From the superdelegate process to the farm bill to the recent raid on immigrants in Postville, Iowa, elitism is rearing its nipped-and-tucked head all across America.
How else can you explain anointing a handful of Democratic party officials to have more power in the nominating process than millions of average American voters? According to CNN, each Democratic superdelegate has more power than 13,000 primary voters. So just like George Bush was able to ignore millions of people marching in the streets against the Iraq War, the superdelegates are free to replace the will of the voters with their own whims. The idea that, like father, superdelegates know best, is anti-democratic and elitist.
The farm bill passed by Congress last week is no different. The New York Times notes that Safia Ali, a 25-year-old mother of five in Somalia, can no longer afford rice or wheat or powdered milk. The price of food commodities has skyrocketed in recent months, setting off a global food crisis. Safi Ali has not eaten in a week and her family is starving. The response of the richest nation in the world? Pass a food bill that increases cash subsidies to the very same large, corporate-owned farms that are manipulating crop prices in the first place. Between 1998 and 2007, profits of the agribusiness giant Cargill increased nearly 1000% — from $280 million to a whopping $2.3 billion — extorting from rising crop prices on the one hand and from taxpayer-funded farm subsidies on the other. Small family farmers in the United States and poor people here and oversees like Safia Ali are the victim’s of our government policies, not the beneficiaries. Politicians in Washington side with big business elites.
Also last week, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency raided a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, and arrested and detained at least 300 undocumented immigrants but as many as 700. Workers at the Agriprocessor meatpacking plant were slaving away under extremely oppressive conditions — in March 2008, the plant was cited with 39 violations of workplace health and safety laws. But rather than step in and twist the hand of the corporation to clean up its act, raise and enforce a minimum wage and provide good public schools and affordable healthcare — the kinds of things Agriprocessor’s workers and everyone in the struggling town of Postville really needs — government agents came with guns and handcuffs to terrorize the workers. (Any close-minded nativists who would argue that undocumented immigrants are the real criminals in Postville should kindly explain when pursuing the American dream became a crime.)
As a nation, we are more concerned with the few at the top than the many struggling at the bottom. It’s not just politicians who are guilty here. The majority of Americans are more concerned about Angelina Jolie’s shrinking waistline than Safia Ali starving in Somalia. Does Angelina Jolie matter more? Do the superdelegates? The corporate titans?
While donor-driven politics and celebrity-driven culture have always privileged the elite few over the many, it’s getting worse. It’s no longer simply that the rich and famous are worthier than everyone else. Increasingly, everyone else is worthless. The rise in reality television shows can be attributed to a growing sense, thank you Madison Avenue, that you only matter if you’re famous so now everyone wants to be. The staggering rise in CEO salaries, while real wages for most Americans have been stagnant or even decreased, is the direct result of the belief that the rich deserve to get richer at the expense of shared prosperity.
The plight of Safia Ali and the undocumented immigrants in Postville and even the discounted Democratic primary voters is not the result of a lack of hard work or personal responsibility, fingers we often point at those who are poor or disenfranchised in the United States. The plight of those at the bottom, a group growing bigger by the day as the economy tumbles and the middle class evaporates, comes because we think the people at the top are inherently superior — and that elitism is cemented in our culture and in our policies.
Elitism is anti-American. When the colonists revolted against England, they were revolting against the idea that one person — the King — mattered more than the rest of them. And while we have stumbled gravely in our pursuit of egalitarianism — from the very early mistreatment of American Indians to slavery to the examples above today — the idea that we are all equally valuable and should be treated as such is emblazoned in the American story, our entrepreneurial independence alongside our deep moral commitment to be our brothers and sisters’ keeper. In the America we aspire to be, everyone matters as much as everyone else. We are all equal, interdependent and interconnected.
