The Fires This Time
Kevin Drum neatly summarizes the negative consequences that could result from a “guest worker program” that creates permanent outcasts rather than temporary workers:
If we truly decide that we want to keep immigration limited, then we should face down the low-wage business bloc of the Republican Party and get serious about keeping illegal immigrants out of the country in the first place. But if we want to allow more legal immigrants into the country — as a guest worker program tacitly acknowledges — then we should encourage them to be good citizens by offering them the chance to earn actual citizenship. Because they don’t do that, guest worker programs end up perpetuating both a culture of low-wage labor that’s ripe for exploitation and insular communities that have no incentive to think of themselves as Americans — because they aren’t. It’s the worst of both worlds.
It’s great to see Drum and Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo, two of the smartest liberal writers on the web, take on the problem of “insular communities that have no incentive to think of themselves as Americans.”
No one wants to see the Paris rights of 2005 in Peoria come 2015.
Unfortunately, the problem is not a hypothetical scenario, contingent on proposed legislation that would categorically bar guest workers from applying for U.S. citizenship.
Rather, the problem of “insular communities that have no incentive to think of themselves as Americans” is a present-day reality and the result of a century of many powerful forces.
From the regional geopolitics of North America, to the legacy of the U.S. Catholic Church in the American West, from the impact of previous guest worker programs and trade policies to the evil ideologies of nativism and xenophobia at the heart of many lasting, collective myths about California: all have shaped the divide between hispanic immigrants and their european counterparts.
Whether you call that chasm “The Huntington Ridge” or “Strangefruit Valley,” its central place in the past and present political landscape of the American west is undeniable.
Like a black hole, it is both an observable fact (e.g., “hispanics are not integrated”) and a force that distorts our own perceptions of this reality (e.g., “hispanic culture has little to contribute to American society.”)
But we should be clear that this hole in the fabric of our political culture already exists today.
Over the last four years, I’ve spent a great deal of my personal and professional time thinking about what can be done to mend this tear and I’ve come up with a not so modest proposal. Teach Americanness to every man, woman and child in the U.S. — and make it compulsory.
Let the cultural warriors battle over the details of the curriculum — the war against “insular communities that have no incentive to think of themselves as Americans” can only be won in this way.
April 5th, 2006 at 1:45 am
Teach Americanness to every man, woman and child in the U.S. — and make it compulsory.
Let the cultural warriors battle over the details of the curriculum — the war against “insular communities that have no incentive to think of themselves as Americans” can only be won in this way.
[musical notation] Details, I want details.
What the heck is “Americanness”? Would you require everyone to learn English, as the McCain-Kennedy bill would?
I take it that part of this teaching Americanness would be a program to teach citizens about American principles of welcoming immigrants, etc.?
April 5th, 2006 at 2:08 am
I would love to be a part of the process through which these questions are asked and answered. Think of all the people who would want to — and should — weigh in on these fundamental points?
The debates could be on television, on the web, on the radio, in townhall meetings, in churches and synagogues and temples, bus shelters and homeless shelters.
What a moment in time that would be.
As for my particular opinion on language and bilingualism, I offered it here: look for eskimo.