Are Opponents of Illegal Immigration Racists?

By

Sherman N. Miller

10/2/2006

It is disquieting to hear arguments on turning a blind eye to illegal immigration because these illegal immigrants are doing jobs that Americans will not do. Does this suggest that America clamors for yesteryear's cheap labor providing a legitimate business rationale for the reincarnation of a modern day version of America's slavery epoch?

A reformed Pennsylvania Yellow Dog Democrat chap (who in the past would have voted for Democratic candidates even if they ran a yellow dog) offered a compassionate look at illegal immigration. He is a Caucasian college professor, in his middle sixties, who expresses strong feelings on America's Civil Rights Era.  This reformed Yellow Dog Democrat argued that it is okay for illegal immigrants to break American laws because they are coming to this country seeking a better life for their families. He then said that his grandparents were immigrants and he wouldn't be here if they did not get the chance to come to America.

I challenged his assertion on cherry-picking American laws on immigration. He argued that some laws are good laws and some are bad laws, so he felt that illegal immigration laws were bad and he did not feel they deserved felonious status.  This professor argued that the plight of today's illegal immigrants is comparable to African Americans’ yesterday civil rights struggle. He contended that the movement of illegal immigrants today hiding from the law was comparable to yesterday's black slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad.

As I listened to this chap make the case on illegal immigrants doing jobs that Americans will not do, I retorted that Black Americans did many of these jobs before the illegal immigrants came. Today the exploiters are faced with Black Americans having mainstream legitimacy, so blacks will have to be paid the fair market value for their labor. I argued that American labor has watched

many of yesteryears’ good jobs be exported to low wage countries; however, there are a host of jobs that must be done at home such as domestic work, landscaping, and so on. Hence, 12 million illegal immigrants offer a way to depress wages for many Americans through their willingness to work at Third World rates, which is incarnating a new chattel class.

The professor shared that a chap showed up at his house with some workers who appeared to be Hispanic and offered to cut his grass weekly for 30 dollars. He agreed. I retorted asking what the fair market value of doing that job is. The professor said somewhere between 30 and 80 dollars.

However, the professor said if he had to pay 80 dollars he would probably cut the grass himself. 

We then turned our attention to the long-term political impact on the United States of America. Since the nonwhite children of the illegal immigrants born in the US will be citizens, this tanning of America means a redefinition of who will get to be President. The professor pointed out that whites are not having a lot of children and the illegal immigrants are having many children,

so one might expect a long-term shift in political clout in this nation.  He also argued that this shift in political clout to descendents of illegal immigrants is not solely a US problem because in Europe illegal aliens are supplying many of the European new births. 

As I pondered the professor's compassion for the illegal immigrants, I wondered who cares about the many young black native born citizens that I see standing on the street corners in the hoods across America with no hope of a better tomorrow?  Is it okay to offer hopes of a better tomorrow to illegal immigrants while seeing recidivism underpin marrying aged Black American males becoming one of today’s endangered species?  What is very disquieting is that in this age of political correctness it is easy to taint opponents of illegal immigration as racists in the media.

However, the real concern for our political leadership presently who are burying their heads in the sand on the illegal immigration issue, is that massive consternation over illegal immigration growing across the nation could evolve into riots against illegal aliens comparable to what happened to Black Americans in the early portion of the Twentieth Century. Wikipedia (on line encyclopedia) reports, "Labor conflict was also used to justify the racially motivated 1917 massacre of hundreds of black residents of East St. Louis - many of whom were women and children, at the hands of white workers who resented living amongst and competing for jobs with black people." Will history repeat itself in the Twenty-First Century?