Undocumented immigrants have every much of a right to be in the United States as I do. That I was born on one side of the border does not make me fundamentally more deserving of the opportunities of this nation than anyone else. (In fact, arguably the fact that many immigrants have been forced to flee their home countries because of the disastrous economic and foreign policies of the United States, may argue for an even stronger claim than mine; having only ever benefited from America, I should be giving back not benefiting more.) Safia Ali, who has nowhere to which to flee, is no less deserving of food and shelter than I am, nor for that matter less deserving of a good job, a college education, or even designer clothes. And the superdelegates votes shouldn’t count more than yours or mine.
Those who are on top are not more worthy of being on top. Those who are on the bottom are not more deserving of being on the bottom. But until we really embrace the idea of inherent and equal human worth, in our hearts and our souls — and not just among the people we know personally but for everyone, worldwide, no matter their situation — the community values that America represents will remain a good idea on paper but warped and elusive in practice.
Sally Kohn is the Director of the Movement Vision Lab
Access to illegal aliens allows unscrupulous people like the Pottsville plant to operate. Period.
“…Elitism is anti-American. When the colonists revolted against England, they were revolting against the idea that one person — the King — mattered more than the rest of them….”
- No, no, no. This conception of the American Revolution may sound pleasing & idealistic, but it actually reflects the standard brainwashing that everyone who grows up here is afflicted with. We don’t know our own history.
The truth about the American Revolution is much less pretty. First of all, the notion of “the colonists” is itself a quasi-fictional abstraction. Of the population in the colonies at the time, about 1/3 wanted to remain loyal to Britain, and about 1/3 were indifferent. Only 1/3 were really willing to fight for independence.
And the reason they wanted independence was not nearly so lofty & high-minded as the writer implicitly claims. The whole point was cutting out the role of the middle-man. Basically, the colonies’ land-owning elites saw that they could govern the New World themselves, in their own interests — and that this was better (for them) than taking orders from Britain, & having to give the Brits their cut of the action.
In other words, the American Revolution was not so much against elitism, as in favor of replacing foreign elites with domestic elites.
I am afraid RichM has a good point. The whole American dream is about living in a free country with very little restrictions, so you can make tons of money no matter the consequences. I definitely do not see much solidarity in the USA today, the lack of general health care is a good example.
That is why republicans can get away with this “we are the best, screw everybodey else” line of thinking…
I see the superdelegates and voting in primaries/caucuses differently than most - I believe the primary season should only be a snapshot of opinions that the party then looks at and decides who will be the best candidate, and for the party to decide (superdelegates is one way of putting this) and sinking or swimming based on their thought out decision. How democratic is it if early voters (in early primaries) who voted for other candidates don’t get a say as to who they would switch their vote towards (IRV voting could help?)? States having different rules is stupid - I think they could adopt a system to make Democrat only ballots matter the most, and to assess independents & republicans who cross over as an argument to be made as to who is more likely to be elected in the fall a consideration. The current system is a mess, and fields the wrong candidates just about every four years. I’m in FAVOR of superdelegates, and I’m still hoping (a slim hope) they will reject Obama and put someone else on the ballot in November.
The problem with elitism is that it is a state of denial based in reasoning that ignores its own origins and outcomes. It can work for a given ammount of time but is ultimately destructive - like an adolescent stuck in a stage of narcissism. It has become intensely eco/anthro-necrotic.
Am I bitter?
The fact that this country was founded by pirates who plundered the native americans living here and the natural resources?
The fact that corporations still plunder and steal without any social responsibility?
The fact that politicians legislate and enable the plundering, allowing and promoting the destruction of the very planet needed for our survival.
Yes, I’m bitter. And sad. The fact that not one mainstream candidate, Obama, Hillary, McCain will stand up to corporations that promote overconsumption just so they can be ‘profitable.’ All at our expense.
And the war is also just another corporate agenda.
“It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.” ~General Douglas MacArthur
elitism is AMERICA??
Surely you jest.
“The crushing weight of being American”. Mark Twain
OK, elitism is bad, and we have done a lot of it. Now what? We should stop, but we can’t within the current order.
Truly, nationalism in all of its various robes ends up being a form of elitism. Is this not also endemic to the capitalist economic system, which divides people by economic class interests, and dooms many to great pain?
