Immigration Dissonance Revealed In A Joke
I have written many times that I am conflicted over the way US immigration policy is implemented. Historically our immigration policies and practices have been racist and based on corporate desire to exploit one ethnic group or another for cheap labor resources. Today, as is cited in David Sirota's "Hostile Takeover," American corporations are sending jobs overseas to exploit Third World and Asian labor markets at the expense of American workers.
Still, as was illustrated in a joke that I received in my e-mail a few days ago, most Americans are dead set on blaming the various immigrant groups for the economic hardships most Americans are facing. Like most jokes that are based on ethnicity, the punch line is based upon stereotypes that a) have some kernel of truth to a very small degree; b) distort that kernel of truth in an extensively exaggerated way; c) are hurtful and shamefully reflect that loss of truly American values and spirituality; and d) demonstrates the mass ignorance that we Americans perpetrate in the name of nationalism, xenophobia, fear and "patriotism."
The joke is funny. Much like the joke that Whoopi Goldberg told in her recent cable special where she uses the infamous "N-word" to illustrate why we tell such jokes, but also why we are so conflicted over the use of such words, this joke will make most of us laugh. Equally, and oddly, this joke will make most of us uncomfortable with our laughter and the truth behind the joke... or at least it should.
Unfortunately, the reality of immigrants--legally here or not--in America is nowhere near the reality depicted in this joke. The immigrant families I have worked with as a social worker in Boston and Chicago areas have often had the father and mother of the family working two or three jobs, most of them at minimum wage without any benefits or potential for raises. In many cases, as has been the case for immigrant families throughout American history, the children of these families end up working to support the family in some way as soon as they are able to do so.
In the Chicago area, I worked with families that primarily worked in the restaurant industry, if not the hotel service industry. These industries are notorious for not paying well, abusing their workers, and hiring under the table, especially when dealing with immigrants (legally here or not) who do not understand their rights as workers.
The families I worked with in the Boston area included Vietnamese and Cambodian families where EVERYONE in the family worked. Often, like so many immigrants in the past, these folks would work in a family-owned restaurant, starting work at 5:00 AM and working until 11:00 at night. The children of these immigrant families leave school only to arrive at the family restaurant to work at food prep. Like my own family, the parents view their labor as necessary for the family to survive in our economy. Like my own family, where I worked in my step-father's construction company from age 10 to 18, these children are not usually paid for their labors.
The Lebanese families I worked with in Worcester often worked in the hotel service or cleaning business, having two or three jobs ongoing at a time. One Lebanese family I met while living in Norwood, Massachusetts, operated a wonderful Middle Eastern restaurant. The father, mother, brother, sister-in-law and their children all worked in the restaurant. After 15 years of hard work, the family began experiencing some prosperity. But that prosperity sits on a tightrope in our economy when tax cuts benefit the rich and hurt the Middle Class and the poorest among us; when cost of petroleum products, like plastics used in the restaurant business, rises and cannot easily be passed along to customers; when the cost of education, medical care, gasoline, food, utilities and everything else rises faster than wages and revenues; and when there is a gaping wound in our overall economic realities.
The FACTS show that the majority of welfare fraud is committed by 1-3% of welfare recipients, most of whom are born in America as American citizens. The FACTS show that most immigrant families that receive any type of state or federal assistance eventually work their way off the welfare roles while those American families that have received welfare assistance are often caught in what has been called the cycle of poverty. The FACTS show that most of those American-born families are white, not minorities, and not immigrants.
Then there is the reality of the workplace. When I worked for RCN in Boston, my office was filled with folks from Mexico, India, the Caribbean, Dominican Republic, Ireland, England, and South America. The job I took after that had immigrants from China, Vietnam, Australia and Guatemala. My wife worked for TicketMaster in Chicago and had office mates from all over the world.
So, while the joke is funny, it is a joke based on an erroneous stereotype that has been in place for time immemorial. When my Irish ancestors came to this country, there were signs in the windows of Boston and surrounding communities that literally read "Irish Need Not Apply." These Irish were labeled as lazy, "no-good for nothings," and other ethnic slurs.
