The anti-Christianity of the Racist Right

[_Mister Scratch]

Some excellent points, Bob. I wonder how many of the anti-immigration folks actually live in areas---such as Southern California---where immigration is a day-to-day fact of life? This issue strikes me as being rather like the gay marriage issue, where those who most oppose gay marriage tend to not know any gay people at all.

I live in such an area.

Ultimately, it seems that the anti-immigration issue always comes back to the basic point that "it is against the law," which, let's face it, is a pretty lame argument. When you peel back the layers of sociological, economic, and other forms of argument used by the antis, what you tend to find is plain old, xenophobic racism---the kind that insists that ethnic differences be "whitewashed" away in the name of "assimilation." The same howls about "assimilation" were going on during the era of mass Italian immigration, too. This is no different.

What a load of horse manure. And what a typical left wing socialist argument.

Please elaborate, my friend.

If you are against unfettered immigration them we will label you racist. How typical of left wing radicalism. Free speech is fine when you agree with such pundents.

You mean "pundits", right? Further, I cannot see anywhere in my post where I advocated "unfettered immigration." I merely pointed out a fundamental, philosophical gripe I have with those who demand "assimilation." (What might this "assimilation" entail? Can I ask such a question? Who would be the Minister of Culture that would determine just how, and in what ways, a person could be considered "assimilated"?)

But if you disagree they shut you up with ad hominem name calling.

Come on, Jason. I have come to expect better from you. That is not what I was doing at all. Would you say that these howls of "the immigrants must 'assimilate'"---Borg-style, I might add---is somehow *not* racist?

The most simple question one can ask of anti-immigration, right-wingers is, "Why do you oppose immigration?" What you will find, I believe, is that every answer is really just a cover-up for some deeply held racist belief, such as in some fantasy, white man's version of "Americanism," or "assimilation," which, conveniently, the right-winger himself gets to define and enforce.

I
I have no problem with regulated and legal immigration.

Neither do I. The trouble is that this is a naïve and oversimplistic platitude in response to what is, in reality, a multifaceted issue.

I am for a guest worker program that could lead to citizenship. I am for this because I believe unfettred illegla immigration is a drain on resources, increases taxes and threatens prosperity and the economic well being of me, my children and future posterity. I also believe unrestricted borders are a security threat.

See, what is dumb about your post is your silly belief that there is such a thing as "unfettered illegla [sic] immigration." Where, may I ask, does this occur? You claim to live in a high-immigrant area. Close to where I live, there are signs literally depicting immigrants dashing across the border.... I think that it is a flat-out fallacy to think that "unfettred [sic] illegla [sic] immigration" is even a remote possibility. In fact, it is an oxymoron, a definitional impossibility. There are hundreds of U.S. guards planted along the Mexico border. (And, since the issue of racism had been tossed into the mix, dare I ask how the US/Mexico border compares to the US/Canada border?)

Look, let me put it this way: people are going to be coming into this country whether we like it or not. I think it's appropriate to liken this issue to the Church's policy on sex: people will be having sex whether the Brethren, or Vaughn J. Featherstone, or Boyd K. Packer, or whomever else opposes it. What should we do about it? Should we clamp down harder? Should we begin to stigmatize individual sexual practices, ala SWK? (Which would be analogous to Coggins's despising of ethnic uniqueness, or, as he terms it, "Balkanization"?)

I don't like the idea of terrorists being afforded easy access into the country, but I don't think a stigmatization of immigration is going to be a realistic solution to the problem.

[Dr. Sunstoned]

Ultimately, it seems that the anti-immigration issue always comes back to the basic point that "it is against the law," which, let's face it, is a pretty lame argument. When you peel back the layers of sociological, economic, and other forms of argument used by the antis, what you tend to find is plain old, xenophobic racism---the kind that insists that ethnic differences be "whitewashed" away in the name of "assimilation." The same howls about "assimilation" were going on during the era of mass Italian immigration, too. This is no different.

You mean "pundits", right? Further, I cannot see anywhere in my post where I advocated "unfettered immigration." I merely pointed out a fundamental, philosophical gripe I have with those who demand "assimilation." (What might this "assimilation" entail? Can I ask such a question? Who would be the Minister of Culture that would determine just how, and in what ways, a person could be considered "assimilated"?)

