This Just In: Republicans Full of Shit

A Washington Post article about the new immigration bill says that many on the right "derided the agreement as a sellout of conservative principles," characterizing it as a form of amnesty.

Not only are they full of shit, the Republicans are entirely lacking in any sense of (alarmingly recent) history. It was Ronald Reagan whose "amnesty" toward illegal immigrants started this whole mess. Because as nice as "amnesty" sounds, his program was really about policing a newly racialized border.

Before the Reagan sleight-of-hand (keep the audience's eye on the flashy "amnesty" while you start building barriers with the other hand) people crossed the border more freely and there was less incentive to become an "illegal." A person could simply go home at night or after the season. Work in the US, live in Mexico. But the Reagan rhetoric and policies turned an economic situation into a military one. The border crossers were no longer laborers, but invaders.

The Reagan amnesty was a propogandist fiction used to legitimize the creation of an enforced (and racialized) border. The very word "amnesty" suggests that these worker had been doing something that needed legal forgiveness, but until the 1986 bill, this wasn't necessarily the case.

By destroying the fluidity of the border, Reagan created an incentive for illegal immigration. If one can't keep one's job and go home at night, one contrives to make one's home where the job is. It ain't rocket science.

But what really pisses me off about this is how the very architects of NAFTA are the ones bitching about immigration. One the one hand, they want us to believe that we are all part of a single market, that economies should overflow national boundaries and that we'll all benefit from relaxing economic regulations.

Although I've never quite understood how the guy losing his job or the other guy who's being employed at crap wages with no health insurance are really benefitting. Although I do see how Chrylser is benefitting.

Where was I? Oh yes: so the Republicans want us to think beyond national boundaries when it comes to NAFTA, but when it comes to immigration, we need to be vigilant about these borders.

Part of this is surely a kind of reflexive racist response to the brownin of America, but an even larger part of it is about supporting and maintaining the real goals of NAFTA: the endless supply of cheap labor south of the border. If we permit a fluid border, we run the risk of ACTUALLY, rather than just rhetorically, blending the economies, thereby effectively raising the standard of living in border towns and bringing wages more in alignment with those of the US.

Republicans can't stand the thought that the bullshit they spout about NAFTA--that is will help workers--might actually come true, so they've concocted this new hysteria about immigration to help ensure that they don't ever have to live up to their "conservative principles."