HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE A RACIST, REACTIONARY REPUBLICAN, PART 2

https://heterodoxacademy.org/research-summary-race-and-the-race-for-the-white-house-on-social-research-in-the-age-of-trump/

This is part two of our quizz. On the last post we had four questions to test whether you were a racist, reactionary Republican or perhaps, somebody was just confused or misinformed about the true nature of immigration.

Here are four more question about immigrants.

You may be a racist, reactionary Republican if:

5) You complain about illegal immigration but still take all the economic benefits they provide.

This is my favorite. Immigration bashing conservatives are always complaining about illegal workers. But they are happy to unquestioningly take the economic benefits that come from the work that illegal aliens do.

We know that Donald Trump does. We have the testimony and the records of illegals who work at his Trump National Golf Club in Westchester, New York. Lots of hard work, not very much pay, and nobody bothering to look at employment documents or work records.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/05/17/donald-trump-undocumented-immigrant-employees-kaye-dnt-ac360-vpx.cnn

But what of the other well known reactionary racist Republicans, such as the ones who beat up illegals all the time on Fox Fake and Phony News?

When Laura Ingraham, a well known immigrant basher, goes to the supermarket and sees a good bargain on strawberries does she simply put them in her shopping basket and pay for them? Or does she do what any good, and honest immigrant hater would do? Does she immediately go to the produce manager and say, “I can see these are delicious looking strawberries, but they are on sale for a very low price. I suspect that they were produced by cheap illegal immigrants. On principal no such food will ever pass my lips. I demand to see the tag certifying that all this produce is illegal immigrant labor free!! Or I won’t buy it - ever!!”

No, my bet is she picks up the strawberries and heads to the checkout counter.

Do you think that all Republicans personally demand absolute certainty of the legal status of every gardener, landscaper, truck driver, delivery driver, housekeeper, construction worker, field hand, home health care worker and meat packing employee that they hire? And how often do they demand proof from a subcontract that their laborers are certified native born? Ever? Ever, ever?

You can’t openly or tacitly accept the economic and other benefits of illegal alien labor and then bash them for being illegal and a threat to our good American ways. At least not in good conscience.

6) If you claim that you are all for legal immigration but never even acknowledge the danger and difficulty in it.

Do you understand and accept that that legal immigration in our country is very difficult and unbelievably time consuming? Do you realize that for a new citizen to bring in even close family members it can take years or even decades?

Our immigration systems favors those who are rich, safe and secure, and who can afford to wait. And it hurts those who are poor, endangered and threatened. If you have time, then you are always at a huge advantage to those who don’t have that luxury.

Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank, tried to save his family from Nazi Germany by twice applying to legally immigrate to either Cuba or the United States. The first time was in 1938, and the second was in 1941.

Nothing happened the first time. On December 1, 1941 he was granted a single visa, for himself. But it didn’t matter for him or for the Frank family. On December 11th Germany declared war on America and his visa was canceled.

You know the rest of the story: Otto and his entire family were found by the Nazis, sent to Auschwitz and were murdered. Perhaps the entire family should have tried to crash the shore in America somewhere seeking asylum. Come what may it is hard to imagine that they would have had a worse outcome.

Conservatives, in a very disingenuous way, will point to the “hordes” of people migrating up from Central America and say, “I have nothing against them immigrating. Just as long as they do it legally.”

Ok, imagine that you are the mother of a poor family in El Salvador. you are lining up to enter the American embassy because you are desperate to get away from the murderous gangs and corrupt local officials.

Along comes a gang member from your neighborhood. “Hey, Maria, what are you doing here? You’re not thinking of leaving are you? That would be bad. We are going to have a party tomorrow night, and we want that pretty daughter of yours to come over. And by the way, we want you son to do a little favor us. He wouldn’t mind that, would he? Of course not. That would be too bad. Lots of people around here getting hurt, you know. You don’t want that to happen, do you? Of course not, that’s why your not leaving, right?”

You think that Maria is going to continue lining up to enter the American embassy for one, two or ten years to try and wrangle visas so that all of her family members can legally enter the U.S.? No. By that time everyone in the family is likely to be dead. It may not be in a concentration camp, but dead is dead.

Assuming that you have the language skills, money and legal help needed to apply for legal immigration into the U.S. the wait can easily stretch for years This is why so many people from Central America (and other places more or less within walking distance of an American border) simply disappear overnight and start walking north. They are not thinking about being penned up in cages, or denied medical care, or being abused and denigrated. They are not thinking about the months or years it may take to be granted an asylum request.

