It's easy to skewer David Frum, as I have done myself on foreign policy issues — a neocon deluxe who has but lightly modified that since becoming a Never Trumper as well, and thus ardently defending The Blob/Deep State.
Domestic policy? Well, even blind hogs find acorns, and while his new long read on immigration isn't all right, it's not all wrong, either.
White maladjustment to the changing face of America is not a good moral reason to reject "open borders" or anything close to it — though it may indeed be a good political reason.
Wage undercutting by illegal immigrants — who spread from replacing their legal Latinx brothers and sisters in farm work to moving into housekeeping, gardening and construction work (many Southwestern big cities, it's hard to get a new residential development built without them) IS arguably a good moral reason.
Before we go further? The Flaws of Frum, just a few.
Yes, more people ever are making $2 a day globally. But, making a 20-year-old comparison without adjusting for inflation is a huge fail. That's reason No. 1 life is NOT "all well" whether in Honduras or Haiti, Zambia or Zimbabwe, Ukraine or Uzbekistan.
Second, speaking of Honduras? And Latinx? Frum (of course) ignores how we have repeatedly destabilized most countries in Latin America. And yes, most countries. (The map is actually wrong in not coloring Honduras red as well.)
And thus, Hispanics who DON'T have a better life in front of them come north. If we were honest, Frum, we'd call these people refugees.
Third and related? Frum doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.
Fourth? Frum also ignores that many Hispanic illegal immigrants normally plan to move home eventually. But, Trump's wall makes that harder.
Fifth, Frum engages in stereotyping by pretending that the vast majority of illegal immigration is Latinx, and that they're new arrivals. Neither is true.
The shorter David Frum? Ignore American coups, less wall and more law enforcement bodies on the border, and ignore realities of immigration.
Now, per the above?
Liberals is really, anymore, just a term for left-neoliberals. They do exist, and per Michaels, one distinguishing mark is not wanting to call themselves neoliberal on the issues where they ... are neoliberal.
Left-liberals are those who admit there are at least some problems with market capitalism, especially in conjunction with a deregulatory state, but don't want to discuss just how bad the problem is, and also in the US don't want to walk outside the Democratic party.
Leftists are those who go beyond that. (And, I don't care if you claim to be a leftist; if you won't put even one toe outside the duopoly, you're a left-liberal.)
Back to immigration.
Liberals, if not favoring totally open borders, lean in general toward more open borders than the other two groups. Why? They're neoliberals at end. Open borders lets them boost both neoliberal market capitalism with cheap labor, and boost diversity by changing the demographic face a bit more. They may think this demographic change boosts Democratic electoral chances, a claim about which they should be much more circumspect. As for the jobs being an economic boost? Hell, many conservatives, while being careful with phrasing, will admit cheap labor does goose the economy, and it can be either legal or illegal. And, speaking of, liberals often are no better than Frum at distinguishing the two.
And, librul Deadspin shows this (love calling it out at times) by getting Frum's character right and his motivations at least semi-right but going semi-wrong on its call-out of his call-out of Joaquin Castro et al. Castro is not offering amnesty per se. BUT, if he were? An amnesty for all illegals IS the functional equivalent, at least, of abandoning border control, especially when the Reagan amnesty, we were told, was a once-off.
Left-liberals and leftists have less unity on the issue. (The Nation found this out a decade ago when it wrote a semi-open borders piece and got flamed by a number of readers in letters to the editor.)
Leftists will generally, as I did above, point out the US imperialism that has caused the immigration push. Left-liberals may not go that deep; leftists will also point out the capitalist tsunami behind all this more ardently. Both will also generally distinguish between legal and illegal immigration and will likely express different strategies for both. And, left-liberals and lefists, more than liberals, know that African-Americans are no more immigration friendly than whites, if that much.
For this leftist, addressing illegal immigration begins with addressing American right-wing coups.
Second, this skeptical leftist will agree with Frum on cutting, or even ending, the family reunification portion of today's immigration law and reframing the law on skills.
Related to this, leftists will reject that the US has some shortage of gray- or white-collar STEM or similar jobs that need filling via legal immigration. That's not true.
A skeptical leftist will also note that we can't solve the world's problems; we can do what we can to not make them worse. That means no more coups. And no more lying about coups.
If liberals are really left-neoliberals who don't like that name, then many neocons are, aside from Israel, a hybrid of paleocons and neoliberals in some way.
No comments:
Post a Comment