With multiple military conflicts and other disasters around the globe—and as Republicans in Congress fiddle with issues designed to appeal to their extremist base—the nation’s debate over immigration seems to have been muted.
Yet a recent article by Rinku Sen, the executive director of Applied Research Center and the publisher of ColorLines magazine, reminds us that while Congress plays election year politics, state legislatures are moving ahead with measures attacking immigrants.
Writing on the online progressive news and commentary site, TomPaine.com, Sen seeks to dispel six myths fueling the uglier aspects of the immigration debate, among them: “Immigrants are not animals.”
Last week, Rep. Steve Katz, R.-Ariz., presented his proposal to Congress for a “super fence” along the border. “We could electrify it,” he said, “not enough to kill somebody but enough to make them think twice. We do that with livestock all the time.” If the problem eased, he suggested, we could open it up again and “let the livestock run through.” Enough said.
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| UFCW members joined a march for immigrant rights on Labor Day 2006 in St. Paul. |
Sen notes that more than 30 states have passed 57 laws banning undocumented people from receiving social services or pledging National Guard troops to patrol the southern U.S. border. In all, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), nearly 500 immigration measures were introduced in 2005. To date, at least 44 bills have been enacted in 2006, on par with 2005.
In Colorado, the governor signed into law a spate of laws cracking down on employers who hire undocumented workers and increasing penalties for falsifying identification documents. But in two separate rulings, the Colorado Supreme Court refused to allow an initiative to stay on the ballot that would have denied state services to most undocumented workers. Yet Gov. Bill Owens has threatened to call a special session of the Legislature to vote to put a similar measure on the ballot.
Meanwhile, five states recently have sought to limit or exclude immigrant workers from receiving workers’ compensation when injured. This “use-up-immigrant-workers-and-throw-them-out” mind-set is reflected in the broader policy debate in states such as Arizona. As Nathan Newman at Progressive States Network writes:
For the right-wing in the Arizona state legislature, their only response to sweatshop employers using low-wage undocumented immigrants has been to try to make criminals of the undocumented workers themselves, even as they’ve opposed raising minimum wage standards to eliminate the sweatshops which financially benefit from exploited immigrants in the first place.
In his piece on TomPaine.com, Sen rebuffs the myth that immigrants drain public resources, noting the facts don’t support such an argument.
Studies in state after state show that immigrants pay their fair share of taxes. Even the undocumented pay into Social Security through false numbers. According to a 2005 study by Physicians for a National Health Program, immigrants, including the undocumented, use fewer health care resources than native-born citizens. Immigrants accounted for 10.4 percent of the U.S. population, but only 7.9 percent of total health spending, and only 8 percent of government health spending. Their per capita expenditure is less than half that of non-immigrants. Thirty percent of immigrants used no healthcare at all in the course of a year.
So here’s an idea for state lawmakers (not to mention Congress). Address the underlying causes of the nation’s jobs, health care and pension crises—like putting taxpayer money to fund services that benefit the majority of us, rather than providing the very wealthiest with tax breaks they don’t need. And instead of criminalizing workers, how about negotiating trade deals that benefit workers in other nations, enabling them to support their families without leaving home?
But scapegoating the most vulnerable is much easier—and a great distraction in an election year for Bushites who want to turn the discussion away from such real concerns of working families as good jobs and an affordable education. As Sen notes:
Racism is the wedge conservatives use to distract us from real questions that need answers. If they are so upset with people draining the public treasury, they should protest real drains like the $70 billion of corporate tax income lost in offshore tax havens annually.
Politicians and immigration foes are trying to manufacture a new culture war. But the majority of Americans don’t want one and must speak up now to drown out the subtle racism dominating this debate.
Reprinted from the AFL-CIO news blog, http://blog.aflcio.org
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