Come on, Jason. I have come to expect better from you. That is not what I was doing at all. Would you say that these howls of "the immigrants must 'assimilate'"---Borg-style, I might add---is somehow *not* racist?

The most simple question one can ask of anti-immigration, right-wingers is, "Why do you oppose immigration?" What you will find, I believe, is that every answer is really just a cover-up for some deeply held racist belief, such as in some fantasy, white man's version of "Americanism," or "assimilation," which, conveniently, the right-winger himself gets to define and enforce.

I have no problem with regulated and legal immigration.


See, what is dumb about your post is your silly belief that there is such a thing as "unfettered illegla [sic] immigration." Where, may I ask, does this occur? You claim to live in a high-immigrant area. Close to where I live, there are signs literally depicting immigrants dashing across the border.... I think that it is a flat-out fallacy to think that "unfettred [sic] illegla [sic] immigration" is even a remote possibility. In fact, it is an oxymoron, a definitional impossibility. There are hundreds of U.S. guards planted along the Mexico border. (And, since the issue of racism had been tossed into the mix, dare I ask how the US/Mexico border compares to the US/Canada border?)

Look, let me put it this way: people are going to be coming into this country whether we like it or not. I think it's appropriate to liken this issue to the Church's policy on sex: people will be having sex whether the Brethren, or Vaughn J. Featherstone, or Boyd K. Packer, or whomever else opposes it. What should we do about it? Should we clamp down harder? Should we begin to stigmatize individual sexual practices, ala SWK? (Which would be analogous to Coggins's despising of ethnic uniqueness, or, as he terms it, "Balkanization"?)

I don't like the idea of terrorists being afforded easy access into the country, but I don't think a stigmatization of immigration is going to be a realistic solution to the problem.

Interesting, is it not? After four pages of debate between rc, Jason, myself, and a few others, Scratch consolidates the salient points of the issue thusly:

1. All principled opposition to present immigration policies are a prop for xenophobic racism

2. All principled opponents of present immigration policies are racists by definition (as all principled opponents of the homosexual lobby are "homophobes" and all principled opponents of radical feminism are misogynists).

3. The term "assimilation" is a code word for racism

4. There is no mass immigration problem at all, the entire thing being the creation of right wing racist (no doubt "Neocon") ideologues.

5. As an utterly irrelevant side note, the LDS Church opposes sex.

Where to start parsing this philosophical ball of yarn? I really don't know. In the first instance, just to take one state where its very, very, obvious that the immigration situation is well out of hand, California saw its immigrant population grow by 53% during the 80s and then rise by another 27% just between 1990 and 1996. The borders are essentially porous, which is why between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Mexicans cross that border each and every year. Which brings us to another point that tends to get washed out of such arguments: the debate isn't over immigration per se, but mass illegal immigration and both federal and state governments refusal to control our borders and control the numbers and kinds of people coming through them. Consider the following points, just about California from a recent exhaustive Rand study:


1. Unlike what Scratch claims, Immigration to the state of California has been truely colossal. One third of all immigrants to the U.S. reside in California and one in four state residents are legal or illegal immigrants. This has all occurred in just the last 30 years, with the sharpest spike coming in just a few years in the 1990s.

2. California had a 16% advantage in job creation during the 1980s with respect to other states, of which 2% can be attributed to immigration. Only a small number of those jobs, however, went to California natives.

3. Immigration lowers wages in key entry level and semi-skilled job catagories, and in the 80s, between 128,000 and 195,000 indigenous Californians remained unemployed or withdrew from the labor force due to levels and kinds of immigration exactly like the kinds we continue to face today.

4. The overwhelming majority of present immigrants are uneducated and unskilled, while California needs precisely the opposite to remain a competitive economy, and few jobs being created in that State require a High School diploma or less.

5. And back to the other 800 pound Gorilla in the room, Immigrants as a group consume several times in tax revenue what they pay into the social service infrastructure in taxes.


Scratch's charges of racism are not, intellectually speaking worth the bandwidth to refute, any more than are rc's.


