A horrible suspicion just visited me. Aside from the choice of vocabulary, does everybody actually agree with Trump? Does the message of “let’s keep immigrants out” resonate on some level with everybody? And I don’t really care about the immaterial distinction of wanting to keep out white-collar immigrants as opposed to Trump’s desire to keep out blue-collar immigrants.
Is Trump doing so great because he says what everybody is thinking? Is there anybody who disagrees and happens not to be an immigrant?
This is both sad and scary.
Clarissa's Blog 
No one has to agree with everything a politician says. In fact, in a 2 party system, that’s almost impossible. You just have to agree with enough that one candidate seems better than the other. The “Make America Great Again” theme will resonate with a lot of people who really won’t listen to anything else he says. That one line and the belief that he will kick ass will be enough.
Recessions beget bigotry against immigrants. There’s a long historical trail of anti-immigrant sentiment extending back to the early 1800s. Usually its focused on a particular group — Irish, Germans, Chinese, Japanese, Poles, everyone seems to get a turn. People want to blame someone for their misfortune, and Hitler isn’t the only politician to try to leverage prejudice for personal gain. Been done in the US too.
I don’t believe we are having a recovery, and I suspect the Fed is about to screw up on interest rates. If true, they will put us back into a recession or worse. Then all the garbage will emerge from the woodwork.
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And I don’t really care about the immaterial distinction of wanting to keep out white-collar immigrants as opposed to Trump’s desire to keep out blue-collar immigrants.
Why do you personally feel it’s an immaterial distinction to make between white collar and blue collar immigrants?
A lot of immigrants don’t have a collective identity as immigrants and don’t feel solidarity with the group of immigrants. They identify as white collar or blue collar and/or ____ ethnicity and/or to ___ country. A lot of people self define narrowly, so when somebody like Trump keeps going on about Mexican day laborers, they don’t feel offended because they’re white collar HB-1s from China, for example.
And let’s be real, the Latinos running in this race are Cuban. There’s been a completely different immigration policy for Cubans than other groups.
I don’t know if Jeb takes personal issue with anti-Mexican sentiment, but people have repeatedly said that he’s campaigning diffidently and Columba might be the reason why. She does not like the spotlight.
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I am personally an immigrant. I have personally said on various occasions that my only identity is that of an immigrant. And I personally find it unpleasant when I’m personally told that I’m not welcome because I and people like me personally and collectively steal jobs and worsen working conditions.
I have had to eat a lot of shit, hear a lot of insults, and undergo a lot of humiliations because I’m an immigrant. And every one of those insults, every one of the “who the hell are you to say anything critical about this country, go back home”, every single one has come without an exception from super progressive, ultra Liberal folks. They detest me because they can’t feel sorry for me. I don’t give them an opportunity to condescend to me.
So what the hell do I personally care if somebody hates only the bad Jews, only the loose women, only the incorrect inmigrants, whoever they happen to be? Just like I believe in the rights of all women, whether they feel solidarity or not, whether they identify narrowly or not, I don’t make distinctions between immigrants based on the job they happen to hold.
Every single act of hatred self-justifies with these invented distinctions. “It’s not all black people I hate, it’s just those lazy layabouts on welfare who spread crime. And they don’t even have any solidarity, just look at Ben Carson.”
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For me, it’s this awareness that even though I might self categorize myself as a particular kind of person, this distinction is largely lost on people blabbering about immigrants. It’s very interesting/frightening sometimes to see people project random hated ethnicities, and citizenship statuses upon me, before I open my mouth and sometimes even after they receive abundant contextual clues. It’s amazing how people will only see the garbage schema in their head and will become visibly agitated if you disturb it by existing.
If I self identified narrowly, it would save me a lot of agita and heartburn because I could believe they’re not talking about me or my parents or my cousins or many of my friends.
I found birtherism and SB1070 like laws to be incredibly worrisome and rage inducing.
