Xenophobia
This is slightly off topic for this blog, but there is a connect.
The reaction to the President’s speech on immigration tonight is amazing to me. Michelle Malkin says Same Old, Same Old and Powerline describes it as a “huge disappointment.” I do not understand the level of vitriol that goes into this issue, and given the lack of comprehensive alternative suggestions from the critics, I cannot help but wonder if this is a no-win situation for the President – any president actually. There is an irrationality on both sides of the issue that boggles my mind, and on the right I cannot help but wonder if that irrationality is fueled by a bit of xenophobia.
Xenophobia denotes a phobic attitude toward strangers or of the unknown.
I find much of it unbecoming. People seem to be reacting to the word “illegal” as if it automatically denotes “violent felony” forgetting that all of us engage in some illegal activity, even if it is accidental, on a daily basis. Cultures are indeed radically different, but why do we react with hostility instead of curiosity?
I think this issue of xenophobia lies at the heart, at least in part, of what this blog is dedicated to – the a priori disregard of a Mormon political candidate solely on the basis of his religious affiliation – that is to say what appears to me to be a xenophobic reaction by evangelicals towards mainstream Mormons.
I am wondering if the reactions to the immigration debate cannot be instructive of the discussion here? Xenophia is overcome by education. Clearly there is much education that needs to be done concerning the vast majority of illegal immigrants, as there is much education that needs to be done about Mormonism. But xenophobia also creates barriers to receiving that education.
How do we overcome them?
[tags]immigration, xenophobia, education[/tags]
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Zethris on 15 May 2006 at 10:56 pm #
While I understand where you are going with this, I do want to voice my opinion that ultimately the law breaking of those who are jumping borders, incorrectly referred to as “illegal immigrants”,(eg. no such thing) are very damaging to us. Especially us young folks and our planned futures. Especially to my own future as a recent graduate with nothing more than a piece of paper to hopefully get a job somewhere. Especially to my ability to build a foundation so that I can be on my own, get married, and have a family! No one is allowed to mess with me on that. I have worked too hard for some lazy jerk to just run illegally across a border, take my job, my tax dollars, and then complain I am still not giving him or her enough!
Living in California, I had the reoccurring experience where businesses would summarily dismiss employees in favor of someone who came in and said they would work for nearly half per hour. As a business, thats nearly impossible to refuse. So the Mexican gets the job and I am in the HR department getting “let go†or better yet “laid off†so they can get away with not paying unemployment by forcing me to have to quit from never re-instating my position. How nice.
I had the same experience in Las Vegas. Whats more, in desperation, so I could eat, I too offered to work for so little, but because I am white I don’t get hired still because why would I offer to work for so little unless there was something wrong with me? So there is some racism there too. I went for three months without a job in California, and 2 in Las Vegas after going through the same thing I had previously went through in California.
I graduated a year earlier with a Masters degree in religious history, and I already had another useless degree in Computer Science and even another in Culinary Arts. I am fairly well educated. I should be having all the job opportunities in the world, right? Wrong.
With my last $100 to my name. I flew to Pennsylvania. I got away from the insanity that is California and anywhere near the US/Mexican border. I got off the plane, went to church the next day, interviewed on Monday and got a job in 3 days flat! One that equivalently was the same type of work and job duties as I had in both California and Las Vegas, but roughly twice the pay. Also, the cost of living is much lower here too. This HAS to say something.
These people are taking massive amounts of entry level jobs at next to nothing per hour (commonly under legal minimum wage) giving businesses great incentive to hire them over the highly trained individual, or worse, incentive as a “general practice†and advertise your position in the newspaper under your nose at a much lower rate per hour. Waiting for someone to apply so they can fire you for the person who is wiling to work for less. There is no job security in an at-will work environment and California and Nevada businesses take advantage of that big time, but in a terrible way.
These people are leaving no living wage for a young single person, just out of college to make a living. We have record numbers of students returning home and not moving out until the ages of 25-30!
Worse yet, these people are hurting many opportunities for those who have done the right thing and come here legally, usually after an average of 2-3 years of a grueling visa process. My foreign fiance and I have been engaged and apart for 2 years! We have chosen to do the right thing by getting her here legally.
I can’t tell you the frustration I have when I see these selfish little rats claim they deserve rights of any sort when they are doing so much to ruin my life and the lives of many other young people by their infestation.
xenophobia? I’m sorry, but I know way much more than enough to know these people are not healthy for America. They are thieves, they are felons, and they need to be sent home. Plain and simple.
