I read The Accidental American by Rinku Sen and Fekkak Mamdouh earlier this year. It's about Fekkak's journey of immigrating to the US, working in the restaurant industry, and organizing immigrant workers to fight for their rights, but it's also about immigration in general. Although a bit disorganized, the book does provide one of the most succint and helpful explanations of why we are in this situation today, especially with regard to immigrants from Mexico. I still have a copy if anyone would like to read it.
Racewire has a video up of Fekkak. It can be found here. I like his comment that we cannot ship the restaurant jobs to China. A lot of our jobs have been moved elsewhere, where the pay is less and the labor conditions are less stringent. But it is impossible to ship labor in the hotel/restaurant sector, construction, and other service industries overseas, which is why we need to be vigilant about making sure workers are not being exploited.
It's really neat to see an immigrant helping other immigrants. Where I work, I usually see the opposite; one of the first things a new group of immigrants will try to do upon coming to the U.S. is make it more difficult for more people from their place of origin to come over as well. You see this on a national level in Michelle Malkin complaining about "anchor babies" and Lou Dobbs (whose wife is a Guatemalan immigrant) with his nativist rants, but it's true at the state and local levels as well.
Posted by: Leighton | June 18, 2009 at 09:53 PM
Oh, and I almost forgot Bobby Jindal, himself an immigrant from India, who is a consistent closed-border advocate. Lots of examples all over the place of this attitude.
Posted by: Leighton | June 18, 2009 at 09:55 PM
Lou Dobbs' wife is a Guatemalan immigrant? Seriously I do not understand that man.
I'm suprised that you have seen immigrants making it more difficult for others to immigrate here - I have seen very supportive Central American/Mexican immigrant communities in IL and OK. It seems like a huge network of jobs and housing. Obviously "immigrants" are not a monolithic group, though.
Posted by: Natalie | June 19, 2009 at 07:11 PM
It seems like classism mostly, with occasional racial or regional undertones. Clients at or below the median income in their country of origin tend to be supportive of other immigrants, but some of our more well-to-do clients will privately express the notion that they're the cream of the crop of whatever place they're from, and don't want their reputation in their newfound home being sullied by "lesser specimens" who allegedly don't know how to assimilate as well. The former are numerically more common, but the latter have money to spend on lobbying and are therefore more influential on policymakers.
It's kind of like how if the U.S. were the second-richest country in the world, Ivy League New Englanders would immigrate to the richest country and try to make the immigration process more expensive in general, and more challenging in particular for people from the Deep South.
My boss "knows" Lou Dobbs second-hand, and apparently he has a very happy marriage, as his wife is one of the self-proclamed "worthy" immigrants who is very prejudiced against the bulk of Guatemalan immigrants.
Posted by: Leighton | June 30, 2009 at 11:28 AM
That is true - it seems loyalties lie along income lines rather than race/ethnicity. Although I don't think it's higher-earning immigrants that are making the process more expensive or challenging - the US gov't seems to be at fault there!!
Posted by: Natalie | June 30, 2009 at 08:23 PM
True enough; I just don't deal with lawmakers on a day-to-day basis, so it's easy to focus on the things that are right in front of me.
Posted by: Leighton | July 02, 2009 at 03:37 PM