I don’t know why so many immigrants and minorities play into respectability rhetoric and politics. It’s sad.
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I am with Clarissa here. I sure started out as “But I am a good kind of immigrant, white, educated, well assimilated.” Sooner or later you realize it doesn’t really matter, the fact you think you did everything you could to become naturalized will never be enough for some people, and you will always be other. Once I started realizing that, I have much more sympathy for all immigrants who don’t have the good fortune of looking white or having a good education, because most locals where I live would be just as unlikely to have my kids over for a playdate as they would the kids of a Mexican-born cleaning lady. When people think they have the right to be here and you don’t, that this is their country and you are an intruder, it really doesn’t matter that you are more civilized, educated, or generally contributing member of society than them. You don’t belong and that’s final.
I identify as an immigrant today, after having been naturalized for years, more than I did when I immigrated 16 years ago, and I feel more kinship with all other immigrants, whoever they might be, than I did when I thought I was so much better than all of them. I am not.
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“When people think they have the right to be here and you don’t, that this is their country and you are an intruder, it really doesn’t matter that you are more civilized, educated, or generally contributing member of society than them”
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Without the nation state there’s no such thing as immigration or immigrants, just people moving around as they see fit and blending in locally or not as they see fit.
And I’m thinking Trump is a little like emerging nationalist parties in Europe, he’s the only one talking about immigration in terms of any kind of limits at all.
All the others are trotting out some version of open borders and/or mass amnesty. The majority of people in any country don’t want either and so Trump’s getting more play and support just for talking about what all the other candidates are afraid to.
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In the US there’s nothing but limits. It’s practically impossible to enter the country legally. Enormous resources are expended in hassling people like me who never broke any law. When I was a graduate student, I was stopped and questioned for endless periods of time every time I crossed the border with Canada. Every single time. I had an INS agent hassle me on the phone when I was working at Cornell – where I was absolutely legally. I could go on and on. I fail to see what is gained by wasting resources in this way but I guess the question was answered for me by the customs officer on the border who threw an actual fit of hysteria over my salary listed in my visa papers. He was traumatized because the salary seemed too high for him and he had a freak out over it.
Open borders? Come on. They don’t even exist when they legally exist, like between the US and Canada. There is no real problem all of this idiocy tries to solve. This is purely a psychological problem.
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I think one message that really does resonate, is lets have an appropriate amount of legal immigration. Roughly 1 million per year (although that is a complicated stat as the 1 million new citizens come from a variety of categories, some former students, some from work visas, many from related family members etc.) come here, by far the most in the developed world. We are the most diverse nation this world has ever known, and it truly is a strength of ours.
In many ways you are what is so great about this country :), you specifically! (you know i am not one to kiss up.. i mean this sincerely). The fact that we can attract some of the brightest from literally every country on this earth is one reason the US has had so much success.
Now, with 7 billion people on this planet, and somewhere between 4 billion – 6 billion who would have immeasurable quality of life improvements instantaneously by moving here, we need to have a controlled immigration process. Unless you advocate completely open borders (which i have heard a surprisingly number of journalists make a case for – which is just ridiculous on the current scheme of things), then you must set the limit somewhere. 500k? 1 million? double to even 2 million?
Then we must decide, do we aim for mainly skilled (such as yourself?), or blue collar / relatively uneducated? or a mix? These are very serious, non xenophobic reasons to be skeptical of the current immigration morass, and frankly most people don’t have the time / knowledge level to always discuss it in what hopefully i have presented is a logical manner. Some politicians exploit that. Trump is one of them.
Don’t want to prattle on too long, but hope maybe this provides a hopeful explanation to you of where i think many people stand, even if they dont always articulate with such a fine tooth granularity.
But yes, we want you 🙂 and are better for having you here!
