It seems immigrant is the new gay.

[ccharles000]

I just saw an ad for Dole here in NC and it was about immigration. I think repubs will use immigration as a wedge issue like the used gay marriage.

[XemaSab]

1. So I can go get a day laborer from the front of Home Depot

and have him redesign my living room for $100 a day? :shrug:

SCORE!

[Hydra]

2. Why is it that people forget to use the word "illegal" when it suits them?

I just had another friend have to leave the country for playing by the rules. This is not funny anymore about how we should be tolerating this.

[rockymountaindem]

3. Well look at it this way

Maybe soon they'll run out of groups to blame...

Oh, who am I kidding?

[Ian David]

4. McCain can't use immigration as a wedge issue.

http://conservativestodefeatmccain.com/Immigration.htm


http://www.rogueriver.tzo.com/blogginon/archives/01-01-2008_01-31-2008.html






http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002732.html

[notesdev]

5. Immigration should not be a GOP issue

It's a labor issue. Every foreigner who holds a job in the United States represents an incremental decrease in the wages of US workers.

To support labor immigration - legal or illegal - is a kick in the crotch to unions in particular, and every American wage earner in general.

[VP505]

7. One thing about the

G-ang O-f P-erverts they will use anything as a wedge issue as long as it stirs enough hate to get the job done.

[anigbrowl]

10. Lump of labor fallacy. read up on it.

[notesdev]

13. How is that?

Do you take the Bush position that they're "just here doing work that Americans won't do"?

Did it escape your notice that Bush and McCain are respectively the #1 and #2 advocates for illegal immigration?

Who do you think this benefits?

Not the American worker who sees his wages go down, or gets rejected from jobs because he can't speak Spanish.

It benefits the agricultural corporations - GOP donors - who get effective slave labor, subsidized by the very people who are screwed by it.

[Bluebear]

14. 'or gets rejected from jobs because he can't speak Spanish' - that is a big problem here?

Really?

[notesdev]

15. In some areas and fields, yes

If you knew people in the construction industry, you'd know just how bad the situation was.

Just Google the phrase 'job "couldn't speak Spanish"' and you'll get more info than you ever wanted to know.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

22. Yes, it would help your employment chances.

I applied for a paralegal job for which I am massively overqualified (Have a J.D. and other qualifications) and they asked me if I spoke Spanish and I said "No". They didn't even bother to call me into the office.

[anigbrowl]

16. I like economics. I think free immigration is a good thing, overall.

I do not intend to get drawn into an argument about it. That's why I suggested you read up on the lump of labor fallacy as a starting point. My experience of discussing the economics of immigration with people is usually that they start out with a fixed idea about how the economy works and don't want to change it even in the face of evidence, so both sides wind up getting very frustrated.

In brief, you have fallen into a right wing intellectual trap - the idea that immigrants are being shipped in to steal American jobs, and that this is at the root of our economic woes. It is a seductive trap, since immigration does result in demographic changes in the workplace. But it's a trap, because it means that in an economic downturn the powers that be and their mouthpieces (the usual right wing commentators in particular) divert blame from themselves by encouraging people to blame the most recent arrivals for their economic troubles.

When you want to have a substantive discussion instead of one made up of soundbites, I'll be happy to participate and explain my thinking in more detail. I'm not saying this to get at you personally, but simply because I don't feel like writing several thousand words when I get the sense that they'll be replied to with a few one-liners, as so often happens on DU. Actually, the high traffic and low average information content per post at DU is the main reason I don't tend to write long articles here. The site is so busy that it's hard to have a truly in-depth conversation.

[notesdev]

18. Your argument does not apply

The 'lump of labor fallacy' argument pertains to restrictions on working hours, which has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

If you are seriously suggesting that if you have 100 jobs to do X, and you have 100 people skilled in X, that then adding another 100 people skilled in X will not bring down the wages of that job, then it is you who are subscribing to a fallacy.

[anigbrowl]

19. Take off that tinfoil hat and try a thinking cap

The lump of labor fallacy is the idea that the demand for labor is fixed. Working hours are just one example of its misapplication, not the concept itself. I'm guessing you just looked it up on wikipedia and mistook the example for the thing itself.

