It’s sad how the average us citizen can be whipped into a frenzy – even when the news is manufactured. I wonder if all this rattling about immigration is just that. It is obviously a racial issue.
You really can’t deny that as fact.
All the focus, all the video has been the stealth night vision images of Mexicans, South or Central Americans stealing across the divide.
I have yet to see the Canadian footage.
The recent sweep “across the country” labeled “Return to Sender” (dry heave) seems to entail a lot of olive skin tones, and black hair.
Couldn’t really see any Canadians.
But then again, how do you distinguish a Canadian from an American? I mean, besides the red “mountie” outfit.
Considering the lack of peeps (that would be the sound not the people) emanating from our southern neighbors and the riotous ruckus that was present this past week about some crazy Canadians planning an attack on their own parliament (I might want those notes…), it does seem that our attention is, well, misdirected.
What is the problem exactly?
There are bad people in every ethnicity, color, creed, religion, in every part of the world. Why are we picking on the ones coming here to work? That seems so odd to me.
But at the same time, not.
Making “hot button” issues take center stage during election years is on every politicians “must do” list. Gay marriage, abortion, immigration, the war of terror. It’s sad, but most Americans take the bait that is fed to them, especially when it is repeated on 24 hour news stations, talk radio and splashed on every newspaper and magazine. When there’s all this attention on a subject, of course, people are going to look. Why wouldn’t they? Think about this. What if, Angelina and Brad had been able to have their baby like everyone else – no security, no isolation, no decoy baby (jk I don’t think they did that!). No pictures. No stories. No latest updates. No paparazzi. Do you think anyone would have said – gee, I wonder what’s going on with that baby? I doubt it. Look at Matt Damon. He’s a babus, and his wife just had a baby this weekend. Any fuss? Any sold out magazines with exclusives? Not a one. Couple of comments. Coupla pics. That was it.
Hot button topics. Shove into the front the issues that people get crazy about, and you can slip the stuff that they care about off stage left.
We need to stay focused. What are the things that affect you daily?
Healthcare.
Education.
Air, water, land quality.
Safety – on a global scale.
Taxes.
The price of stuff.
Your work environment.
To name but a few.
How about gay marriage? Does it affect you daily? Weekly? Yearly?
How about abortion?
Immigration?
We need to not get all twisted up in fear and insecurity and focus on what really matters to us.
To you.
What matters to you?
Whatever it is, see who is addressing that – not just for the cameras or the press conference or the interview, but their RECORD, their history. What do they stand for? Everyone says stupid stuff, says stuff out of anger or frustration, says things and then regret them later. Don’t go by that, go by what this person does on a daily basis. For example, John Edwards has been working, since 2004, on the issue of poverty. He expressed that this was a huge priority to him during his run for vice president. And what did he do – pursued it. That’s the record we should be looking. Not the photo ops. Not the 8 seconds of doctored snippets that make that person look fantastic or horrendous.
Anyway, came across this article on immigration.
Let’s chill a bit.
POLITICS-US:
Is Illegal Immigration a Manufactured Crisis?
Analysis by Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, Washington, May 25 (IPS) - Driving Pres. George W. Bush's plan to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the border with Mexico and Congressional plans to build hundreds of miles of fences along it is a sense that the exodus of immigrants from Mexico has reached a critical level. A recent CBS News poll found that six in 10 respondents see illegal immigration as a very serious problem. In another poll by USA Today/Gallup, 81 percent agreed that illegal immigration is "out of control". But some analysts of immigration disagree. They see a crisis manufactured primarily for political ends. And they point to medium- to long-term trends that may reduce pressure to emigrate from Mexico.
In a recent opinion piece, Douglas Massey a sociologist at Princeton University, wrote; "The Mexican-American border is not now and never has been out of control...What has changed are the locations and visibility of border crossings." According to Massey, beefed-up enforcement has backfired. It has not deterred immigrants or reduced their inflow. But it has driven undocumented migrants away from the cities of San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas, where the great majority of unauthorised immigrants entered before the 1990s. Both metropolitan areas have big Hispanic populations, making new arrivals less noticeable.
Now the concentration of undocumented entries has shifted east from San Diego to an area where a major U.S. highway enters Mexico. According to Massey, the border patrol has filmed immigrants running in groups across the highway and used the footage in a documentary portraying a border being overrun.
From El Paso, enforcement has pushed crossings out into the Sonora Desert in Arizona. Because this area is much more isolated and dangerous for migrants, the death rate during border crossings has tripled. From the 1980s to 2000, while the number of Border Patrol agents has more than quadrupled and its budget has increased eight-fold, the rate of apprehension of migrants while crossing has dropped from 33 percent to 10 percent.