By "assimilation", we of course mean blending into the "melting pot"; E pluribus unum. Part of this involves renouncing loyalty and fealty to one's parent country and transferring that to one's new national home. Another, more subtle aspect, is the comprehending of and integration with the political, social, attitudinal, and historical aspects of the American experiment, which includes precisely its tolerance, pluralism, heterodoxy, and its Republican form of government in theory and practice. It does not, of course, mean washing out all prior cultural elements or denying one's parent language or traditions. It does mean a transfer of loyalty and self concept from the mother country to one's new home, such that one is not longer a Mexican (even though from Mexico), but is now an American, and part of a larger political and historical fabric that requires a certain set of values and attitudes that may or may not be compatible with cultural elements brought from one's mother country.

[_Coggins7]

For those interested in an actual intellectual engagement with this issue, here are a couple of links re the above last post.


http://www.cis.org/articles/1998/IR32/impact.html


http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR854/

[_Coggins7]

Ultimately, it seems that the anti-immigration issue always comes back to the basic point that "it is against the law," which, let's face it, is a pretty lame argument.

12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.

[_Coggins7]

Much, much more could've course be said about Scratch's statement here, but, again, why bother?

[_rcrocket]

Poor California. The stand-alone 8th most powerful economy in the known universe. Standards of living in the stratosphere. I live and work here because I can make 10 to 20 times more per year than I can make in Utah and three to four times more than I can in my home state, Washington.

One of the most pervasive health care systems in the world. California has a complete MediCal system which covers the uncovered better than any other state's system. Doctor's salaries are among the highest in the U.S.

The public schools are not the greatest in the world, but teachers' salaries are the highest in the country.

The Church, too, teaches a thing or two to the elites in Christian service to the immigrant Latinos, Laotians, Vietnamese, etc.

I frankly do not see what immigration is doing to kill California.

Border security is a farce. Anybody wanting to enter the country illegally can just hike a few yards around a Canadian checkpoint and walk in. I was camping south of the Canadian border years ago and saw two dozen trucks cross the border on a dirt road and offload hundreds of white burlap-wrapped bales in a remote campground. I reported it to the local sheriff who shrugged and basically ignored me.

Any terrorist who wants in will get in. Immigration restrictions will do nothing.

rcrocket

[_Coggins7]

Poor California. The stand-alone 8th most powerful economy in the known universe. Standards of living in the stratosphere. I live and work here because I can make 10 to 20 times more per year than I can make in Utah and three to four times more than I can in my home state, Washington.

Excuse me but California (or would Mexifornia be a more appropriate term?) is a pit. It was a great place to live through perhaps the middle 80s, but its fallen on very hard times, economic, cultural, and political since that time. I wouldn't live their again if I were a millionaire with virtually unlimited income. This is a state that simply victimizes its citizens endlessly and aggressively. You are a Libertarian? Well, you are living in something about as close to a western European democratic socialist state as you can get in North America. Beyond that, California is a very beautiful state with a lot of great people. It is, however, in steep, steep decline. I wouldn't allow myself to be victimized by the tax rates, government scams, and regulatory oppression there if it was the last place on earth to live. California is perhaps the most business unfriendly states in the union. Standards of living are in the stratosphere? Perhaps for wealthy lawyers, but nobody can afford to live in California. I have no idea how the middle class survives there with its massively inflated housing, apartment, and energy costs.

What's really unfortunate too is that the entire state is a virtual satrapy of the environmental movement, combined with a political class who have allowed California's population to grow exponentially while essentially ending the the development and construction of new energy production facilities roughly 30 years ago.

One of the most pervasive health care systems in the world. California has a complete MediCal system which covers the uncovered better than any other state's system. Doctor's salaries are among the highest in the U.S.

This is taxpayer funded subsidized medicine rc, and the primary reason for today's through the roof medical costs. Why are you on a soapbox for that? I thought you were a Libertarian?

The public schools are not the greatest in the world, but teachers' salaries are the highest in the country.

Who cares if teachers salaries are the highest there, as this has, under the present government monopolized, union dominated school system, absolutely no relation to the quality of teaching? Indeed, many of California's school districts, like L.A. Unified, are among the worst in the nation and in the world. Of course, teacher's salaries are not merit based, but union membership based, which takes much of the wind out of the sails in any argument holding them forth as some kind of social achievement.

I frankly do not see what immigration is doing to kill California.

Frankly, I see no indication of any willingness or interest in educating yourself on the dynamics of the issue, so its no wonder you hear no, see no, and speak no immigration problems.

