We Need to Talk about Immigration and Jobs (and Free Trade)

PROLOGUE

Now that we’ve gotten through the midterms with the Republic still intact, I think it’s safe to return to my regularly scheduled blog, already in progress. Seriously though, I wasn’t sure if the Union would survive this week. I probably shouldn’t count my chickens just yet. There are still several undecided elections and a runoff to go in Georgia. But the MAGA chuds don’t seem interested in attempting a coup for the GOP in toto like they did for Trump.

We seem to have fallen victim to that ancient Chinese curse (which is neither Chinese nor ancient): May you live in interesting times. But all the drama infecting our lives revolves around the simple fact that our politics no longer addresses fundamental, kitchen-sink issues. The Powers That Be refuse to allow the economic reforms needed, and Everyday People lack the political consciousness and community cohesion to overturn the elites’ programs.

What we need is more money and benefits for workers. But, rather than meet that simple, easy demand, the Ruling Class gives us (by way of the Mainstream Media) boogeymen to distract us and fill us with mind-controlling fear. It was most transparent in the midterm elections’ home stretch. The Republican ads were replete with this fear-mongering. The Democratic ads also fear-mongered, but at least their warnings were legitimate. The Dems have no intention of defunding the police, turning your kids trans or teaching them Critical Race Theory (not that Republicans even know what that is). Meanwhile, the GOP has shown every intention of banning (and criminalizing) abortion when- and wherever possible.

The mystification of US politics has given the rich wealth beyond the dreams of avarice (and corporate profits they haven’t seen since the 1950’s). It has also given the Military-Industrial Complex virtual carte blanche on “defense” spending and overseas operations. But you can always have too much of a good thing, and I think the Establishment has sown the seeds of its own destruction.

Now we have come to a pretty pass. The Elites’ blocking of even minor economic reforms has given an opening to the Far Right, the only fringe political group the Elites will allow in the MSM (and sometimes actively support). A radical bloc is taking over the GOP, with the support of the party’s base, and their agenda is noxious to most of the country, even to the Democrats who, up until now, have been willing to drift Right along with the Republicans. This is causing a national schism so great that I don’t think our current political system can mend it. I think the dissolution of the Union is almost inevitable at this point.

You can bet your sweet bippy that this is the opposite of what the Establishment wants. It wants to keep a lid on all that fear and anger, directing it against useful targets (e.g., immigrants, racial minorities, the poor) when necessary, but still keeping it at a low simmer. Stupidly though, they keep turning up the temperature without letting us vent. Now we’re boiling over.

By indulging their greed, the Elites have broken the Bipartisan Consensus. They had a nice thing going for almost 250 years now: an empire with an internal proletariat that was willing to accept scraps as long as those scraps were big enough to keep them well-fed. But the Powers That Be couldn’t leave well enough alone. They just had to keep expanding their slice of the American Pie, no matter how desperate it made the rest of us.

Now that even the petit bourgeoisie is losing patience with the status quo, the game is up. Economic insecurity and thwarted political energy have reached such levels that mystified expressions of discontent like Donald Trump and QAnon are replacing actual political movements. But, hey, why not indulge in fantasy when no political movement able to materially improve your life seems possible?

The rest of this essay is devoted to one of those kitchen-sink issues that, if addressed, could help us out of our current mess. But, like I wrote in the previous essay, I’m not interested in saving the empire. I just wanna minimize the damage that could result from its breakup.

PART 1

I set myself quite the task in my last essay: saving America, or, more accurately, keeping the whole country from exploding in an orgy of the violence and the death and the blood and the hey-now. (That last part should be read in the voice of Dr. Frink from The Simpsons.) At first, I thought I could tackle the whole subject in one essay. But the more I wrote, the more I realized it was too big a topic. So I’m gonna try and break it up into more manageable portions.