So long story short, and to end this rant that seemed to come out here, I see what you were getting at. But I think there is a difference between the examples you gave. There is indeed religious xenophobia. But racial/immigration xenophobia, for many, I don’t think exists. We are all well aware, many with first hand experience, of what is going on in the west. That can’t be said for outsiders looking in to say, the LDS church. They aren’t truly experiencing anything first hand. At best, most are hearing it from someone else with half truths so that they can build their own conclusions or more often, are told how to think. They may see us do things for worship such as temple ordinances, but they don’t really know why.
On the flip side, we know why these border jumpers are jumping the borders.
So the complaints against their actions are quite valid and quite justified. But alas, even though there are many solutions to fix this, nothing will be done about it until it’s too late. So once again, food storage is a great council to have. I just wish I could have moved to the East coast 2 years ago. I wouldn’t have been wasting so much time trying to get my life started, and I would probably actually have a home of my own finally by now.
JohnS on 16 May 2006 at 6:04 am #
While I have sympathy for your experience, single person andecdotes and impressions are an insufficient basis for drawing a general conclusion, let alone making policy decisions.
The ingratitude of the recent marches is problematic, but that issue cannot be solved by over-reaction.
Zethris on 16 May 2006 at 7:40 am #
I fail to understand how it can be so easily dismissed that this is a problem, for many. Not just me. Do I have to gather together all of my contacts who have lost jobs to these people and have them post here? I am NOT alone.
It kind of is a slap in the face calling the jeopardizing of my ability to get my life started a simple impression, particularly an anecdote as I find nothing humorous about it.
It’s hard to know of the tone in discussions sometimes in a text based discussion environment. But I get the impression that there may be too much of a cavalier attitude towards this issue.
It is the experiences of the people bad and good, that eventually shape the policy making in government. Usually with urgency placed on the reoccurring bad experiences to hopefully stop the pain and damage it is causing.
My experience is of a type of thing that is happening, right now, to many legal Americans. With all of the information out there, how could one not see that I am not alone in this?
People aren’t just complaining about them illegally coming here. It is what they are doing once they come here that is the cause of this issue. They are taking massive amounts of resources and opportunity by exploiting capitalism and our tax dollars. They are a source of a raise in poverty level both from the way they choose to live, and the lowering of the average wages from their flooding the work place with their ability to undercut competing applicants.
Look at it this way. Many Cuban’s make it here illegaly each year. For a time a while ago, you would hear it on the news, because it was news. But most of these Cuban’s immediatly apply for asylum exploiting a loophole to allow them to stay and gain a fast track to a working visa or citezenship. Seems to me we would be hearing about it all the time then right? Well no, because the majority of these people, once here, become very productive tax paying people who thrive on education and assimilate very well here. So they are not a squeaky wheel, they become part of the big wheel. No one wants to hear good news like that so the news media has no incentive to incite controversy about it.
Even though there was an attempt (or maybe still is) at inciting controversy about the canadian border, the news talks about it much less because, to be honest, it’s not a big problem. Most canadians who come here illegaly or stay here after a passport term generally also become very productive people once here. The majority don’t keep trying to take and take and take. So again, we here much less about them because they aren’t causing so much damage.
I love the Mexican people. But unfortunatly, they are not doing the right thing, and are causing much hardship for those in their path. It needs to be stopped. It needs to take as much an extreme measure to stop it as it has taken for them to come here. Then, and only then, can they be re-admitted under controlled circumstances and under much more reasonable immigration laws than we currently have.
Close the southern borders, give those who are here a chance to become legal and official, send the rest who refuse back.
fromouteast on 19 May 2006 at 10:30 am #
I do not understand the level of vitriol that goes into this issue, and given the lack of comprehensive alternative suggestions from the critics, I cannot help but wonder if this is a no-win situation for the President – any president actually. There is an irrationality on both sides of the issue that boggles my mind, and on the right I cannot help but wonder if that irrationality is fueled by a bit of xenophobia.
Then allow me to explain it to you.
In defense of Zethris John, if you cross the border and enter our nation “illegally” and you find “illegal” employment here, there are a number of people who are engaging in “illegal” and criminal behavior. Criminals, all of them. The employer just became a criminal because he just spit upon our State and Federal employment laws. Apparently, those employment laws do not apply to him. And the immigrant became a criminal because he crossed a “closed border” and refused to get in line and apply for citizenship (or at the very least, a Green card) and wait for his chance to come here, pay taxes, and work legally. That is what makes that “undocumented worker” (if you are a liberal Democrat, you use that term since it sounds a lot nicer and much more inclusive) an “illegal alien.”