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Thank you, Matt. I know you want me here but you vote Republican, and people who vote Republican have always been extremely welcoming. What bugs me to no end is the Liberals who only like the immigrants they can feel sorry for. Immigrants like me who can and do talk back are unacceptable to them. Sadly, in my experience, such people are always, without an exception, Democrats. This hypocrisy drives me nuts.
And yes, it does seem like there is a definite preference among many to limit immigration to those who will be voiceless, powerless, and the easiest to exploit. The way INS hassles those who are here completely legally and never break any laws is ridiculous. It’s an enormous waste of resources that nobody questions. In the meanwhile, people who are here illegally and violate all sorts of laws are never hassled. I know people from my country who managed to come here easily because they lied and forged documents in very obvious, egregious ways. And also people who’d never lie or forge anything and who are denied entry for no reason and hassled.
I’m starting to think that the whole point is precisely to have a huge number of terrified and confused undocumented immigrants because it’s so easy to exploit them in so many ways.
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I appreciate your perspective. Gives me a lot to think about. Haven’t really heard that perspective much (but i think that proves your point about the immigration narrative).
I think the closest thought i could offer is indeed the democratic party / liberals at least here in the US definitely believe in a paternalistic model where they the elites can control a large portion of the electorate. And you are not an easy person to control 🙂 As obviously more educated and financially resourceful immigrants are less dependent on them, perhaps this causes most of the issues / attitudes you discuss.
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—I’m starting to think that the whole point is precisely to have a huge number of terrified and confused undocumented immigrants because it’s so easy to exploit them in so many ways.
Exactly. Not only real housewives of the Orange County (TM) but also every liberal working for a non-profit, or an associate professor, or a freelance progressive blogger should be able to afford Mexican maid and gardener. In fact, liberals need it more then the housewives. Because it is difficult to balance work, activism, family life, children and all the chores if one has to do it all by one(so very progressive)self. Even if one is able to do all that, there may be not enough time left to make a show out of it and be widely known as a progressive/feminist/etc role model. (With all due respect to progressives and feminists.)
And of course educated immigrants are less welcome. They are in a direct competition for the middle-class jobs that the locals (conservatives and progressives alike, but conservatives are somewhat limited by religiously-induced compassion) want for themselves and their children. Computer-related subjects and natural sciences are somewhat immune, as they are believed to be the source of technical progress, i.e. the source of profit and wealth, and security. (Similar things happened in USSR under Stalin – physicists were harassed much less than anybody else because the country needed an A-bomb.) Humanities? Social sciences? Not immune. Arts? 🙂
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I don’t even think it’s limited to these utilitarian motivations. There are many people who believe themselves to be Liberal and progressive but who are motivated by the need to condescend and pity. And if you try to get in the way of that, they get very enraged.
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“I don’t make distinctions between immigrants based on the job they happen to hold.”
That is brilliant! You’ve been on fire in this thread.
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Thank you. It’s a subject that I feel strongly about.
I wish people let go of the strange and useless fantasy of a big wall with a small door. This kind of worldview is impoverished in every sense of the word – economically, philosophically, emotionally , politically, and morally.
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What particular immigration policy would you prefer for Canada, the US (and Ukraine for that matter)?
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For the US, a complete ban on the idiotic lottery system and its substitution with an expanded H1B and exceptional talent visas. Also, an opportunity for everyone who gets a graduate degree from a reputable university in the US and has no organized crime connections to get a temporary visa that allows to look for employment for longer than 6 weeks. Maybe 9 months or a year.
For Canada, the expansion of the great “professional immigration” program (which, for instance, does not allow immigrants to seek any welfare assistance for the first 10 years. I’d expand that to 15) and the removal of all other programs.
In Europe, I’d initiate a move away from the refugee concept and towards something like Canada’s professional immigration.
As for Ukraine, nobody wants to go there but if they did by some utter miracle, I’d have an open door policy for immigrants from Latin America, Africa and India. They won’t want to go because of the climate and racism but since we are fantasizing.
