A day after Biden said Harris would “cut her own path,” she declared that her presidency would not be a “continuation” of his during an interview with Fox News
The criminalized immigrant labor underclass is part of and subjected to key contradictions (in the dialectical sense) of American and therefore international capital. You’re 100% right that there is a substantial economic (capiralist) force that benefits from the systemic underpayment of this labor force, so they push for policies that ensure it is present and that the owner class never pays too big of a price for “enforcement” of anti-immigrant laws. At the same time, being able to underpay undocumented immigrants requires that they stay precarious and delineated into that underclass. They must be kept unable to demand better working conditions and pay through fear of ICE and deportation. So the capitalist class also pushes for precarity and criminalization so that the immigrant labor underclass is regularly disciplined.
Compounding this, they also need to deflect from their practices, for why the higher-paid jobs disappear, and rather than accept blame for trying to pay horrendously low wages, they employ the oldest of American owner class dupes: they spread a racist, xemophobic false consciousness that transfers blame to to desperate people, trying to make them both undeserving and villains for having to take shot pay under bad conditiobs., which the owner class frames as “stealing jobs”. Thus in deflecting blame they create a force against their policy of a disciplined but present undocumented labor underclass, creating a huge number of absolute racists that would restrict that labor force (through cruelty and violence) below what the owners actually materially want. And at some point, psychology and ideology begin to have a substantial impact - that point is when the direct material impacts become somewhat detached from the policy, e.g. when employers get unlimited bailouts and profits are more from finance than production.
Re: COVID, I think their primary weapon there is to drive up unemployment overall and to make workers poorer and less able to withstand longer periods of unemployment, which does include the undocumented immigrant labor underclass but also every other worker.
Re: Being anti-immigrant, the regime depends on terrorizing the underclass and also must contend with an increase in attempted crossings, so that population can increase even as anti-immigrant policies go into effect.
Re: Kamala, parent asked how this regime had anti-immigrant policies. I listed examples. I also referred to anti-immigrant policies originally because these policies are social violence of which Kamala was an active part of selling. She was and is an import piece of adopting the rightward anti-immigrant push of the Democratic political class as a whole, in contrast to any attempt to distance Harris from the Biden-Harris administration.
We should spell this out for people more often. Liberals generally fail to crack the “paradox” of right-wing anti-immigration rhetoric and those same right-wing petite bourgeoisie & corporations illegally/semi-legally putting them to work.
I think it would be useful to compile talking points resources at different levels of complexity and thoroughness, kind of like Wikipedia vs. Simplified Wikipedia. The stuff I’m saying is a well-established analysis, of course, and something we could all curate for use in discussions. Obviously there is ProleWiki, but I think a denser web with different levels of complexity / scope would be pretty useful.
In this case, a short overview of the contradictions in the maintenance of a precarious immigrant labor force would be useful. And I didn’t even mention immigrants that are documented but still precarious (like H1-B holders) and how they still serve the same type of role and face similar contradictions, just usually at a higher level of pay. Etc etc I could go on but should’t, ha.
And yeah liberals have a tendency to be racist at the same time as they are trying to position themselves as anti-racist (not talking about parent, but your comment on the paradox). It is kind of fascinating.
The criminalized immigrant labor underclass is part of and subjected to key contradictions (in the dialectical sense) of American and therefore international capital. You’re 100% right that there is a substantial economic (capiralist) force that benefits from the systemic underpayment of this labor force, so they push for policies that ensure it is present and that the owner class never pays too big of a price for “enforcement” of anti-immigrant laws. At the same time, being able to underpay undocumented immigrants requires that they stay precarious and delineated into that underclass. They must be kept unable to demand better working conditions and pay through fear of ICE and deportation. So the capitalist class also pushes for precarity and criminalization so that the immigrant labor underclass is regularly disciplined.
Compounding this, they also need to deflect from their practices, for why the higher-paid jobs disappear, and rather than accept blame for trying to pay horrendously low wages, they employ the oldest of American owner class dupes: they spread a racist, xemophobic false consciousness that transfers blame to to desperate people, trying to make them both undeserving and villains for having to take shot pay under bad conditiobs., which the owner class frames as “stealing jobs”. Thus in deflecting blame they create a force against their policy of a disciplined but present undocumented labor underclass, creating a huge number of absolute racists that would restrict that labor force (through cruelty and violence) below what the owners actually materially want. And at some point, psychology and ideology begin to have a substantial impact - that point is when the direct material impacts become somewhat detached from the policy, e.g. when employers get unlimited bailouts and profits are more from finance than production.
Re: COVID, I think their primary weapon there is to drive up unemployment overall and to make workers poorer and less able to withstand longer periods of unemployment, which does include the undocumented immigrant labor underclass but also every other worker.
Re: Being anti-immigrant, the regime depends on terrorizing the underclass and also must contend with an increase in attempted crossings, so that population can increase even as anti-immigrant policies go into effect.
Re: Kamala, parent asked how this regime had anti-immigrant policies. I listed examples. I also referred to anti-immigrant policies originally because these policies are social violence of which Kamala was an active part of selling. She was and is an import piece of adopting the rightward anti-immigrant push of the Democratic political class as a whole, in contrast to any attempt to distance Harris from the Biden-Harris administration.
We should spell this out for people more often. Liberals generally fail to crack the “paradox” of right-wing anti-immigration rhetoric and those same right-wing petite bourgeoisie & corporations illegally/semi-legally putting them to work.
I think it would be useful to compile talking points resources at different levels of complexity and thoroughness, kind of like Wikipedia vs. Simplified Wikipedia. The stuff I’m saying is a well-established analysis, of course, and something we could all curate for use in discussions. Obviously there is ProleWiki, but I think a denser web with different levels of complexity / scope would be pretty useful.
In this case, a short overview of the contradictions in the maintenance of a precarious immigrant labor force would be useful. And I didn’t even mention immigrants that are documented but still precarious (like H1-B holders) and how they still serve the same type of role and face similar contradictions, just usually at a higher level of pay. Etc etc I could go on but should’t, ha.
And yeah liberals have a tendency to be racist at the same time as they are trying to position themselves as anti-racist (not talking about parent, but your comment on the paradox). It is kind of fascinating.