And excellent article. ― Molly
As Republicans in
Congress hurl claims about immigrants stealing jobs from US citizens, it’s
clear that lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to be in deliberate denial about
the fundamental hypocrisy of the US’s chaotic, cruel immigration policy.
As immigrant organizers
laid bare in February 2017 by shutting down businesses nationwide with a “Day
Without Immigrants” strike that exposed the inability of restaurants,
construction companies and other businesses to function without their immigrant
workforce, the US economy would collapse without the labor of the very
immigrants that Republican lawmakers are trying to push out of the
country.
“We want to make sure
that people understand that this city would stop functioning if we weren’t
there to build, or cook, or clean,” Ligia Guallpa, an organizer with the
Worker’s Justice Project in Brooklyn, told Labor Notes at
the time of the strike.
In a blog post titled “Under the Volcano,”
legendary celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain also eloquently summed up these
uncomfortable truths about the United States and its chaotic, cruel immigration
policy as it pertains to people coming from south of the border: “Despite our
ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that
Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we
need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, look
after our children.”
“As any chef will tell
you,” Bourdain continued, “our entire service economy — the restaurant business
as we know it — in most American cities, would collapse overnight without
Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are ‘stealing
American jobs.’ But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE
American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s
position — or even a job as prep cook.”
Despite his erroneous use
of the word “American,” Bourdain nailed the crux of the issue to the shed: The
United States, despite all the strategic nativist political demagoguery from
its politicians, is economically dependent on the massive pool of low-paid,
often undocumented laborers who come north every day seeking work.
That dependence is why
achieving a coherent, just immigration policy is a practical impossibility
today: So long as this nation keeps lying to itself about the basic nature of
its national economy, no solution will be found. The problem, in short, is all
business, capitalism in the raw, humanstreated
as disposable to keep prices low and profits high.
Please continue this
article here: https://truthout.org/articles/capitalism-politics-and-immigration-a-tale-of-profitable-suffering/
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