In just a handful of words, simple logic inextricably forces sincere humanitarians to also be internationalist communists. Anything else is duplicity or stupidity!
“you’ve got to organize, organize, organize …” - John L. Lewis
“Undocumented immigrants have every much of a right to be in the United States as I do,” says Sally Kohn.
OK, when every nation-state and its borders has been abolished and we’re all sitting around campfires singing Kumbaya, I guess I’ll agree. (Although some interesting changes in the status of women would, of course, have to be accepted by us females. Women’s rights do vary hugely, after all, from nation to nation — and without nations one would expect the lowest common denominator to prevail.)
I’m amazed at how many progressives seem to forget that enlightened laws in powerful nations can be leveraged into other nations (particularly since the Internet) by encouraging the people to demand more fairness and equity. That border between the U.S. and Mexico is NOT “just a line on a map” as the old Coca-Cola executive Vicente Fox put it!
“But until we really embrace the idea of inherent and equal human worth, in our hearts and our souls…”
Great. Another solution-less diatribe.
As Bill Maher would boringly repeat: New Rule - no rants about problems that do not include solution options.
Humans seem to be still operating with Tribal Think. The Tribe is THE ALL that gives tribal members their very identity. The rest of humanity can Go To Hell, and many tribes say that quite openly (religous fundamentalist tribes, among others).
And that is the way of it throughout history everywhere, not just in the USA. But this does include our time as well, here in the so-called 21st century modern world. Just listen to right-wing talk radio, to hear the rants about the (non-existent) Liberal Tribes and Terrorist Tribes and how they need to be conquered by the so-called Conservative Tribe consisting of simple-minded primitive chauvinists who hate to part with “their” “money” for the good of the larger group, or even the human species itself, and would kill the Other first before they would let that happen.
Sadly, though she definitely is a victim of corporate and political greed as well, even the mother in this story, one Safia Ali, is also a greedy person, as she is MOTHER OF FIVE (!) in a nation that can barely feed any of them. She is a victim AND perpetrator of Tribal Think. And there are many levels of Tribes to which someone belongs, the most basic one is The Family. Just ask Tony Soprano.
By her actions this person insists her Tribe deserves five more members. Even though having a child is the most greedy, selfish thing you can do, as it means you think you deserve to burden the Earth with more of your progeny, for decades to come. And at her rate of increase, the Earth will by 2030 have something on the order of 32 billion people to support. Except there is no way the Earth can. Even if we all lived in cardboard boxes and ate mud cookies. And believe me, there will be collossally-murderous wars before that happens.
The old tribes of the Americas were the same way. In native languages, one’s own tribe was called The Human Beings, and the other tribes were sub-humans to be shunned, conquered, enslaved and killed. Same in Africa to this day. Same in China, same in India, same in Europe, same of course as is evident today in the Middle East…
And in America today, of course, the simple-minded tribal thinkers believe America can do no wrong, and follow the guys with the big warbonnets on (Bush and Cheney) that swear all they do is for the protection of the Tribe, even as these same chiefs betray the very group itself by selling its members into bondage, razing the group lands and resources for trinkets and wampum, and forcing the group into wholesale slaughtering and being slaughtered.
But like the sleight-of-hand fakirs they are, the war-chiefs use the distraction of the OTHER, the boogeyman OTHER Which Must Be Destroyed, in order to get away with their evils against humanity and even against their own people. That is typical tribal thinking of all the ages.
Unhappily, today’s tribes have tools to destroy not only the Other, but all life on Earth. That science provided these tools to the primitive tribal political forces that are running amok today was profoundly unwise on the part of scientists. As Einstein and other scientists lamented after the genies were already out of the bottles.
And Modern tribal thinking has reached its zenith in the corporation. These should be unmasked for the internal political entities they are, mini-states without allegience to any country or anything else but themselves. The very world, corporation, should be replaced with the word Tribe. The General Electric Tribe, the Boeing Tribe, the Microsoft Tribe, the Exxon Tribe, and so on. And Chief Executive Officer should be replaced with just Big Chief.
