Re: Common Dreams xenophobia

[raghu <mraghu01@xxxxxxxxx>]

>
> I doubt this is correct.  The US successfully limited immigration with the 1924 immigration laws.  The large scale immigation in recent decades appears to be a policy choice, not inevitable.  Just look at Japan, which has a policy of essentially no immigration.  Europe chose a policy of immigration in the 1970s, primarily because its declining populations couldn't sustain their welfare states.  If the Europeans (or Americans) want to be like the Japanese, they could.
>

Declining populations are still a reality in Europe and Japan and I
suspect in the US too, if immigration is accounted for. Japan's
immigration policy is overtly racist, Europe and the US are attempting
to reconcile restrictive immigration policies with a democratic value
system.
Unfortunately there is an inherent contradiction here. And the
contradiction is being exposed increasingly these days. The Europeans
and the US could never be like the Japanese. not without a painful
reevaluation of their value systems.

I believe the contradiction (one manifestation of which is the
conflict between unionists and immigrants) only arises under
capitalistic rules rules of the game. The unions essentially made a
Devil's bargain with capital promising in essence a pliant workforce
in exchange for some amount of pensions and benefits - at the cost of
exporting poverty to the Third World and to illegal immigrants. Today
the unions find themselves ranged against the unlikely coalition of
capital AND low-cost Third World labor. This situation can only be
rectified by refusing to play by the rules of capital.

As of today capital is doing a great job playing union labor against
third world labor and laughing all the way to the bank.

--raghu.