[Peace-discuss] [Peace] Why I won’t be marching in the July 4th parade

Robert Naiman naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
Tue Jul 4 22:57:07 UTC 2017


Immigration is a big show and there's more than one thing in play. It's a
strange sort of peace movement that wouldn't stand up for protecting
refugees, a basic U.S. government obligation under international law and
under U.S. law. A key narrative of the Sanctuary Movement for undocumented
Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees in the 1980s was that the Reagan
Administration wasn't complying with U.S. international law obligations on
protecting refugees in general and the Refugee Act of 1980 in particular. I
find it breathtaking that protecting refugees is something that has to be
argued for on this list, rather than being taken as a premise.



Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
(202) 448-2898 x1

To Stop Cholera & Famine, Stop Refueling Saudi Warplanes Bombing Yemen
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/to-stop-cholera-famine?r_by=1135580
<https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/house-back-un-call-for?r_by=1135580>




On Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 5:35 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> But what's not complicated is that the "rules" of immigration have always
> been worked out by the ruling class in order to disempower the working
> class. The fact that we have so many highly professional,
> well-educated, and successful immigrants in our community (and in our
> country) adds a new twist to this scenario, but these people aren't
> challenging the rules of the capitalist game, obviously. But they do give
> the News-Gazette a reason to view them as "model minorities," and we're
> back to where we started, Horatio Alger 2.0. It's a strange sort of working
> class movement that alienates and even demonizes most of the working class,
> both white and black, while identifying itself with the business and
> professional class, especially those in academia who represent the
> neoliberal corporate university at its finest. And of course, three years
> in to the Black Lives Matter movement, not to mention the Ammons tenure,
> there is no multi-racial class solidarity to be found in the parade
> procession, to my knowledge.
>
> DG
>
>
> On Tue Jul 04 2017 16:24:48 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time), Robert
> Naiman via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>
> Trump's Muslim ban is an attack on *previously-legal* immigration. He
> blocked people from coming to the U.S. who had valid U.S. visas, including
> UN- and US- vetted Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
>
> The question of impacts of illegal Mexican immigration on low-wage
> American workers is complicated. The question of economic impact of legal
> Syrian and Iraqi migration on low-wage American workers is not complicated.
> There's no impact. The scale is far too small. It's tears in the rain.
>
>
>
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898>
>
> To Stop Cholera & Famine, Stop Refueling Saudi Warplanes Bombing Yemen
> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/to-stop-cholera-famine?r_by=1135580
> <https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/house-back-un-call-for?r_by=1135580>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 2:55 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
> From <https://www.jacobinmag.com/ 2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity
> <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity> >:
>
> ...who’s for illegal immigration? As far as I know … the only people who
> are openly for illegal immigration are neoliberal economists.
>
> First of all, neoliberal economists are completely for open borders, in so
> far as that’s possible. Friedman said years ago that, “You can’t have a
> welfare state and open borders,” but of course the point of that was “open
> the borders, because that’ll kill the welfare state.” There’s a good paper
> <http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=16508148925211743157&hl=en&as_sdt=20005&sciodt=20000>
> you can get off the web by Gordon Hanson, commissioned by whoever runs Foreign
> Affairs, and the argument is that illegal immigration is better than
> legal immigration, because illegal immigration is extremely responsive to
> market conditions.
>
> So it’s quite striking that you have all this protesting against illegal
> immigration, and especially at a time when it’s down. So why are people so
> upset about it? They are upset about it not because it has gotten worse, it
> hasn’t, but because they somehow recognize that one of the primary sort of
> marks of the triumph of neoliberalism in the US is a very high tolerance of
> illegal immigration, and that illegal immigration is the kind of *ne plus
> ultra* of the labor mobility that neoliberalism requires. I mean that’s
> why for years — even though it’s a kind of contradiction in terms — as a
> policy it’s worked well. The Bush administration did everything it could to
> talk against illegal immigration but leave it alone and I’m sure the Obama
> administration would do the same thing except its hand’s being forced by
> the Tea Party.
>
> ...Some argue that limiting immigration could help restore the unions and
> that’s obviously false and I’m certainly not saying that the Tea Party has
> the diagnosis right. The Tea Party thinks that immigrants are taking away
> their money. It’s not immigrants who are taking away their money; it’s
> neoliberalism that’s taking away their money...
>
>
> On Jul 4, 2017, at 2:39 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.
> net <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>
> Was there a count of how many people marched with the Immigration Forum?
> It seemed like a lot of people.
>
>
>
>
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