This kind of Treason is how -by way of ‘globalization’, the NAFTA, the WTO, and ‘free trade’- the corporate tribes cynically evade every law on the books of the United States (the laws on taxes and labor exploitation and health and safety and minimum wage and unions and environnmental health mandates- but somehow not laws on copyrights and corporate trade agreements and private property) by manufacturing, trading and operating in other countries that lack all those laws, yet then demanding that the products thus made illegally be allowed into this country without penalty. It is impossible to compete with this lawless advantage unless these laws are dropped here in a race to the bottom (do you hear Perot’s giant sucking sound yet?), along with dropping any semblance of decent humanity. May as well bring back slavery.
We ALl need to act Socially, now more than ever. We need to recognize the problems of ecological destruction, limits to growth, overpopulation, warmongering, rape and murder of people and planet, and unalloyed unnecessary greed, and what EACH of us contributes to them. This self-examination should extend to political entities, corporate entities, commercial entities, tribal entities, and every individual that wants a better tomorrow for their children as well as all the children of others.
I know even the mother in this article wants this. And hopefully, this will come to pass for her and hers. But the population explosion is not sustainable. And Tribalism, whether of real tribes, or political tribes, or corporate tribes, must be put aside, for the good of humanity, for the good of Earth.
I wish that all children would be treated as precious and a gift, and every person be free from want and fear and live a good life. But as long as people think selfishly, primitively, and Tribally, this will never be the case. As long as tribal-driven overpopulation pressures continue to degrade the environment, and hinder the capability to help better people’s lives, this will not happen.
However, I can imagine a better world, without Tribalism, and so can others, as John Lennon did not so long ago. It is still possible. Yet Tribalism is ingrained, along with basic fear and anger and selfishness, in the human psyche. So this will be one of the hardest things we little critters of earth will ever have to overcome in ourselves.
FVHorn,
It is really hard to “act socially” when someone is robbing your pantry, stealing your livelihood, or beating you over the head with a bible, badge and gun.
I think that we can all agree that Utopia would be grand. It just isn’t going to happen. Just like the coming presidency will be wrought with all of its own evil, regardless of who (of the likely contenders) gets in there.
“The rest of humanity can Go To Hell, and many tribes say that quite openly (religous fundamentalist tribes, among others).”
I don’t see that changing… in my lifetime… or a hundred lifetimes.
“I believe in an aristocracy…Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky…They are sensitive for others as well as themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.”—E.M. Forster
The world would have died of despair long ago but for the elite.
kloro above makes a GREAT point:
“you’ve got to organize, organize, organize …” - John L. Lewis
That’s what Obama is (a community “organizer”) and that’s what he’s trying to do (for the whole country - amazingly ambitious.)
To the article. “Does Everyone Matter Equally?” Of course not, except to Jesus or other promoters of moral vision.
The world is FULL of ridiculous inequities, some of them “enforced” for even decades or centuries.
To the article. “Why are superdelegates super? They won’t be as soon as Barack taps Hillary for VP. They suddenly will (could) be just “managed” right into line by a masterful “organizer”.
To the article. Immigrants. I still say we should have a special (higher) minimum wage just for illegals, enforced with paperwork only by IRS and DOL. Pay worker now or pay difference as fine later. No statute of limitations and no excuses. They arrested the wrong folks at Postville. They should have been there just to calculate the fine for the employer.
Excellent article!
Elitism is the crux of our dilemma… and it begins with the idea that one species is somehow superior to all others and ends with the notion that there are real differences in value between members of our human species.
Humans have a place in this biosphere. It is our ecologically determined herbivore niche. It is not a place of dominance but of partnership and when we discover that species truth, we will also discover the beneficial fallout of community and democracy.
The biosphere is a participatory community. It involves all living beings in positions that are not only important to them personally but to the whole. Caring for everyone is the best way to care for ourselves individually and enrich our individual life experiences.