This will be the first part of my series on keeping the country from blowing up. It’s a good topic to tackle first, I think, because it’s one that most Americans seem unaware of. It also explains a lot of the material conditions that are driving us insane. This little bugaboo is trade policy, specifically “free trade agreements,” which have a suitably Orwellian name. These agreements are used to feed “the imperial wealth-pump,” a useful term cooked up by my favorite blogger, John Michael Greer, a.k.a. the Archdruid. (His Right-wing bias has become more apparent in recent years, so, if you read him, just keep that in mind.)

Free Trade sucks the wealth out of the imperial periphery, i.e. the Third World or Global South or whatever-you-wanna-call-it, and funnels it to the imperial core, i.e., the First World: the USA, Canada and Western Europe. Minerals like oil, gold and rare earths are mined with little regard for the environmental effects. Agricultural products are grown in ecologically destructive ways, turning what should be a sustainable or even regenerative industry into an extractive one. Sweatshops and factories are opened by First World-based companies (either directly or indirectly) that work the locals to death at slave wages.

These resources and products are then shipped off to be consumed by the First World. Of course, the spoils are not shared equally among the imperial citizens of the core. The elites get the lion’s share and the rest of us get the scraps from their table. But this is still enough to keep many of us in the US at a higher standard of living than the vast majority of the world. There’s even enough to keep most denizens of the First World satisfied, or at least content and/or atomized enough not to revolt. Perhaps most important, there’s also enough left over to enrich elites in the Third World, in order to bribe them to run the imperial wealth-pump on their end. They’re the overseers in this system.

The Third World is thus impoverished, driving many people to migrate to the First World. This is the part that is completely missing from our political discourse. Conservatives demonize and dehumanize migrants, while Liberals defend them, but they both miss the bigger picture: MIGRANTS DON’T WANT TO BE MIGRANTS. THEY DON’T WANT TO LEAVE THEIR HOMES. It’s not like they were dreaming of America. They weren’t singing that Neil Diamond song. They weren’t yearning for Reagan’s “shining city on a hill.” They don’t think this is the land of milk and honey. They aren’t fucking Fievel. (FYI: That’s a reference to the 1986 animated film An American Tail.)

We’re destroying their economies, wiping out their livelihoods and forcing them to come here. The First World is the only place left for them. They’re just following the wealth we stole from their countries. Of course, that doesn’t work so well for Global Capitalism. While Free Trade drops barriers to the movement of capital, it restricts the movement of people. The US-Mexico border wasn’t militarized until NAFTA took effect in 1994. This is necessary to achieve wage arbitrage, i.e., increasing profits by moving jobs to lower-wage countries.

I actually got to see the border walls in March of ‘94 while on a missionary trip to Tijuana during high school. (I went to a Catholic high school, but we didn’t do any proselytizing on this trip, thank god.) We visited the wall where it met the Pacific Ocean. There was graffiti that said, “Welcome to the new Berlin Wall.” We nodded in supposedly-knowing agreement, though I don’t think I understood the issues at that time. I don’t remember anyone mentioning NAFTA. Maybe they did and I just forgot. But it wasn’t until I was radicalized a decade later that I began to grasp the political economy of the border.

Instead of confronting our responsibility for the deprivation of the Third World, the discourse in the US takes a nationalist turn into the dumpster. Conservatives have a predictably racist and xenophobic angle on the problem. They think migrants come here because their countries suck because their cultures suck because the people suck.

Liberals take a nicer, but still misguided tack. They correctly point out that migrants are just trying to make a better life for themselves. But they completely ignore the fact that we destroyed their old lives. They acknowledge the historical legacy of colonialism in impoverishing the Third World but dismiss or remain conveniently ignorant of the role of the Global Economy in the Third World’s continuing destitution.

Worse, Libs disdain the anger of the working class at having to compete with migrants for jobs. These concerns are disparaged as racism and xenophobia (as in this episode of South Park). This keeps the issue off the table because very few people want to be thought of as racist or xenophobic. Therefore, the legitimate economic grievances of the working class are left to fester in the dark until they turn into real racism and xenophobia and Culture War bullshit. Because we’ve dismissed their justified concerns, now we have to deal with their insanity.

There’s more to say on this topic, but I’m gonna need some time to choose my words carefully because we’re heading into rough waters. Stay tuned!