John, there are three principle reasons why this border control issue is such a big deal, why it is NOT just xenophobia, and why it will matter so much in 6 months (and in 30 months for Mitt):
#1) Not every illegal is coming over here just to find cheap work, work that Americans won’t do. Quite a few of them are coming over here to traffic drugs. Just four weeks ago, they busted 2 illegals in Arizona with 100 pounds of Meth Amphedimine. That has a street value of just over $1,000,000. As and Arizona resident who has kids, I don’t want that filth in my state. (And when I say “filth” I refer to both the “drugs” and the “illegals” who trafficed the drugs into my country.) Now, maybe those drugs would have found their way into my country even if those two were stopped at the border? I don’t know John? But I do know this, those two guys had no business being in my country and the drugs they possessed could have ruined the lives of an untold number of Arizona children. I didn’t even mention the number of illegals who come here just to molest and rape our children. Ask Sheriff Joe how many illegals he has in the tent jails and what laws they were convicted of breaking. You’d be sick about it just like me.
#2) By turning the other cheek, allowing illegals to cross the border illegally, giving them under-the-table cash employment in this country, and pretending it doesn’t matter, we are basically saying that illegal aliens are nothing more than a perminant underclass in our society that need no better treatment than the way we treated African-Americans as slaves. That is about the best way to describe them, slaves. Think about it. We (in the Southwest) are so spoiled and so greedy, we think we are entitled to have our lawns mowed (in 120 degree heat in the case of Arizona) for a mere $9/hour. We are so spoiled that the going rate for people to come and clean our toilets and vacuum our rugs is $8.50/hour. We are so damn cheap, that we expect the illegals behind the counter at Coco’s Coffee Shop to be willing to work for less than minimum wage so that the restaurant can afford to sell us that Denver omlette breakfast for just $7 (instead of the $10 it would cost if the illegals weren’t here.) We send our children to get jobs at the mall (because our kids are TOO GOOD to mow lawns) so our kids stand behind a counter and do nothing, (they don’t even break a sweat) while illegals harvest all our fruit and vegitibles for us. And we pay them pennies. How awful we are! We are terrible people! We are not entitled to near free labour from a perminant underclass of human beings who work for next to nothing just because their own nation is so damn twisted and corrupt (and willing to raise so many illiterate and uneducated masses) that they jump at the chance to do work that we would never want our kids to do (even though each of us was willing to do it when we were children.) The whole idea that we are so greedy for cheapie labour says worse things about us than it does about the illegals.
#3) Don’t foreget September 11th. We are at war with Islamic Fundementalists who would kill everyone of us, just for talking about these things openly on this blog. All they have to do, is get to Mexico and sneak across the unguarded border to slip into our country, unnoticed. Our intelligence agencies will never know they are here until it is too late. If we don’t take the border seriously (and too many people don’t) don’t expect our enemies to take it seriously, either.
On Monday, the President said the same thing he has been saying all along, he wants to create a “guest worker program” for the people who are willing to do work in low paid jobs that Americans “aren’t willing to do.” If these jobs are so low paid that Americans aren’t willing to work them (or if their value to the economy is so minimal that they simply do not warrant top dollar) then maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to have those jobs filled. Maybe, we shouldn’t even have those jobs as part of our economy? Export those jobs. If picking lettuce pays a crappy, unacceptable wage, a wage so low that the lettuce would simply rot in the fields before it is harvested, then export all the lettuce picking jobs to Mexico. And if the work MUST be done here (it can’t be exported) and there are no illegals who are willing to subject themselves to substandard inhuman conditions, then one of two things will happen; the job will pay more or the job will disappear. If an office manager has a limited budget to hire a cleaning crew and she can’t afford to pay more than $8.50 an hour for people to clean the toilets (she doesn’t have the budget), and she can’t find anyone willing to do the work, she is forced to walk into her bosses office and demand more money in the budget to pay more for the work, or, she is forced to ask her boss to empty his own waste basket and clean the toilet once a week. Either way, MATH AND ECONOMICS has fixed the problem.
This is a big deal John. Having illegals risk death to cross a huge desert for the privlidge of cleaning our toilets for such a cheap wage that they are forced to live 7 or 8 in a room (somewhere) so that they can send half their check home to Mexico to support a family that doesn’t want to leave it’s own corrupt country, is a huge problem. It saddens me that we (as a society) were so damn selfish, that we are now just having to face the music.