And the superdelegates votes shouldn’t count more than yours or mine. Really! And pray tell, what have you ever done for the Democratic Party? Have you ever run for office? Have you ever mounted a campaign for public office? Ever asked anyone to financially support you in your quest for that office? The superdelegates are there for one reason only, to ensure that there is not a “draw” in the election results. They are the elected leaders and have good knowledge of their communities’ needs and wants and are experienced in all things political - yes Ms. Kohn, the Presidency of the United States is a political office. They are the people that the next President will have to deal with as he/she attempts to govern this vast country. Superdelegates are the gatekeepers to help avoid a messy nominating convention. Have some faith. . .or are you an Obama supporter?
The article is critical of the new farm program, but says nothing about the fact that 2/3 of the money goes not to farmers, but to food stamps for needy people and school lunches. As for the price of grains, that is due to investment funds trying to make a quick buck and also to the increased demand for grain worldwide and use of biofuels.
A better thing to do than bitch constantly would be to park the gas guzzler SUV`s and ride a bike to work, carpool, let the kids walk to school, forget that long vacation, etc. That would save many gallons of fuel and lesson the need for ethanol from corn.
“Undocumented immigrants have every much of a right to be in the United States as I do. That I was born on one side of the border does not make me fundamentally more deserving of the opportunities of this nation than anyone else. ”
Bullcrap. Sorry. If you are born in Mexico, you are Mexican. Born in America, American. Want to come to America, get a passport and visa. Want to work in America, get a work visa. Want to be American, apply.
There was a time when America needed immigrants. That was before we outsourced our jobs as part of globalization. We may still need some immigrants for jobs Americans can’t or won’t do, but legal immigrants. Since 1970, our population has grown 100 million despite fertility rates at or below replacement levels. That means 50% more Americans, many of whom were born to illegal immigrants. Not surprisingly our debt has increased 9 trillion since then.
Namaste
Can you do rainbow colors too?
old goat - excellent conclusion! and thanks for the new terminology - did you invent it yourself? eco/anthronecrotic. Anthroponecrotic? as in ecocide, anthropocide.
Cool!
The royal courtesans at the top of the heap are so far removed from ordinary voter concerns that only a revolution and overthrow would wake them up.
MiMiCcs, Those “Mexicans” are Indians. They were here before any North American European.
Limiting migration (immigration) without limiting the free flow of corporate capital is murder. Fascism doesn’t work. Never did before and never will. Fascism always ends up in murder and genocide - it is inevitable.
Does Everyone Matter Equally?
No, of course not. Are you fucking stupid? Only the megarich matter…
“Undocumented immigrants have every much of a right to be in the United States as I do.”
This is the most asinine sentence I read in this article. If you think they have a “right” to be here why don’t you trot on down and bring your check for your share of the cost of supporting them. I don’t want to pay for them anymore.
But I’ll make a deal with you….bring in as many as you want under your personal sponsorship. You will be directly responsible for all their needs and not one tax dollar will be spent on them.
No one has a “right” to come here and choose for any of us to support them. Nor do I take kindly to your support of big business, drug cartels, human slavers and identity theft, etc.
This kind of self serving, self gratifying, unrealistic, racist argument is just the reason these people will not remain here. A realistic dialogue would have solved this last year, but this type of attitude precluded it and pushed the country to oppose it by over 80%.
To suggest that if your own country didn’t do a good job in providing for you and its our responsibility to provide for you is the most callow type of thinking.
As to the stupid argument that the poor are disenfranchised….whose jobs does this person think these illegal aliens are taking? Who does she think would really pay for her childish thinking? Our own poor citizens are paying and would pay the greatest price of diverting the job’s and money to support her ideology. God preserve me from extremists.
“Access to illegal aliens allows unscrupulous people like the Pottsville plant to operate. Period.
Got it in one. Though you left out operate without paying a living wage.
Elitism and the income gap are legitimate concerns but illegal immigration only exacerbates both and helps impoverish and control the very poor she claims to represent.