During the era when large numbers of Italians came to New York and Boston, the Italians were labeled in much the same way as those coming across our southern borders today (1880s Italians were called Guineas and WOPS. In New York, these Italian-Americans were initially confined to tenement apartments in an area that is now referred to as "Little Italy." But history has changed most of "Little Italy" into parts of "China Town." Then again, China Town is fast becoming "Asia Town" because of new immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other parts of the "Far East."
In Boston, these Italian-Americans replaced the Jews that had originally congregated into the North End of Boston. The North End is currently renowned for its Italian community, Italian restaurants, and Italian bakeries. But even that is changing as gentrification is moving in and the Italian flavor of the North End.
In Boston and New York, Italians were labeled as no-good. In fact, in the movie, "It's A Wonderful Life," there is a line that demonstrates the prejudice against Italian families when mean Old Mr. Potter calls them "nothing but garlic eaters."
Today Hispanics coming across the border are called "wet backs" and "spics"). But in my day, there were all kinds of slurs against Puerto Ricans moving from San Juan to Boston or New York. Supposedly, these folks were only moving to these places for the welfare benefits. This perception is strange because anyone that has tried to get benefits for anything in New York City can vouch how difficult, tedious, embarrassing and humiliating seeking aid is in that city.
When I was growing up, my mother had several periods of time where she was a single parent. During those times we lived in "The Projects" and received welfare. The social workers of the 1960s would enter our home and inspect every inch of the place looking for signs that my mother might be living with a man. Many times I watched my mother beg her social workers--none of whom had an inkling of an idea what it meant for my mother to beg them for help-- for basic things like school clothes for the new school year because she could not afford them. If my mother found a low-paying job, there were no benefits, and her welfare (AFDC) was cut off completely. If she received help from my grandparents, she would lose what little was "given" to her by the government. It was a "Catch 22" that humiliated her to no end. She fought hard to get off welfare and worked like a dog most of her life... just like most poor families... and just like most immigrant families. IT is important to note that while my maternal grandmother's family had roots going back to the 1600s, my maternal grandfather was a first generation immigrant... and my paternal grandparents were third generation Americans.
Those immigrants from Central Eastern European and Slavic countries were called "Hunkies" and labeled as useless when they came to America. They worked in the coal, steel and refinery industries. They settled in pocket communities that were often looked down upon by the established ethnic groups in the area where they settled. Northwest Indiana, Chicago, parts of Wisconsin, parts of Pennsylvania and parts of New York are places where Serbs, Croatians, Poles and similar immigrant groups are found in abundance. While many of these families have found some measure of prosperity today, they lived lives of poverty, abuse and exploitation for at least three or four generations.
The abuse and exploitation of Chinese and Japanese immigrants in America from 1820 to the 1950s is a legendary demonstration of our history of exploitation, racism and use of stereotypes and prejudice to justify our insecurities, fears, xenophobia, and bad immigration policies. But anyone that has studied the history of the Chinese or Japanese in America can attest to the fact that these folks, and the families that have emerged from the very first immigrants, have worked hard and accomplished much for our nation.
Each of these immigrant groups have eventually grown in terms of political power and prosperity in the places that they congregated when they first arrived. Many have migrated from inner city neighborhoods to suburban lives, leaving the tenements and exploitive nature of inner city ethnic neighborhoods to the next immigrant group coming to America with hopes and dreams.
But we are seeing a new phenomenon in terms of immigrants in America. They are arriving in a new state of enslavement. They are often relegated to jobs that are not on the radar scope of the "rest of America." Sweat shops for the garment industry, sex slaves and prostitution, drug trafficking and exploitive under-the-table jobs are all that are open to them. Anyone that has taken a taxi ride in New York, Chicago, Boston or Washington will tell you that immigrants from around the world are working 16-20 hours a day trying to make a living as a taxi driver... and are usually paying out more than 70% of their daily revenues just to stay afloat.
The 1970s brought an influx of Cambodians and Vietnamese into the US. If anyone were to check the demographics of welfare rolls, there would be less than 5% of those receiving welfare identified within either of these ethnic groups. Yet, when they arrived, there were all kinds of erroneous rumors and slurs about these folks being on the welfare rolls, receiving tons of money for immigrating, and driving brand new cars while living two or three families to an apartment. Almost none of these stereotypes were true.
Let's face it... Our approach to immigration, racism, prejudice and welfare are all munged. We are being fed a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and emotional bovine excrement. When any of us bother to research the facts, or get exposure to the realities, these stereotypes do not hold up under scrutiny.
