Immigration: A Socialist View
This came from a comment I posted on my cousin's (right-wing) blog about his approval of McCain's bill:
I actually think I may come close to agreeing with you on this issue Mark. While I was in and out of the marches and was really inspired, I don't agree with blanket amnesty, not a wide open border policy.
However, also don't support a "guest worker" program, where people who are needed remain a 2nd class citizen and are not given a path to citizenship. I think we need to recognize that big business and the free-trade is more responsible for the mass migration in the last 10 years than anything else. Conservatives can't play it both ways. I have witnessed many saying plainly that "illegals" don't have a right even to assemble or protest... let alone have decent pay or working conditions.
If low paid foreign migrants are needed in many US sectors then lets figure out how many, where, and be able to regulate the flow. In other words we need to use our brains, to plan. The right must acknowledge that if you are going to worship the "free-market," then freedom of labor movement is part of that. If capital is free, labor must also. The 2 are the sides of the economic coin. My ideal actually does not involve "freedom" of labor or capital. But if you believe in one, you have to believe in the the other. If capital is given the advantage, labor will be exploited. Displaced migrants keep coming here and we continue losing hard fought worker gains.
NAFTA and agreements like it have displaced millions of people - making many communities redundant. The doubling of Mexican migrants since 1994 is no accident. Mexican farmers can't compete with US agricultural technology and scale.
At least Europe is not being hypocritical. This week they lifted the freeze on Eastern Europeans being allowed to work in Western Europe - as part of the EU.
I think the solution lies in providing a reason to live in Latin America. Free trade, neo-liberalism and the Washington Concensus has instead put progress on a 20-year pause. These last 2 years of Latin "populsism" have been some of the best on record...
posted by leftside at
1:05 AM
3 Comments:
Free trade, neo-liberalism and the Washington Concensus has instead put progress on a 20-year pause...
Talk about passing the buck. Wait till 20 years of central planning takes affect.
Capitalism is the only solution for S. America. Unfortunately, your kind are setting it back a generation or more. It's unfortunate that a whole new generation is going to have to find out the hard way that socialism does not work in reality.
Going from being a slave to the oligarchy to a slave of the state is no revolution. A slave is a slave. The answer is to give people the tools to open small businesses and create their own destiny. (small business ownership is forbidden under Matt's model of socialism, by the way, readers)
It's sad to think that this illogic still exists after history has explained (100 million dead) to the world that it simply does not work.
Come on guys, what about the actual ideas expressed here on immigration?
I won't repost my comments on the record of neo-liberalsm in the world and Latin America over the last 20 years, suffice to say that reality is on my side.
It is that reality that is waking up voters across the region to reject this imported model. It is the reality that the fastest growing economies in the world are mostly socialist: China, India, Angola, Venezuela, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cuba, Argentina...
Stop putting words in my mouth JSB. On small business, if you're basing that speculation on what Cuba does, you'd be wrong. Small businesses are allowed in Cuba - there are over 200,000 privately owned and operated. Yeah, they are taxed and owners don't make much, but they are there - in 150 some industries.
But that is Cuba. Just because I support their revolution, doesn't mean I would export every part of their model to every other part of the world at any particular moment. That would mean not thinking, not planning.
And (again), a condemnded man (Stalin - disavowed by the Soviet politburo) killed millions of people... in the 30s. Political killings are much more a right-wing thing as any objective analysis of the last 50 years can tell you. Whether it was in Turkey, Indonesia, East Timor, Colombia, Congo, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Southern Africa... Just as I assume you would not associate with those regimes, I do not with Stalin. So enough trying to lump me in with a policy of gulags (I'll refrain from the obvious Guantanamo barb).
If families plan, if communities plan, if businesses plan, why is it a bad thing for countries to plan?
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