“park the gas guzzler SUV`s and ride a bike to work, carpool, let the kids walk to school, forget that long vacation, etc”
Fairly hard for some of the folks in rural areas to follow that advice, but good for the cities.
“Safia Ali, is also a greedy person, as she is MOTHER OF FIVE (!) in a nation that can barely feed any of them. She is a victim AND perpetrator of Tribal Think.” FVHorn’s opinion.
Well you certainly have one heck of a bee in your bonnet about population growth to come out with such comment.
What’s the population of Somalia? How many tribes constitute its demographic population. What’s going on in Somalia? Why is it going on? Who is most responsible for this situation which by population is the number one disaster according to the UN’s recent appeal for aid there? How is it possible that an ancient people’s country that has been raped and pillaged by colonial domination continues to lose its population to violence dispersal and sanctioned famine when if left in peace and given even a semblance of fair trade could easily support her people and begin to rebuild.
What choice do people who have been invaded and dispersed by the recent invasion have? There is no government to represent them no chemist or pharmacy to avail of nothing to eat, to drink and so on…..
To call this poor unfortunate woman whose husband is possibly dead of being selfish is disgraceful from your armchair analysis of the world’s population problem. There is plenty to support the world’s population into the future and all these ridiculous projections of 32 billion are nonsense, nothing more. Anyone with a clue about statistics knows they can be interpreted willy nilly to come up with such numbers. What if every female had five kids and so on…??
The problem is not the poor populations being greedy at all. It is quite the opposite. The elites and their rapacious greed using violence to deny others and secure for themselves alone resources and profit is the real problem. And look at the statistics, almost universal, you’ll find that the poor are still getting poorer and the rich richer.
Somalia was just on the road to recovery having lost much of its population when Bush decided to get his folks in there.
Now it is an absolute disaster zone. What right have the US to be the instigators of an invasion of Somalia? We don’t hear too much about the goings on there except the ‘war on terror’ ‘Al-Quaida’ and ‘Islamic Fundamentalists”. The crusade continues………. We impose our will.
And is it not somewhat ironic that The State of Israel bends over backwards to increase its popuation to occupy more land illegally while by your line of thought the Palestinians should be encouraged to reduce theirs or not? After all how inconsiderate would the mother of five Palestinian children be when they have no water this summer in Gaza? Maybe a couple might survive. Or an Iraqi woman in Iraq or a woman in Afghanistan when the place is saturated with DU? Selfish people really those tribal types eh?
People that argue for illegal immigration irritate the devil out of me. Surprise!
But Somalia is a comopletely different question.
“After all how inconsiderate would the mother of five Palestinian children be when they have no water this summer in Gaza?”
I had understood Gaza was an independent state now. Self governing, yes?
No water this summer? What would your solution be for them? How would you deal with this problem if it arises?
RichM,
I was under the impression that the goals of the rebelling colonists were even more ignoble. I believe that one of the rarely stated reasons for the rebellion was that the crown had determined to slow and limit expansion into the Native American Indian lands to the west, and that was not good news to influential individuals who had designs on those lands, or to those who expected to indirectly benefit from such expansion. They supported independence to remove what they perceived as unreasonable limitations on their opportunities for boundless economic growth.
FVHorn,
It is not necessarily tribal thinking that should be eradicated, but our welfare and even our survival depend on promoting an awareness that the only tribe that makes sense in the 21st Century is that of the entire human race. We are becoming more interconnected through electronic communications and through air travel and trade every day. And we are becoming more aware of our interdependence and the extent to which we must learn to share this small planet as everything we do has an impact on others and vice versa. And with the continual development of increasingly lethal military and killing technology, we daily become more vulnerable to the danger of conflicts that arise anywhere on the planet.
We are developing a one-world culture and economic system, and the struggle now is to determine the content of that culture and the structure of that economic system, for those determinations will surely influence the probability of, and quality of, human life in the future.