You can apply it just as easily to the economy as a whole. You're assuming that there is only so much productivity which can be sold (ie that demand is limited), and it must be divided up between the pool of available workers. You fail to consider that every worker, in addition to being a producer, is also a consumer. Add workers to a growing economy and you create even more demand for goods and services and thus demand for more labor. The mistake is in the assumption that there will only ever be 100 jobs to do X. In fact, this number is flexible in accordance with market demand.

Here's an old Paul Krugman column on the subject, if you'd prefer to hear it from someone generally regarded as a liberal: http://www.pkarchive.org/column/100703.html

The problem right now is that demand for goods, services, and labor is low because liquidity (ie credit) has dried up and so there is not enough money floating around to encourage discretionary investment or consumption. This is due to a mix of over-leveraging (too many people cashing in on the house price boom) and the fact that we've cut taxes heavily while significantly increasing spending (mainly on war).

In cases like this, it's usually the people at the bottom of the ladder who get blamed. Since immigrants, and illegal immigrants in particular, have limited rights and can't vote, they're the obvious target to beat up on. Trade is also blamed for taking away jobs as well, though few people stop to consider that it helps to keep prices down. Economic sentiment in times like this usually runs heavily in favor of protectionism, but protectionism is a terrible strategy which rarely improves things for more than a few.

[notesdev]

24. Sorry, that's nonsense

Foreign labor sends a ton of money overseas that doesn't come back into our economy. A foreign laborer is not the equivalent of an American laborer in terms of impact on the economy. Americans spend their money here; foreigners spend a lot less here.

Simple supply and demand dictates that when you add a large new supply of labor to the economy, the cost of labor goes down. That's the Bush economy we've seen and we've seen the results. Wages are stagnating and the middle class is shrinking rapidly.

We do not benefit from this foreign scab labor being imported, when Americans are not able to get work at good wages easily. Only if there were a large oversupply of jobs would your argument be true, and that simply is not the case. If your theory was correct we would be in a nirvana economy from the 20 million plus new laborers that the GOP regime brought in.

[JeanGrey]

20. Oh yeah - Old McNutz informed us that you

"couldn't get an American to pick lettuce for fifty bucks an hour". Uh huh. Right................
Immigration is one of McCain's biggest problems and it will cost him dearly.

[anigbrowl]

21. Did I say that? No. Thanks for playing.

[JeanGrey]

23. Nope, but he did. And we know.

[Bluebear]

6. Well, the old gay is still the new gay too.

Don't think that using gay marriage as a wedge issue is kaput either!

[blondeatlast]

8. I thought abortion was the new immigration and gay was the new school choice...

Never should have allowed my scrip to "Vogue" to lapse.

Hmph.

[LeftishBrit]

9. Similar in the UK...

Anti-immigrant bigotry is our biggest form of prejudice, and has been so for a long time.

One hopeful note is that the Tories' over-use of the immigrant bogey in the 2005 election is widely thought to have backfired on them.

[darkmaestro019]

11. Uh, yeah

Immigrants--legal or illegal--choose to be so.


I don't think I like this, though I see what you were going for there.


Don't worry, I'm sure they'll have some vitriol to spare for the kwaaaaares like me. Just be patient and have a cookie while we wait.

[Hippo_Tron]

12. Dole's race is scaring the shit out of the NRSC

Hagan wasn't supposed to be a serious threat. I can't wait to watch this race develop.

[ccharles000]

17. God I hope Hagan wins.

[OhioChick]

25. "Immigration" or "Illegal Immigration?" n/t

[JustinL]

26. a guy named Marvin Liebman said it best

In the early ’90s, longtime conservative direct-mail consultant Marvin Liebman criticized the Republican Party for increasingly relying on intolerance in its appeals to voters. He saw the GOP becoming just “an agglomeration of bigotries.”

The In These Times article from which the excerpt is taken discusses the issue of gays and immigrants as the twin bogeymen of the right. More and more, it seems to me that the fundamental difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is that, in general, Democrats support expanding the circle of moral concern, while Republicans support freezing the circle in place or even contracting it.

[Cleita]

27. Of course it's a wedge issue because it involves a prejudice.

It's no different than the abortion issue (taking women's rights from them) and as you point out, gay marriage. The Pubs are very skilled at appealing to the basest prejudices in people in framing these issues to divide and distract from the real issues. Horrors! The voters might want to hold them accountable for wholesale stealing from the Treasury and war crimes for starters.