Alabama's Immigration Law: How the 1% Get Richer

[McCamy Taylor]

Intro. Alabama is poor. We all know that. But did you know that Alabama is also rich? That's right. The state famous for its poverty is also chock full of rick folks, even though it has no Stock Exchange, no oil wells. Ever wonder how the 1% in a place like Alabama get so much more than their fair share? Here is how.




Alabama or Why I Am a Democrat. It isn't because I think Democrats are any more likely than Republicans to throw banksters in jail. In the post Citizens United world, money runs Washington, and any politician who wants to stay in power has to go where the dollars are. I'm a Democrat, because this is the party that is willing to challenge racism, nationalism, sexism. Case in point, Alabama.

ATLANTA — The federal government asked an appeals court Friday to stop Alabama officials from enforcing a strict immigration law that has already driven Hispanic students from public schools and migrant workers from towns, warning that it opens the door to discrimination against even legal residents.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/07/alabama-immigration-law-j_n_1000086.html

Sadly, these are some workers and even a few union members who applaud Alabama's tactics. "Good!" they exclaim. "More jobs for Americans!" Not realizing that laws which deprive Hispanics of education and safety (no more calling the police when you get robbed) are adding to the wealth of the wealthiest 1% and keeping everyone else's wages down. How? An undereducated workforce does not have the skills to change the political system. A scared workforce does not have the guts to call OSHA. A poor workforce will work hard for minimum wage. And when your population includes a poor, undereducated, scared workforce, every other worker finds his own wages and protections cut. It happened in England two hundred years ago when they imported Irish (considered an inferior race) to take the jobs held by Englishmen, and it has happened here almost since the founding of this country, with Germans pitted against Irish pitted against Italians against Chinese against Blacks and all of the (men) against women.

We all know about Alabama. We watched its police bust heads, shoot fire hoses and sic attack dogs during the Civil Rights era. Some of us were unlucky enough to live there at the time. White Alabamans can not help being racists son’s of bitches, right? It’s in their (inbred poor white trash) blood….

That’s the myth. The fact is that racism in Alabama is a carefully nurtured crop, just like cotton. The bosses in that state make sure that white workers hate Black workers and Latino workers in order to keep salaries low and work conditions abysmal. Every fire hose aimed at a Black child during the 60s was also a fire hose aimed at white workers---whether the whites knew it or not. Every lynching that occurred in the 1920s tightened the noose around the neck of the entire working class. This divide and conquer strategy has worked for over a century. Engels predicted that America would have never have a successful socialist workers movement as long as workers allowed themselves to be divided and conquered. And he was right.

Even the urge to label white working class Alabamans as inbred, racist rednecks is part of the strategy that the state uses to keep its workers down. Who in America will care if

between 2000 and 2006, approximately 3,400 Alabamians between the ages of 25 and 64 died because they did not have health insurance coverage(?)

http://www.lwval.org/Health_Care_in_AL_F&I/Health_Care_in_AL_F&I.pdf

Alabamans gave up their right to expect the rest of us to give a damn on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965----



And once again, we slip into divided and conquered mode.

Alabama's Immigration Law. At the moment, the whole nation knows that Alabama despises the Latino immigrants whom employers have lured to the state with jobs. Today, we read about a girl, the daughter of a US citizen, who was called a “filthy Mexican” on her school bus. We also heard about a winning high school football team (Hispanic) that was told to “go home” by the losing team. Alabama has given itself the right to detain and hold without bond anyone it deems looks “furren” if that person isn’t carrying proof of citizenship.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/29/earlyshow/main20113223.shtml

You would think that foreign companies, especially those owned by people who look “furren” would stay the hell out of the state. You would be wrong. Whenever Alabama gets in the news for oppressing some working group---Blacks, Latinos, women---foreign investors start to salivate at the thought of the tremendous profits they can reap from those artificially depressed wages.

Here is a fun and revealing little document about how Alabama has attracted more foreign---including Asian---auto manufacturing companies than any other state in the last few years. Pay particular attention to the part about being sensitive to the values of others cultures. No, I’m not talking about the culture of the workers. Alabama wants to make the Korean bosses feel right at home. Proving that it isn’t the color of your skin or the shape of your eyes that determines whether your kids will be mauled on their school bus. It is how much money you have in the bank.

http://nepalstudycenter.unm.edu/MissPdfFiles/alabama-car-industryNLIssue3_06_pdf.pdf

What does Alabama’s “employer friendly” policy mean for Alabamans? Congratulations! you have the 5th most income disparate economy in the nation!

Alabama has the 5th largest percentage of households making less than $30,000 a year, and the tenth-highest percentage of households making above $100,000 a year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/26/top-ten-states-with-the-worst-inequality_n_853755.html#s269521&title=5_Alabama

All that prosperity for so few!

With money on all our minds, it is easy to forget that racism is where wealth inequality begins in this country. Obama gets maligned for our financial ills, while his efforts to bring American workers together by battling the various –isms---sexism, racism, homophobia---are ignored. Almost as if some folks believe that equality is a luxury we can only afford in times of prosperity.