And certainly those who run corporations, as well as national governments, will continue to try to shape the minds of the populace in a self-serving manner, and all those who are already connected to the idea of a human tribe must fight those propaganda wars.
Many at CD and in the progressive community make what I believe is a mistaken assumption that we must expand the tribe, or the group, to include all animals, if not all life, but I think that is not feasible for a number of reasons, including: (i) evolution programmed us to emotionally connect to other humans, not to the non-human environment; (ii) we can communicate far better with fellow humans; (iii) we can develop common goals and have common requirements for survival with other humans; (iv) the non-human set of creatures is several orders of magnitude more complex and difficult to understand, changing before we can understand or connect to it, and so creating an unworkable moral/ethical system; (v) the emotional connections most feel to the non-human animals are quite artificial and fragile as they were formed inside the protective cocoon of human civilization, and few actually take those non-human connections so seriously that they would give up the life of a human loved one for the benefit of some non-human creature(s).
presence_aka_Namaste May 19th, 2008 3:06 pm
I won’t take offense this time when you accuse me of being a racist, but I would suggest that when someone has no valid argument they will resort to name calling, but I’ll assume you are just ferrvent in your belief.
Do you consider it a rant when I say that just because someone wants to come here they should be able to? And where is all this aid and resupply to the despotic government of Mexico? And when exactly did we ccreate the government of Mexico? Well over 50% of all illegals are from there.
The Constitution is quite clear and certainly understand it. It pertains to US citizens and their rights. Other than basic humanity, we owe nothing to illegal aliens and they have no civil rights.
Your information is quite flawed. Each illegal alien, after all taxes and any other benefit they produce(if they paid taxes, many don’t) cost American citizens over $2000 per year, each year.
This does not account for the American families they have displaced in the workforce that must draw benefits, nor all the other obvious costs.
So yes, I favor the law and I favor having peoople ask to come here. And yes, I have no interest in supporting them and their families because they want me to. And yes, if you emntered the America illegally you are a criminal.
Do I understand why they want to come here, of course I do, but why don’t you tell our friend thats been waiting patiently for 3.75 years now to immigrate legally that she will have to wait longer because you feel anyone can come here if they want to.
Selective compliance will get you what you don’t want and didn’t expect.
“This kind of self serving, self gratifying, unrealistic, racist argument is just the reason … “
Well, you’ve got a point there says the “pot”! I need to watch my own reactions and language closer!! And I will.
My initial numbers came from the Texas State Comptrollers office. http://www.window.state.tx.us/
Their #’s from 2006 will tell you that Federal programs are a wash with Federal taxes paid, but the cost to local government’s here is over a billion dollars. The problem there is that they don’t count food Stamps issued to illegal aliens children because the children are legal, or any of the other costs of these kids that are citizens, but have illegal alien parents that draw on every program for them.
The cost of building new schools to accomodate these kids and the illegal kids too, the cost to educate them is staggering to our local school districts. Local hospitals are overwhealmed and their cost is far higher than officially counted because much of the loss is written off before net results.
Illegal aliens are subsidized with in state tuition here, CHIPS money is used to fund pre natal care for illegal alien pregnant adults. Pell grants are issued under the same reasoning as using CHIPS money.
A working American that loses his job to an illegal alien has few recourses. The other jobs like his are taken the same way. So when he and his family go on food stamps, AFDC, Medicaid, I would certainly count these costs as the result of illegal aliens criminal activity.
The actual cost here in Texas even if you only take into count the most obvious costs of illegals is over the $2000 mark. I use that figure to be conservative.
And yes, they take American jobs, jobs Americans used to do. They are a net cost to our citizens, but a lovely subsidy to business.
There are currently around 20+ mi;;ion i;llegals here, about 21/2 to 3 million here in Texas.
RichM, well said. I have been saying for a long time now (and I was a trained history teacher) that there was nothing whatsoever revolutionary about the “American Revolution”. In 1781, this country went from rule by rich, white, male landowners to rule by . . . rich, white, male landowners.