I was on a call-in radio show late one night this week to discuss immigration and my new book, Dream Chasers: Immigration and the American Backlash.
The radio station, WBZ, is a CBS affiliate in Boston that reaches much
of the northeast United States, so I expected some conservative blowback
to my unapologetically progressive stances, but not much. What I got,
though, I wasn't prepared for: unremitting anger at "illegals" for
ripping off the system. This, in liberal Massachusetts.
I was
taken aback because my strong sense in researching and writing the book
was that the economic argument about unauthorized immigrants -- that
they are "stealing" jobs native-born Americans would gladly have -- was
largely a thing of the past. I argued that it was cultural issues -- use
of Spanish, the threat of crime and terrorism, jumping the line of
those wanting to immigrate, and racism -- which stirred so much anger.
But
the callers and the radio host kept harping on how "illegals" were
getting federal and state benefits they didn't deserve, were
undercutting American workers, were lowering wages overall, were
stressing schools and hospitals, weren't paying taxes, and so on:
economic issues, perhaps fueled by the cultural anxiety I explained in
Dream Chasers, but economic all the same.
Of course, times remain
very difficult for people in the lower 75 percent of income in the
United States, and immigrants of all kinds have, historically, been
among the principal targets of blame for economic stress. Real income growth in the last twenty years
has been only 9 percent, with most of the growth coming during the
1990s. People are rightly frustrated, although blaming low-income
workers is scarcely warranted.
READ MORE:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-tirman/anchor-babies-and-other-horror-stories_b_8051144.html
No comments:
Post a Comment