They’re thinking, “We gotta get out of here before we starve to death or somebody kills us!”

7) If you think that “chain migration” is bad.

Chain migration is the derisive term reactionary conservatives have invented to describe the process whereby one or more family members who is legally living in the U.S. sponsors another family member to apply to immigrate. It is basically a way for immigrants to unify family member to live here legally.

Conservatives hate this. I don’t really know why. Donald Trump’s own mother was rescued from the dire circumstances of her life in Scotland (her village was very remote and very poor) and allowed to immigrate to this country because his father, Fred Trump, sponsored her. And Trump’s wife, Melania, sponsored both of her parents to immigrate. You’d think that they would be down with this.

I guess that they don’t know the story of Jonas Salk. For you millennials, or Gen Xers, or for anyone under the age of about 60, Jonas Salk was a hero. He was the man who developed the first polio vaccine.

If you don’t think that a polio vaccine was a big deal, let me tell you, it was. When I was a kid (growing up in the 1950s and 1960s) polio was frightening as hell. Hardly anybody knows or thinks about polio nowadays, but it used to be a horror and a constant worry among all Americans. In the early to mid 1950s there were as many 25,000 to 50,000 new cases of polio per year, many of them young children. Those who were not killed were left cripple, marked or, in many cases, unable to breath without being confined to a large metal cylinder known as an iron lung.

Jonas Salk stopped polio. But without “chain migration” he would never even have become an American. In fact, he might not even have lived.

Salk’s mother was named Dora, and she was a Russian Jew. Her older sister, Jennie Press, and her husband emigrated to the U.S. in the very early part of the 20th century. They sponsored Jennie’s four brothers and her father. The father, in turn, sponsored Dora. Her first born child, Jonas, was born in 1912 and automatically became a citizen.

Good thing that we allowed “chain migration” back then. I can’t think that anybody in the Trump administration, especially Stephen Miller, Trump’s racist in residence, would have thought that even a single person in Jennie Presser’s family deserved to enter America. And you know what they would have said, “You let one in and they all gotta come - then there goes the neighborhood!”

As I said, if it had not been for “chain migration” Jonas Salk might not even have lived. The early 20th century was a dangerous time to be Jew. In her book, Jonas Salk: A Life, author Charlotte DeCrroes Jacobs gives us an idea of just how desperate Jews were to get out of Eastern Europe. “At the beginning of the 20th century, weary from burying their slaughtered neighbors, one of every seven Russian Jews immigrated.” The operative word - slaughtered. That could have been Jonas. And it could be someone from El Salvador today.

The next time you hear on Fox Fake and Phony News about an “invasion” of people from Central America remember that statistic: one out of every seven Jews, almost 15% of all Jewish people, fled Eastern Europe and Russia to immigrate and escape to America. (The count between 1890 and 1904 was about 2 million people, altogether).

Do you think that the “invasion” from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala is 15% of the population of those countries? We have had immigration based on reuniting families or creating them for over one hundred years. And we have taken in millions of immigrants and refugees of all types for just as long.

8) If you believe that immigration based solely on “merit” makes sense

For reactionary Republicans the antidote to “chain migration” is something they call “merit-based migration.” What this means, or who would decide which immigrant had it, has never really been explained.

The vague, general idea seems to be that we should not allow anyone to immigrate unless they already have some special super talent or like, like really smart! (perhaps a stable genius, like Trump). This might include people with PhDs or any one with some great ability that we could immediately harness for our benefit. And of course, they should already speak fluent English. Whatever this means it does not include anyone who is not already street legal and ready to make make money for us.

It has never been the policy of the U.S. to screen all immigrants for “merit”. And it is a good thing or it would certainly screened out Albert Sabin.

Who was he? He was the immigrant scientist who invented the oral vaccine for polio. Sabin’s invention allowed for quick, easy and widespread vaccination. When coupled with Salk’s injection method, it eradicated polio in America and then for most of the rest of the world.

Albert Sabin was a Polish Jew whose family freely and legally immigrated to America when he was about 15 years old. This was an effort to escape the vicious pogroms (purges) against Jews that were carried out in Poland and other countries after WWI.

Sabin hit our shores in 1921. It is unlikely that he had much of any kind of education, and certainly did not speak English. When he was young he was tutored by a cousin. He went to New York University (famous as a school of higher education for immigrants - do we still have such things?) and studied bacteriology. In 1933 he started working on the polio virus.

Developing the oral vaccine for polio, along with many other scientific accomplishments, would likely have pegged Sabin as a “merit” immigrant. But given the rabid anti semitism of Eastern Europe at the time it is more likely that he would never have survived long enough to get an education, let alone invent something as important as the oral polio vaccine.