Increased restrictions at the border, Massey said, had tripled the cost of crossing illegally. But ironically, making it harder and more dangerous to cross over has had the unintended effect of reducing return migration. So once undocumented immigrants get in to the U.S., they tend to stay longer and are less likely to travel back home. A study by Massey found that in the early 1980s, about half of undocumented Mexican immigrants returned to Mexico within 12 months. By 2000, the ratio had dropped to 25 percent.
David Card, a labour economist at the University of California at Berkeley, sees the perception of out-of-control immigration as partially fueled by a growth in nativist prejudice against immigrants, which he says rises and falls periodically in the U.S. "There is no crisis that has anything to do with immigration," he told IPS. But nativism, he said, has been enflamed by fear of terrorism and by wars in the Middle East.
For those on the right whose vision of the country harkens back to an idealised verison of the 1950s, welcoming an influx of mainly dark-skinned people who speak Spanish would require what he called a "cultural stretch". Anti-immigrant sentiment is not new in the U.S. -- it coalesced as early as the 1850s. In that decade, a movement called the Know-Nothings opposed a wave of Irish Catholic immigration. Subsequent groups of newcomers, including Chinese labourers in the late 19th century and southern Europeans in the first decades of the 20th century, often met with bias, repression and calls to send them back home. In those areas of the country that have experienced a sudden influx of immigrants in recent years, such as parts of North Carolina and Iowa, the growth of new communities with an unfamiliar culture and language have unsettled some residents. Local labour markets, especially for low-wage workers, and public services have been stressed by new job-seekers. Nationally, however, total immigration into the United States peaked in 2000 at the end of the Internet bubble, and declined by 24 percent by 2004, according to studies by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Centre.
Immigration from Mexico, which accounts for about one-third of the total flow, followed a very similar pattern of rise and decline. During this period, however, the share of illegal immigration relative to legal increased. The total foreign-born population of 35.7 million in 2004 represented 12.2 percent of the U.S. population. Of the foreign-born, 10.4 million -- 29 percent of all immigrants -- were "unauthorised migrants". The unauthorised, though, constituted only 3.5 percent of the total population. The majority of unauthorised migrants, 57 percent, were from Mexico, and another 24 percent were from the rest of Latin America. Among recent Mexican immigrants to the U.S., 80 to 85 percent are estimated to have entered the country illegally.
Commonly articulated fears that immigrants take advantage of social benefits but don't pay taxes are challenged by a study of 6,000 migrants by the Mexican Migration Project, a joint effort of U.S. and Mexican universities. The study found that nearly two-thirds of migrants reported paying income tax and Social Security taxes. Yet few used any public service in the United States. Roughly 10 percent said they had ever sent a child to U.S. public schools and just five percent said they had ever received food stamps, welfare or unemployment compensation. This project found that most Mexican immigrants do not intend to settle permanently in the U.S. Eighty percent of those surveyed made three trips to the U.S. or fewer and 75 percent stayed less than two years. Of the minority who spent 10 or more years in the U.S., 63 percent bought homes in Mexico with the money they earned.
The net effect of immigration on the U.S. economy appears to be neutral or slightly positive, according to several studies. Consumers gain from lower prices in sectors such as agriculture, construction and services, where many immigrants work. Some studies have found a small downward pressure on the wages of the roughly 15 percent of U.S.-born workers who have not finished high school. But others dispute that effect and say that other factors play a much larger role in depressing the incomes of low-wage workers. As long as gross domestic product per person in the U.S. remains some four times as high as in Mexico (with a greater differential in hourly wages), legal and undocumented immigrants will be drawn to answer the siren song and cross over the 1,951-mile border in search of a better living.
Meanwhile, economic forces unleashed by the North American Free Trade Agreement have driven small Mexican farmers off their land and, in many cases, northward. But countervailing forces are at work in Mexico as well. According to the World Bank, Mexicans living in poverty declined from 24.2 percent to 17.6 percent from 2000 to 2004. As Mexican incomes rise, Mexican population growth and birth rates are declining.. At 1.3 percent, Mexico's population growth rate is now barely higher than Canada's, whereas in 1980 it was more than twice that of Canada. Mexico's fertility rate, the average number of children per women, has declined sharply from 7.3 in 1960 to 2.4 in 2000. Partly as a result of these trends, estimates of migration from Mexico by the United Nations, the U.S. and Mexico all show a peak around 2000 and a steep decline to anywhere from two-thirds to one-half of the peak by the end of the decade.
As Matthew Dowd, senior adviser to the Republican National Committee, wrote recently: "The aging of the population in Mexico coupled with Mexico's economic expansion mean that jobs in Mexico will be more plentiful, thereby prompting fewer young people to come to the United States in search of work."