Want to redistribute some of the wealth that the richest 1% now hold in their greedy little “no way this is going to stimulate the economy” hands? Get to work changing the attitudes of workers across the country towards people of other genders, nationalities, races, religions and sexual orientation.

[dkf]

1. The racism is in giving the jobs we think we are too good for to a particular race.

For less wages than we think are acceptable so that we can get cheaper food.

[izquierdista]

2. Don't single out Alabama

Georgia and South Carolina are trying just as hard to make Hispanics feel unwelcome.

[Scruffy1]

3. It's in the north,too.

Minnesota has one of the highest rates of black unemployment in the nation. The state of Ohio persistently disenfranchises black voters. And on it goes since reconstruction the oligarchy has found racism to be profitable.
Money equals power and power equals money.

[McCamy Taylor]

4. Appeals to regional pride to stifle dissent are the same as fascist nationalism.

For over a century, the South has been able to continue its dirty and divide and conquer policies by saying (in effect) "Who are they to criticize us?"

Well, I was born and raised in the South and have never lived any where else and I will criticize "us" if I feel like it.

[bertman]

5. No doubt a large element of the laws in Alabama is racism against Hispanics;

HOWEVER, I think you have missed some very key points, McCamy. First, the 1% EVERYWHERE have been making HUGE bucks off the undocumented immigrant workers who have been working here for the last ten or fifteen years. This is the result of having to pay undocumented workers half or less than what they used to pay American workers to do the same jobs. Anyone who works in the building industry can vouch for that.

Second, they have been making HUGE bucks off the unfiled workers compensation claims and demands for wages due to missed work because of absences from work due to injuries that happened on the job. People who are working without documentation VERY RARELY file claims for on the job injuries. They are afraid they will be jailed or deported for being here without legal papers, so they go to the local hospital or clinic and receive medical treatment paid for by the government instead of by the employer's workers compensation insurance carrier.

Third, they have been making HUGE bucks off of the American citizens who lost their jobs to illegal immigrant workers because those American workers, who are educated and who are technically skilled, but who will not work for half of what they previously made doing skilled labor, are now working CHEAP doing whatever they can do to put food on the table and pay the mortgage or rent. So the brick mason who used to make $18 an hour laying brick for houses or doing commercial work has been displaced by undocumented workers who gladly work for $8 an hour. The mason then finds himself doing work somewhere else in a different field for half of what he used to make.

Fourth, they have been making HUGE bucks off of their savings on not having to pay for benefits such as vacation pay, holiday pay, retirement pay, or medical insurance. American citizens used to get those benefits on the job. Now, the workers who have taken their jobs are working for wages ONLY--and reduced wages at that. Those undocumented workers don't have a union or a trade organization that is backing their demands for benefits because THEY ARE SCARED TO ASK FOR THEM. Those benefits are the same benefits that American workers and unions fought for and often died to gain.

Fifth, they have been making HUGE bucks off of the purchases of homes, automobiles, trucks, and other personal property that has been sold by those unemployed American workers who cannot make enough money to make the payments on those things or who have sold them to make a mortgage payment. A desperate man or woman will sell their most treasured belongings for next to nothing just to be sure their children have food on the table.

The workers who have come to this country in a desperate attempt to find work are for the most part decent, hardworking people who would make good citizens if given the chance. Unfortunately, they have very effectively been used as pawns to weaken our unions, undercut our job safety regulations and enforcement, and to make the American worker a more desperate individual who will accept whatever is offered by those who control the levers of power.

I am personally acquainted with many American workers who have been working and paying taxes and being upright, law-abiding citizens all of their lives but who are now facing the loss of their homes, their hard-earned rights as workers, and their dignity because our politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, have failed to recognize and deal with the effects of illegal immigration. The first industry they busted was the meat packers union and from there they have worked their way into virtually every aspect of business and industry in this nation.

There is much more to the anger at undocumented workers than just their race.

[mojowork_n]

6. Best historical summary on that topic that I've read in...

...a really long time:

http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/10/a_brief_history_of_georgias_1--or_why_you_cant_occupy_atlanta_without_facing_race.html

Atlanta, apparently, is much the same.

(As is Milwaukee, where I live, where we still have one of the most racially segregated major cities in the country. It's like
living in the 1960's here, for way too many people.)

A month after the end of the Civil War, a train carrying Jefferson Davis pulled into the Atlanta depot two blocks from where Occupy Atlanta has pitched its tents. The president of the Confederate States of America had been caught in south Georgia as he tried to flee. The train stopped in Atlanta to pick up coal on its way to Virginia, where he would await trial for treason.

When the Georgia Legislature convened later that year, it dutifully ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, as it was required to do to reenter the Union. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, but with an enormous loophole. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, it read, shall exist in the United States, except as punishment for crime.

The same legal theories are being revived again, in Oakland, as I'm typing this.

[gtar100]

7. k&r