But here are some things from David Sirota's "Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government--And How We Take It Back" (available in paperback):
That equates to tax breaks for the richest among us: $148 BILLION
Total spent on all of those "welfare" programs: $72.4 BILLION
Please bear in mind this does not account for all of those no-bid contracts that have produced no tangible results here, in the US, and abroad. Nor does it account for the many BILLIONS we spend overseas without ever requiring any accountability on the part of those regimes receiving our tax dollars in the form of foreign aid (aid that helped produced Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Pinochet, the Iran-Contra Affair, and still supports the Saudis (yes, the Saudis, as rich as they are, receive aid from the US in military affairs), and many former Soviet states that are essentially corrupt or controlled by dictatorships). Nor does it account for the billions in forgiven debt sponsored by the US to other nations, including Brazil, Nigeria, Somalia, and elsewhere. Nor does it account for the 10-20 billion spent every month in Iraq alone (never mind the money being spent in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and elsewhere). Should I throw in the billions spent on behalf of Israel?
While our politicians are busy blaming welfare and immigration for our problems, the truth of the matter, they are giving away our tax dollars far faster than any immigrant or welfare recipient in America could steal them... We are being led around by our collective noses toward "facts" that are not factual, not real and appeal to our emotions rather than our sense of justice, fairness, compassion, equity or true Americanism.
Still, as was illustrated in a joke that I received in my e-mail a few days ago, most Americans are dead set on blaming the various immigrant groups for the economic hardships most Americans are facing. Like most jokes that are based on ethnicity, the punch line is based upon stereotypes that a) have some kernel of truth to a very small degree; b) distort that kernel of truth in an extensively exaggerated way; c) are hurtful and shamefully reflect that loss of truly American values and spirituality; and d) demonstrates the mass ignorance that we Americans perpetrate in the name of nationalism, xenophobia, fear and "patriotism."
The joke is funny. Much like the joke that Whoopi Goldberg told in her recent cable special where she uses the infamous "N-word" to illustrate why we tell such jokes, but also why we are so conflicted over the use of such words, this joke will make most of us laugh. Equally, and oddly, this joke will make most of us uncomfortable with our laughter and the truth behind the joke... or at least it should.
In order to really examine the issues, I am posting the joke so that we can really take a look at our collective conscience and see if we really want to be the people that we appear to be when we pass this joke around via our e-mail:
A Somali man arrives in Minneapolis as a new immigrant to the United States He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, "Thank you Mr. American for letting me in this country, giving me housing, food stamps, free medical care, and free education!"
The passerby says, "You are mistaken, I am Mexican."
The man goes on and encounters another passerby. "Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in America !"
The person says, "I not American, I Vietnamese."
The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand and says, "Thank you for the wonderful America !"
That person puts up his hand and says, "I am from Middle East , I am not American!"
He finally sees a nice lady and asks, "Are you an American?"
She says, "No, I am from Africa !"
Puzzled, he asks her, "Where are all the Americans?"
The African lady checks her watch and says..."Probably at work".
Unfortunately, the reality of immigrants--legally here or not--in America is nowhere near the reality depicted in this joke. The immigrant families I have worked with as a social worker in Boston and Chicago areas have often had the father and mother of the family working two or three jobs, most of them at minimum wage without any benefits or potential for raises. In many cases, as has been the case for immigrant families throughout American history, the children of these families end up working to support the family in some way as soon as they are able to do so.
In the Chicago area, I worked with families that primarily worked in the restaurant industry, if not the hotel service industry. These industries are notorious for not paying well, abusing their workers, and hiring under the table, especially when dealing with immigrants (legally here or not) who do not understand their rights as workers.
The families I worked with in the Boston area included Vietnamese and Cambodian families where EVERYONE in the family worked. Often, like so many immigrants in the past, these folks would work in a family-owned restaurant, starting work at 5:00 AM and working until 11:00 at night. The children of these immigrant families leave school only to arrive at the family restaurant to work at food prep. Like my own family, the parents view their labor as necessary for the family to survive in our economy. Like my own family, where I worked in my step-father's construction company from age 10 to 18, these children are not usually paid for their labors.