You really can’t deny that as fact.
All the focus, all the video has been the stealth night vision images of Mexicans, South or Central Americans stealing across the divide.
I have yet to see the Canadian footage.
The recent sweep “across the country” labeled “Return to Sender” (dry heave) seems to entail a lot of olive skin tones, and black hair.
Couldn’t really see any Canadians.
But then again, how do you distinguish a Canadian from an American? I mean, besides the red “mountie” outfit.
Considering the lack of peeps (that would be the sound not the people) emanating from our southern neighbors and the riotous ruckus that was present this past week about some crazy Canadians planning an attack on their own parliament (I might want those notes…), it does seem that our attention is, well, misdirected.
What is the problem exactly?
There are bad people in every ethnicity, color, creed, religion, in every part of the world. Why are we picking on the ones coming here to work? That seems so odd to me.
But at the same time, not.
Making “hot button” issues take center stage during election years is on every politicians “must do” list. Gay marriage, abortion, immigration, the war of terror. It’s sad, but most Americans take the bait that is fed to them, especially when it is repeated on 24 hour news stations, talk radio and splashed on every newspaper and magazine. When there’s all this attention on a subject, of course, people are going to look. Why wouldn’t they? Think about this. What if, Angelina and Brad had been able to have their baby like everyone else – no security, no isolation, no decoy baby (jk I don’t think they did that!). No pictures. No stories. No latest updates. No paparazzi. Do you think anyone would have said – gee, I wonder what’s going on with that baby? I doubt it. Look at Matt Damon. He’s a babus, and his wife just had a baby this weekend. Any fuss? Any sold out magazines with exclusives? Not a one. Couple of comments. Coupla pics. That was it.
Hot button topics. Shove into the front the issues that people get crazy about, and you can slip the stuff that they care about off stage left.
We need to stay focused. What are the things that affect you daily?
Healthcare.
Education.
Air, water, land quality.
Safety – on a global scale.
Taxes.
The price of stuff.
Your work environment.
To name but a few.
How about gay marriage? Does it affect you daily? Weekly? Yearly?
How about abortion?
Immigration?
We need to not get all twisted up in fear and insecurity and focus on what really matters to us.
To you.
What matters to you?
Whatever it is, see who is addressing that – not just for the cameras or the press conference or the interview, but their RECORD, their history. What do they stand for? Everyone says stupid stuff, says stuff out of anger or frustration, says things and then regret them later. Don’t go by that, go by what this person does on a daily basis. For example, John Edwards has been working, since 2004, on the issue of poverty. He expressed that this was a huge priority to him during his run for vice president. And what did he do – pursued it. That’s the record we should be looking. Not the photo ops. Not the 8 seconds of doctored snippets that make that person look fantastic or horrendous.
Anyway, came across this article on immigration.
Let’s chill a bit.
POLITICS-US:
Is Illegal Immigration a Manufactured Crisis?
Analysis by Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, Washington, May 25 (IPS) - Driving Pres. George W. Bush's plan to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the border with Mexico and Congressional plans to build hundreds of miles of fences along it is a sense that the exodus of immigrants from Mexico has reached a critical level. A recent CBS News poll found that six in 10 respondents see illegal immigration as a very serious problem. In another poll by USA Today/Gallup, 81 percent agreed that illegal immigration is "out of control". But some analysts of immigration disagree. They see a crisis manufactured primarily for political ends. And they point to medium- to long-term trends that may reduce pressure to emigrate from Mexico.
In a recent opinion piece, Douglas Massey a sociologist at Princeton University, wrote; "The Mexican-American border is not now and never has been out of control...What has changed are the locations and visibility of border crossings." According to Massey, beefed-up enforcement has backfired. It has not deterred immigrants or reduced their inflow. But it has driven undocumented migrants away from the cities of San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas, where the great majority of unauthorised immigrants entered before the 1990s. Both metropolitan areas have big Hispanic populations, making new arrivals less noticeable.
Now the concentration of undocumented entries has shifted east from San Diego to an area where a major U.S. highway enters Mexico. According to Massey, the border patrol has filmed immigrants running in groups across the highway and used the footage in a documentary portraying a border being overrun.
From El Paso, enforcement has pushed crossings out into the Sonora Desert in Arizona. Because this area is much more isolated and dangerous for migrants, the death rate during border crossings has tripled. From the 1980s to 2000, while the number of Border Patrol agents has more than quadrupled and its budget has increased eight-fold, the rate of apprehension of migrants while crossing has dropped from 33 percent to 10 percent.
