CORPORATE IMMIGRATION

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (1/15/05)

Recently, Alberto Gonzalez, the United States Attorney General, directed that the immigration court system be comprehensively reviewed. Gonzalez said he was concerned about the "intemperate and even abusive" conduct by immigration judges. He added that their "work must improve." He went on to say that immigrants be "treated with courtesy and respect." It takes no wit to figure out that the directive comes from the White House and President Bush.

Since "courtesy and respect" aren’t hallmarks of the Bush Administration and most illegal immigrants come from Mexico, Gonzalez’s high sounding memo appears at first a crassly political appeal for the Hispanic vote. However, since the Bush Administration is the handmaiden of global corporations, Gonzalez’s chilling directive aims to loosen further our borders to illegal immigrants from Mexico by intimidating the immigration judges.

As the terrorist threat looms, the Bush Administration fails to protect our borders and does nothing to stop illegal immigration from Mexico. It’s seeming ineptitude and the pathetic gestures of a hapless Senator Jon Kyl confirm the assumption that the Bush Administration and the Republican Party aren’t concerned about the threat of terrorism posed by illegal immigration but are concerned about the supply of cheap labor for global corporations.

Gonzalez’s icy directive fits hand and glove with Bush’s desire for a guest worker program in which illegal immigrants will be baptized as legal immigrants to supply cheap labor for corporate interests. Corporate types try to reassure Americans that illegal immigrants from Mexico are filling jobs that Americans won’t take as though the jobs were inherently unappealing.

Their reassurance sounds plausible when Americans see many illegal immigrants washing dishes in restaurants, hauling rocks, picking up trash, and cleaning out cesspools. These corporate types and the Republicans don’t mention the jobs taken by cheaply paid illegal immigrants in the construction and manufacturing industries. American craftsmen are disappearing not because their work is unappealing, but because they are being priced out of the market by the cheap wages paid illegal immigrants.

As Marxists, Bush and the Republicans believe the only reality in life is economic. Any other values are dismissed as impediments to economic progress, which translated means bloated corporate profits and lewd salaries for corporate types along with the reduction of the middle class. The final result will be a two-tiered American society, corporate nobility and serfs.

In ancient Greece the lowest class were called idiotes. Serfs without a vote, they were Marx’s lumpenproletariat. If Bush’s economic and social policies achieve realization, middle-class Americans will become idiotes.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006