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What about the unauthorized immigrants here now? They make up about 5% of the workforce nationwide, and 10% at least in places like California. That we know of (I am citing a Pew study that may lowball it).
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All talk about deporting the 11 million undocumented mostly Hispanic immigrants is empty bluster. Nobody is going to deport them en masse. I say, give them all green cards, make them pay taxes, redirect the resources that go into hunting them down to looking for real criminals. Hispanic immigrants are notoriously amazing at integrating themselves into the countries of immigration. Give them half a chance and they will be the best neighbors ever and will enrich this society in every possible way.
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Also — a lot of them do pay taxes. They come out of their checks even if the SSN is fake, and then there are sales taxes, things like this.
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“All talk about deporting the 11 million undocumented mostly Hispanic immigrants is empty bluster. Nobody is going to deport them en masse.”
Actually during the Great Depression, FDR deported many Hispanics under the rubric “Mexican Repatriation” and President Eisenhower deported over a million Hispanics during “Operation Wetback” in the 1950s.
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The world has changed, porous borders, erosion of the nation-state, etc. The conversations of “let’s deport them all” are simply distracting us from real issues.
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People don’t want darker-skinned immigrants, from what I can tell. White ones are OK. That is why Trump’s anti-Mexican remarks are so popular. When many “Mexicans” aren’t immigrants — they were here when it became US, and here when it became Spain for that matter.
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You don’t get any whiter than me yet I keep hearing I’m not welcome. I don’t hear it from the same people who say nasty stuff about Mexicans. But I still hear it.
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Yes, but I think it is those people who like the Trump message.
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If you interpret Trump’s message in the narrow sense of “the specific comments he made about Mexicans”, then yes. But if you look at an underlying assumption of Trump’s words which is that people are subdivided into superior and inferior human beings based on how many seconds ago they crossed the border, then it becomes clear that many of those who say “Eew, Trump, how disgusting” actually share his worldview.
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Hm.
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I have always believed in absolute open immigration. Anyone should be able to live wherever he or she chooses. I don’t agree with Libertarians about much, but many of them believe this and I do agree.
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But that will mean the absolute end to any social safety net, any welfare program. Would that be a good thing?
Besides , the idea doesn’t work in terms of logistics. Imagine a billion people streaming into the tiny Norway. The only possible scenario is a bloodbath where everybody will be killing everybody else for resources.
The problem is that there are very few places in the world where most of the planet wants to live. There aren’t enough Denmarks to accommodate everybody who wants the free use of everything that the Danes have created. My people, for instance, have chosen to create nothing. But they will joyfully eat everything that the tiny Denmark has made. And there are over 200 million of us. Soon enough, Denmark will be just as unlivable as all of our Russian – speaking countries.
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My impression is that the vast majority of people want to stay where they are. I know people who have never set foot out of Delaware.
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And of course it is perfectly OK to have a bit of an obstacle course to obtain citizenship and any attendant benefits accruing thereunto.
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And of course the number of immigrants should be limited based on the size of the receiving country because a billion people moving to Switzerland would not be reasonable. So quotas are needed.
And gradually, we arrive at precisely the kind of system we have now. Quotas, obstacles, exams, etc. 🙂
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And of course the number of immigrants should be limited based on the size of the receiving country because a billion people moving to Switzerland would not be reasonable. So quotas are needed.
I don’t think this is necessary. Most people do not want to go anywhere.
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You prompted a brilliant discussion here Clarissa. So many good points raised. Xenophobia and nativism are nothing new. Public OK opinion on immigration in the US has always been hypocritical throughout our history, starting with the importation of the slaves. Vast migrations of people are now a worldwide phenomenon. It’s possibly a bigger issue in Europe that in the US. You could write a book on the subject and maybe you will.
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John, you summarized it perfectly: the age of massive and constant migration is beginning. The best thing we can do is accept it and not hide behind the fantasies of walls on the border.
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