Increased restrictions at the border, Massey said, had tripled the cost of crossing illegally. But ironically, making it harder and more dangerous to cross over has had the unintended effect of reducing return migration. So once undocumented immigrants get in to the U.S., they tend to stay longer and are less likely to travel back home. A study by Massey found that in the early 1980s, about half of undocumented Mexican immigrants returned to Mexico within 12 months. By 2000, the ratio had dropped to 25 percent.
David Card, a labour economist at the University of California at Berkeley, sees the perception of out-of-control immigration as partially fueled by a growth in nativist prejudice against immigrants, which he says rises and falls periodically in the U.S. "There is no crisis that has anything to do with immigration," he told IPS. But nativism, he said, has been enflamed by fear of terrorism and by wars in the Middle East.
For those on the right whose vision of the country harkens back to an idealised verison of the 1950s, welcoming an influx of mainly dark-skinned people who speak Spanish would require what he called a "cultural stretch". Anti-immigrant sentiment is not new in the U.S. -- it coalesced as early as the 1850s. In that decade, a movement called the Know-Nothings opposed a wave of Irish Catholic immigration. Subsequent groups of newcomers, including Chinese labourers in the late 19th century and southern Europeans in the first decades of the 20th century, often met with bias, repression and calls to send them back home. In those areas of the country that have experienced a sudden influx of immigrants in recent years, such as parts of North Carolina and Iowa, the growth of new communities with an unfamiliar culture and language have unsettled some residents. Local labour markets, especially for low-wage workers, and public services have been stressed by new job-seekers. Nationally, however, total immigration into the United States peaked in 2000 at the end of the Internet bubble, and declined by 24 percent by 2004, according to studies by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Centre.
Immigration from Mexico, which accounts for about one-third of the total flow, followed a very similar pattern of rise and decline. During this period, however, the share of illegal immigration relative to legal increased. The total foreign-born population of 35.7 million in 2004 represented 12.2 percent of the U.S. population. Of the foreign-born, 10.4 million -- 29 percent of all immigrants -- were "unauthorised migrants". The unauthorised, though, constituted only 3.5 percent of the total population. The majority of unauthorised migrants, 57 percent, were from Mexico, and another 24 percent were from the rest of Latin America. Among recent Mexican immigrants to the U.S., 80 to 85 percent are estimated to have entered the country illegally.
Commonly articulated fears that immigrants take advantage of social benefits but don't pay taxes are challenged by a study of 6,000 migrants by the Mexican Migration Project, a joint effort of U.S. and Mexican universities. The study found that nearly two-thirds of migrants reported paying income tax and Social Security taxes. Yet few used any public service in the United States. Roughly 10 percent said they had ever sent a child to U.S. public schools and just five percent said they had ever received food stamps, welfare or unemployment compensation. This project found that most Mexican immigrants do not intend to settle permanently in the U.S. Eighty percent of those surveyed made three trips to the U.S. or fewer and 75 percent stayed less than two years. Of the minority who spent 10 or more years in the U.S., 63 percent bought homes in Mexico with the money they earned.
The net effect of immigration on the U.S. economy appears to be neutral or slightly positive, according to several studies. Consumers gain from lower prices in sectors such as agriculture, construction and services, where many immigrants work. Some studies have found a small downward pressure on the wages of the roughly 15 percent of U.S.-born workers who have not finished high school. But others dispute that effect and say that other factors play a much larger role in depressing the incomes of low-wage workers. As long as gross domestic product per person in the U.S. remains some four times as high as in Mexico (with a greater differential in hourly wages), legal and undocumented immigrants will be drawn to answer the siren song and cross over the 1,951-mile border in search of a better living.
Meanwhile, economic forces unleashed by the North American Free Trade Agreement have driven small Mexican farmers off their land and, in many cases, northward. But countervailing forces are at work in Mexico as well. According to the World Bank, Mexicans living in poverty declined from 24.2 percent to 17.6 percent from 2000 to 2004. As Mexican incomes rise, Mexican population growth and birth rates are declining.. At 1.3 percent, Mexico's population growth rate is now barely higher than Canada's, whereas in 1980 it was more than twice that of Canada. Mexico's fertility rate, the average number of children per women, has declined sharply from 7.3 in 1960 to 2.4 in 2000. Partly as a result of these trends, estimates of migration from Mexico by the United Nations, the U.S. and Mexico all show a peak around 2000 and a steep decline to anywhere from two-thirds to one-half of the peak by the end of the decade.
As Matthew Dowd, senior adviser to the Republican National Committee, wrote recently: "The aging of the population in Mexico coupled with Mexico's economic expansion mean that jobs in Mexico will be more plentiful, thereby prompting fewer young people to come to the United States in search of work."
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