Two immigrant Jews, Salk and Sabin, both made outstanding contributions to their adopted country. One was brought in by the hated (to conservatives) “chain migration”. The other without need of showing “merit”.

“Merit-based” immigration probably appeals to racist reactionary Republicans like Trump because it would naturally favor people who come from white European countries that have good schools and teach their young people to speak English - like his wife, Melania (smart, but not of the caliber of a Salk or a Sabin).

But there is a more odious dimension to it. “Merit-based” immigration is meant to be the end of “chain migration”, meaning that we let in people who can make us money, but do not extend to them the right to unlimited sponsorship of relatives or friends. There ain’t gonna be a “chain of you guys coming in just because on of you was smart enough to get here.”

Do Trump and Stephen Miller and Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter and the other reactionary racist see how stupid and uninviting this policy is? Do they actually think that this policy will make smart and capable people want to make America their home?

Imagine that you are a brilliant software engineer from India, named Mr. Patel. American companies want you to work for them, our universities want you to teach their students. So too do the Germans, British, French, Italians and Chinese. Wherever you settle you are going to be highly paid, perhaps given great laboratories for your work, and get lots of opportunities and respect. So which country will you bless with your brain power. To which of these countries will you emigrate. In which one would you expect to create a new life?

Mr. Patel may be inclined to emigrate to America. Just one problem. Mr. Patel is a good son, who misses his mother and father. He misses talking to them and he particularly misses his mother’s curry. Most of all, he misses having someone and something familare when he comes home from working a 16 hour day.

Too bad. His father is a retired provincial teacher. He speaks some English, but not much. His mother is a traditional Indian housewife. Under the Trumpian rules our engineer is allowed to immigrate. But his parents are ordinary people. We don’t really want them - they have no special “merit” so maybe they get to come in, or maybe not. But even if they do, they will not have the right to sponsor anyone - that would start a chain of migration that might never end!

Our engineer would also like to get married, and he still knows a nice girl from Mombai. She is very pretty and has even been to a good university. She would probably make a wonderful wife.

Too bad for Mr. Patel. His potential young wife might be able to qualify for her own “merit-based” immigration if she went to a really prestigious university and majored in biochemistry or electronic engineering. Of if she already had a white hot start up company. Problem is, she is traditional, and wants to stay home and take care of her husband, and later, the babies. Mr. Patel is looking forward to kids. Her brain power may not be available for making some American company a lot of money for many years.

But wait! There’s more.

Even if the future Mrs. Patel did qualify on a “merit-based” visa to immigrate, there’s still a problem.

The lovely girl has a widowed mother she would like to bring to America, to help with the babies, perhaps while she is later busy inventing the hottest social networking company in the world. And, of course, like Mr. Patel, she has got a whole passel of sisters, brothers and cousins, many of whom might want to live in America. They are all fairly bright, but no geniuses among them. So no merit here, just a potentially long chain of people wanting to be sponsored by someone so they too can emigrate to America. Under Trump, that ain’t gonna happen. So I don’t think Mr. Patel is going to get married.

If you think about it, and particularly if you have even lived overseas, it is not hard to see the stupidity of the Republican “merit-based” immigration policy and the cruelty and exploitation behind it.

The policy basically says, “Hey, foreigner, we will let you immigrate to the U.S. but only so that you can make us a lot of money. We don’t really want you here but if you have big brain, and can help make us rich, without requiring anything from us then, well, ok, you can enter. We don’t care about you, or your needs or your wants. If you have to be alone, and lonely and without anyone or anything that is familiare, that is just how it is. Your immigration stops with you, and maybe a spouse or someone. But that is it. We bestow our highly coveted citizenship on your for our benefit, not yours - and certainly not to any freeloader you might want to drag along with you. Everybody more than pulls his weight or they don’t get in.

If you are anyone of real “merit”, living in a foreign country now, why would you want to emigrate to the U.S.? Inside the U.S. we know that smart, well educated, successful people, are mobile, discriminating and can pretty much live and work anywhere. Such people living overseas can do the same.

No one in the world will emigrate to the U.S. when they can go to Britain, or Germany, or France or some other first world country that will respects them enough to allow them to bring in family and friends and make a real life for themselves.

As plain as the nose on your face!

So, progressives, how did you uncle do? If he got four or more correct answers I would say there is hope for him. But fewer than four correct answers and he needs to turn off Fox Fake and Phony News, and step back from the TV.