educated. Some are, in fact, illiterate. Mexican leaders have specifically been criticized for "exporting poverty" rather than fixing Mexico's political and economic problems.


U. If you take the Mexicans away, the tourism and agriculture industries will collapse.

False. This claim assumes that (A) there are no similarly desperate workers in the USA, but in truth there are, (B) that immigrants from other countries wouldn't be better guests than Mexicans, which is false, and (C) that it is ethical and moral to pay workers wages that are below the minimum wage.

V. Mexicans deserve humane treatment when trying to illegally enter into the USA.

Surely all people do deserve humane treatment before they are sent back, which is why it is so ironic that Mexicans say this, knowing full well that the Mexican government treats migrants into or through Mexico on its southern border so harshly. Their appealing for humane treatment is therefore a hypocritical, cynical manipulation. The wolf pretends to be a sheep.

W. The Mexicans I meet are nice people. Why not let nice people into the USA?

For the reason that they are only nice because they know they are getting many freebies and special treatment, they are taking jobs the Americans would do if they paid decent wages, and they are bringing down wages generally while pushing up taxes, apartment rental rates and real estate prices. They know, in varying degrees, what a deal they are getting and the negative impact they are having on US citizens, but the typical American is asleep and therefore doesn't know any of this. It is time to wake for Americans to wake up and realize they are being robbed.


X. I support the free movement of labor across borders because I would like to work overseas without being limited.

Karl Marx, too, argued for open borders, although that was more a stance than an actual plan to prevent open borders from leading to chaos and suffering. At any rate, the political reality is that First-World nations really do not want other First-World workers like you, unless you have something specific that they need e.g. high-tech skills.

What they primarily want is: desperate people from desperate places. Immigration policies usually are crafted to help businesses, not citizens. In fact they often seem crafted to harm existing workers more than anything else.

Y. The fact that 40% of Mexican mothers in California are unwed says nothing about Mexicans because in Iceland even more mothers are unwed. Anyway, there is nothing wrong with unwed mothers.

There is nothing immoral or bad, in my view, with being an unwed mother per se. However, Mexicans, who are some of the most self-promoting people on Earth, claim to be "family oriented" and to have strong family values, which in their case implies Catholic social conservatism. The 40% statistic simply points out the bogosity of that type of Mexican self-promotion.

FYI, as an atheist myself I could care less about Christian "family values" which are a fraud anyway.

Z. Terrorists will never get through an open border because Mexicans will point them out to US officials. (This idea is presented by comedian Carlos Mencia in one of his rants.)

Mencia is joking of course, but lest anyone take the idea seriously, it has 3 problems:

It is not the job of illegal immigrants to police the border therefore they should not be relied upon to do so.

Illegals would never approach border personnel if their passage across the border area were successful. Only persons who were caught would speak up.

Illegals do not have a personal interest in protecting the USA unless they have relatives in the USA, which surely many do not.

A1. Mexico is a peaceful place, Mexicans are peaceful hard-working people, and therefore Mexicans make good immigrants for the USA to accept.

Firstly, if you think Mexico is peaceful, then consider:

Their army has repressed Zapatista fighters who represent poor indigenous workers. The Zapatistas' leader Marcos recently suggested that the government should be overthrown.

The Mexican national anthem sounds like something that German Nazis would have been proud to sing, since it constantly mentions war and the Fatherland.

The Mexican military has recently been making excursions into US territory.

The Mexican economy is based on the violent drug trade.

Mexico is known for treating migrants crossing over their southern border much worse than the US treats Mexican migrants.

It has been reported that kidnappings for ransom have become common in Mexico City.

Furthermore one cannot successfully claim that Mexicans are all peaceful people. To do so would be banal ethnic cheerleading i.e. tribalism. The truth is, many criminals come across the border and are either caught by the border patrol or not.

B1. Mexicans are just coming here to work and want to go home afterwards.

A lie that conceals a serious problem.

It is common knowledge that the reason for entering the USA illegally is not just to work, but also to give birth, so that newborns will be granted immediate US citizenship. These newborns are termed anchor babies because they allow the parents to stay and provide an excuse for the family to bring the extended family into the USA.

In Ireland, they recognized that immigrants use this to scam the country. As a result, Ireland changed its laws and no longer gives citizenship to the children of illegals. The USA has yet to wake up to its being scammed in this way.

C1. The Spanish-speakers explored and settled the West, so they should be able to live there now. (And by implication, they should be able to completely dominate and own it.)

This is typical thinking for racists. "Our race-tribe had first ownership, so you different people are trespassers." The rightwing Zionist Jews use this argument in Israel, which earns them international condemnation.
At any rate, the first Amercans were Solutreans, followed by Asians. By the racist's logic, we should give the land back to whoever is most genetically similar to those people, who today would be Tibetans, various Europeans, and "Native (North) Americans". Mexicans are none of these.

And, if we presuppose as does the racist that only Europeans matter, then by following his "explored and settled" logic it is the French who controlled a large part of the West beyond the Mississippi, therefore we ought to give priority to French-speaking illegal immigrants

http://home.comcast.net/~plutarch/mexico.html

Perhaps I'll print this off and post it next to my computer.

For the record, I don't share the authors thoughts on this:

FYI, as an atheist myself I could care less about Christian "family values" which are a fraud anyway.

Great stuff MW, thanks!

Originally Posted by April

Great stuff MW, thanks!

Yes, thanks for posting this.

With an exception to the author's religious views, it was a fantastic article.

Thanks MW!

i will use some of these in the red squad. thanks.

You guys and gals are most welcome!

Excellent post MW!!