The Lebanese families I worked with in Worcester often worked in the hotel service or cleaning business, having two or three jobs ongoing at a time. One Lebanese family I met while living in Norwood, Massachusetts, operated a wonderful Middle Eastern restaurant. The father, mother, brother, sister-in-law and their children all worked in the restaurant. After 15 years of hard work, the family began experiencing some prosperity. But that prosperity sits on a tightrope in our economy when tax cuts benefit the rich and hurt the Middle Class and the poorest among us; when cost of petroleum products, like plastics used in the restaurant business, rises and cannot easily be passed along to customers; when the cost of education, medical care, gasoline, food, utilities and everything else rises faster than wages and revenues; and when there is a gaping wound in our overall economic realities.
The FACTS show that the majority of welfare fraud is committed by 1-3% of welfare recipients, most of whom are born in America as American citizens. The FACTS show that most immigrant families that receive any type of state or federal assistance eventually work their way off the welfare roles while those American families that have received welfare assistance are often caught in what has been called the cycle of poverty. The FACTS show that most of those American-born families are white, not minorities, and not immigrants.
Then there is the reality of the workplace. When I worked for RCN in Boston, my office was filled with folks from Mexico, India, the Caribbean, Dominican Republic, Ireland, England, and South America. The job I took after that had immigrants from China, Vietnam, Australia and Guatemala. My wife worked for TicketMaster in Chicago and had office mates from all over the world.
So, while the joke is funny, it is a joke based on an erroneous stereotype that has been in place for time immemorial. When my Irish ancestors came to this country, there were signs in the windows of Boston and surrounding communities that literally read "Irish Need Not Apply." These Irish were labeled as lazy, "no-good for nothings," and other ethnic slurs.
During the era when large numbers of Italians came to New York and Boston, the Italians were labeled in much the same way as those coming across our southern borders today (1880s Italians were called Guineas and WOPS. In New York, these Italian-Americans were initially confined to tenement apartments in an area that is now referred to as "Little Italy." But history has changed most of "Little Italy" into parts of "China Town." Then again, China Town is fast becoming "Asia Town" because of new immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other parts of the "Far East."
In Boston, these Italian-Americans replaced the Jews that had originally congregated into the North End of Boston. The North End is currently renowned for its Italian community, Italian restaurants, and Italian bakeries. But even that is changing as gentrification is moving in and the Italian flavor of the North End.
In Boston and New York, Italians were labeled as no-good. In fact, in the movie, "It's A Wonderful Life," there is a line that demonstrates the prejudice against Italian families when mean Old Mr. Potter calls them "nothing but garlic eaters."
Today Hispanics coming across the border are called "wet backs" and "spics"). But in my day, there were all kinds of slurs against Puerto Ricans moving from San Juan to Boston or New York. Supposedly, these folks were only moving to these places for the welfare benefits. This perception is strange because anyone that has tried to get benefits for anything in New York City can vouch how difficult, tedious, embarrassing and humiliating seeking aid is in that city.
When I was growing up, my mother had several periods of time where she was a single parent. During those times we lived in "The Projects" and received welfare. The social workers of the 1960s would enter our home and inspect every inch of the place looking for signs that my mother might be living with a man. Many times I watched my mother beg her social workers--none of whom had an inkling of an idea what it meant for my mother to beg them for help-- for basic things like school clothes for the new school year because she could not afford them. If my mother found a low-paying job, there were no benefits, and her welfare (AFDC) was cut off completely. If she received help from my grandparents, she would lose what little was "given" to her by the government. It was a "Catch 22" that humiliated her to no end. She fought hard to get off welfare and worked like a dog most of her life... just like most poor families... and just like most immigrant families. IT is important to note that while my maternal grandmother's family had roots going back to the 1600s, my maternal grandfather was a first generation immigrant... and my paternal grandparents were third generation Americans.
Those immigrants from Central Eastern European and Slavic countries were called "Hunkies" and labeled as useless when they came to America. They worked in the coal, steel and refinery industries. They settled in pocket communities that were often looked down upon by the established ethnic groups in the area where they settled. Northwest Indiana, Chicago, parts of Wisconsin, parts of Pennsylvania and parts of New York are places where Serbs, Croatians, Poles and similar immigrant groups are found in abundance. While many of these families have found some measure of prosperity today, they lived lives of poverty, abuse and exploitation for at least three or four generations.