Border security is a farce. Anybody wanting to enter the country illegally can just hike a few yards around a Canadian checkpoint and walk in. I was camping south of the Canadian border years ago and saw two dozen trucks cross the border on a dirt road and offload hundreds of white burlap-wrapped bales in a remote campground. I reported it to the local sheriff who shrugged and basically ignored me.

Any terrorist who wants in will get in. Immigration restrictions will do nothing.

Here is what will stop it: A fence from San Ysidro all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, double layered, filled and topped with razor wire and/or electrified at certain points. Thousands more border security agents able to legally and aggressively enforce border security without having to fear long prison terms for defending themselves from armed Coyotes and drug gangs, including the right to shoot back into Mexican territory when Mexican mafia, gang members, police units, or Mexican military forces in the pay of drug lords shoot into America at the border patrol personnel.


I find your abject defreatism and anti-intellectual sentimentality regarding this issue to be of a piece with your perceptions of the global war against Islamic Jihadism.

[_Mister Scratch]

Poor California. The stand-alone 8th most powerful economy in the known universe. Standards of living in the stratosphere. I live and work here because I can make 10 to 20 times more per year than I can make in Utah and three to four times more than I can in my home state, Washington.

One of the most pervasive health care systems in the world. California has a complete MediCal system which covers the uncovered better than any other state's system. Doctor's salaries are among the highest in the U.S.

The public schools are not the greatest in the world, but teachers' salaries are the highest in the country.

The Church, too, teaches a thing or two to the elites in Christian service to the immigrant Latinos, Laotians, Vietnamese, etc.

I frankly do not see what immigration is doing to kill California.

Border security is a farce. Anybody wanting to enter the country illegally can just hike a few yards around a Canadian checkpoint and walk in. I was camping south of the Canadian border years ago and saw two dozen trucks cross the border on a dirt road and offload hundreds of white burlap-wrapped bales in a remote campground. I reported it to the local sheriff who shrugged and basically ignored me.

Any terrorist who wants in will get in. Immigration restrictions will do nothing.

rcrocket

Well said, Bob. I look at racist slogans such as "Mexifornia" and wonder what such people are thinking.... Have they really experienced the phenomenon first-hand? Or does it all exist in the abstract for them? It seems that these right-wing yahoos just want to zap these "foreigners" back into the stone age, but do these hicks understand that these are fellow human beings they are referring to?

I knew a man who risked a great deal to transport himself and his family across the border via one of the "coyotes." This was a good, honest, decent and hard working man, and I would be glad to count him as a fellow American. Let me ask again: how can one sum up opposition to immigrants such as this with any term other than "racist"?

[_Dr. Shades]

I knew a man who risked a great deal to transport himself and his family across the border via one of the "coyotes." This was a good, honest, decent and hard working man, and I would be glad to count him as a fellow American. Let me ask again: how can one sum up opposition to immigrants such as this with any term other than "racist"?

Maybe we can consider this issue on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with the aforementioned hard working man that you know, but I think the ones who soak up more in welfare, medicaid, etc. than they produce in tax dollars are the root of the problem.

[_harmony]

I knew a man who risked a great deal to transport himself and his family across the border via one of the "coyotes." This was a good, honest, decent and hard working man, and I would be glad to count him as a fellow American. Let me ask again: how can one sum up opposition to immigrants such as this with any term other than "racist"?

Maybe we can consider this issue on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps there's nothing wrong with the aforementioned hard working man that you know, but I think the ones who soak up more in welfare, medicaid, etc. than they produce in tax dollars are the root of the problem.

Have you ever been to the welfare office, Shades? Perhaps you could sit there for a while and observe. You might be surprised as to what color the majority of people getting welfare are. Blacks and whites get welfare at almost twice the rate of Latinos, although the rate for Latinos is rising while the rate for whites is declining and the rate for Blacks remains steady.

While race is definitely a factor whenever anyone talks about poverty, Latinos (the majority of illegal immigrants) aren't a race. They are an ethnicity. Race deals with physical traits; ethnicity deals with culture and citizenship. Latinos are more often classified as white than not, the color of their skin notwithstanding. I think the taboo against Latinos has little to do with their "Mexican-ness" and a lot to do with their "Indian-ness". We have a long history of denying the members of First Nations any advantages, so any connection with them is a 2 1/2 strike disadvantage from the get-go.

Discussions about immigration have to include the past history and politics of poverty. If we could leave off with the "racist" accusations, that would probably be very helpful.