The abuse and exploitation of Chinese and Japanese immigrants in America from 1820 to the 1950s is a legendary demonstration of our history of exploitation, racism and use of stereotypes and prejudice to justify our insecurities, fears, xenophobia, and bad immigration policies. But anyone that has studied the history of the Chinese or Japanese in America can attest to the fact that these folks, and the families that have emerged from the very first immigrants, have worked hard and accomplished much for our nation.
Each of these immigrant groups have eventually grown in terms of political power and prosperity in the places that they congregated when they first arrived. Many have migrated from inner city neighborhoods to suburban lives, leaving the tenements and exploitive nature of inner city ethnic neighborhoods to the next immigrant group coming to America with hopes and dreams.
But we are seeing a new phenomenon in terms of immigrants in America. They are arriving in a new state of enslavement. They are often relegated to jobs that are not on the radar scope of the "rest of America." Sweat shops for the garment industry, sex slaves and prostitution, drug trafficking and exploitive under-the-table jobs are all that are open to them. Anyone that has taken a taxi ride in New York, Chicago, Boston or Washington will tell you that immigrants from around the world are working 16-20 hours a day trying to make a living as a taxi driver... and are usually paying out more than 70% of their daily revenues just to stay afloat.
The 1970s brought an influx of Cambodians and Vietnamese into the US. If anyone were to check the demographics of welfare rolls, there would be less than 5% of those receiving welfare identified within either of these ethnic groups. Yet, when they arrived, there were all kinds of erroneous rumors and slurs about these folks being on the welfare rolls, receiving tons of money for immigrating, and driving brand new cars while living two or three families to an apartment. Almost none of these stereotypes were true.
Let's face it... Our approach to immigration, racism, prejudice and welfare are all munged. We are being fed a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and emotional bovine excrement. When any of us bother to research the facts, or get exposure to the realities, these stereotypes do not hold up under scrutiny.
But here are some things from David Sirota's "Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government--And How We Take It Back" (available in paperback):
"The result today [regarding tax breaks for corporations] is that for every dollar the federal government receives from coporate and individual income taxes, it gives away at least 75 cents in the form of deductions, exemptions, exclusions, preferences, and deferrals."Most of those go to big business and corporations.
"In reality, America is operating like a Third World tax haven [for corporations]. As a St. Petersburg Times editorial put it, 'April 15 is just another day [companies] don't have to worry about paying taxes [because] corporations have been allowed, even encouraged, to dodge their tax responsibility.'"
"In 2004 the Detroit News found that the cost of Bush tax cuts for 'the richest 10 percent this year alone will total $148 billion.' The paper noted this is 'twice as much as the government will spend on job training, $6.2 billion; college Pell grants, $12 billion; public housing, $6.3 billion; low-income rental subsidies, $19 billion; child care, $4.8 bilion; insurance [health] for low-income children, $5.2 billion; low-income energy assistance, $1.8 billion; meals for shut-ins, $180 million; and welfare, $16.9 billion.'"
That equates to tax breaks for the richest among us: $148 BILLION
Total spent on all of those "welfare" programs: $72.4 BILLION
Please bear in mind this does not account for all of those no-bid contracts that have produced no tangible results here, in the US, and abroad. Nor does it account for the many BILLIONS we spend overseas without ever requiring any accountability on the part of those regimes receiving our tax dollars in the form of foreign aid (aid that helped produced Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Pinochet, the Iran-Contra Affair, and still supports the Saudis (yes, the Saudis, as rich as they are, receive aid from the US in military affairs), and many former Soviet states that are essentially corrupt or controlled by dictatorships). Nor does it account for the billions in forgiven debt sponsored by the US to other nations, including Brazil, Nigeria, Somalia, and elsewhere. Nor does it account for the 10-20 billion spent every month in Iraq alone (never mind the money being spent in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and elsewhere). Should I throw in the billions spent on behalf of Israel?
While our politicians are busy blaming welfare and immigration for our problems, the truth of the matter, they are giving away our tax dollars far faster than any immigrant or welfare recipient in America could steal them... We are being led around by our collective noses toward "facts" that are not factual, not real and appeal to our emotions rather than our sense of justice, fairness, compassion, equity or true Americanism.
posted by Jim Downey at 1:51 AM
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