From ... in Social issues — Feb 16, 2022

'Day Without Immigrants' Amnesty Protests Fall Flat

A much-touted “Day Without Immigrants” strike by illegal migrants Monday failed to have any economic impact, largely because illegals move to the United States to work, often on behalf of their families at home, or to pay off the employers who pay their smuggling bills. “Nearly 100 people gathered at the Oregon Capitol Monday, joining other “Day Without Immigrants” protests around the nation,” the Statesman Journal reported. “Hundreds” of people reportedly turned out in Kansas City on February 14. That is a very small share of the 150,000 migrants who live in the Kansas City metro area, according to an estimate by the pro-migration American Immigration Council. “Hundreds” of people protested in Washington D.C. while waving Mexican and Honduran flags, according to pro-migration activist Erika Andiola: The protestors called for amnesties and a “path to citizenship” although most politicians reluctantly recognize that the public strongly opposes labor migration. In Houston, organizers claimed “between 2,000 to 3,000 people attended the local event on Monday,” said ABC13.com. which quoted one of the organizers: “The idea is that folks take time off of school and work in order to bring attention to the plight of immigrants,” said Cesar Espinosa of FIEL Houston. “We want to show that immigrants make a vital part of our economy and society.” Roughly 1.7 million migrants live in the Houston metro area, according to the American Immigration Council. Seven people protested in Boston, Mass. Ten people protested at the bay bridge in San Francisco. Perhaps two hundred protested in New York. A hundred or more protested in San Francisco. Illegal migrants argued that they are needed by Americans as if Americnas cannot do the migrants’ jobs or develop machines that can do the migrants’ work. “If it wasn’t for us, what would this country be?” Monica Valdivia told Action News in Fresno, California. In Utah’s Salt Lake City, protesters “waved Mexican flags and handmade signs that read ‘Citizenship now’ [and] one protester held a banner that read, ‘America runs on immigrants.'” according to the Salt Lake Tribune. View of a sign reading Humane Migratory Reform Now during a protest against U.S. migration policies in Playas de Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico, on February 14, 2022. (GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images) In reality, migrants are not vital to the U.S. economy. Instead, they have been used by employers to help push many millions of hard-working Americans out of jobs and decent wages.

The inflow of hard-working illegals has greatly reduced the share of Americans who have jobs and has allowed employers to convert payroll for Americans into profits and stock market value for investors.

The immigration council estimates that almost 700,000 migrants live in the Philadelphia area. But just fifty people turned out in Philadelphia, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “The question is whether 11 million immigrants in the U.S. deserve the same love as [citizens] everyone else,” said Maria Serna, an organizer of the rally.

The U.S. constitution provides citizens with unique rights and obligations and does not extend all of those rights to foreigners or to illegal migrants. This focus on fellow national citizens allows a democratic community of mutual obligation and respect, and such national political entities are the norm throughout the world.

The national democratic political structures, however, are denounced by U.S. progressives who hate the legal enforcement of national borders even as they also insist on tight legal enforcement to prevent theft of their property or dilution of their trademarked college credentials. Demonstrators gather to call for immigration reform at Lafayette Square near the White House in Washington, DC, on February 14, 2022. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images) The quasi-religious hate of the pro-migration progressives is exemplified by Jia Lynn Yang, the top editor for domestic news at the New York Times, and the progressive author of a 2020 pro-migration book, titled “One Mighty and Irresistible Tide”: Set against all the sins of America’s past — from slavery to the removal and genocide of American Indians — the arrival of open-hearted immigrants, grateful for a chance at a new life on our shores serves as a constant renewal of hope in the American project. If there is salvation for this country, it very well may lie in the underlying gratitude of a refugee whose life has been saved by the granting of a visa. Many illegals work for low wages in the nation’s restaurant industries, so their employers recognize the economic incentives to campaign for amnesties. CNN reported on February 16: chef and entrepreneur José Andrés told NPR this week, “It was a very easy decision” to close his restaurants in Washington, D.C., saying he wants to support his employees who had planned not to work Thursday. Celebrity chef Rick Bayless, who’s famous for popularizing the complex flavors of Mexico’s cuisine, says he closed four Chicago restaurants for the day out of respect for his staff’s vote. NPR reported on other D.C. employers who back their illegal-migrant labor: Ahmad Erfani, who was born in Iran and grew up in France, says he’s closing his bakery, Le Caprice. “Mostly the people who work here are immigrants. We spoke with them, they thought it’s good for solidarity with the others to not work,” he tells member station WAMU. Erfani added, “They are hard workers. I am not happy when I see they are not very happy these days, because it is difficult.

They work hard, they come here six in the morning. It is not very comfortable for us.” The Salt Lake City Tribune reported: Cresencio Pacheco said he missed work at his construction job to attend the protest. “I’ve only lived in the country for a little bit, but I’ve come to realize the importance of immigrants, of illegal immigrants, particularly those who pay taxes year after year,” he said in Spanish. Pacheco attended the protest with his co-workers and his employer, who allowed him to miss work for the day to advocate for immigrant rights. Pacheco’s employer, Craig Munford, who owns a construction company, Clearcut Building Solutions, was also in attendance. He said, for years, he’s seen some of his employees or their family members be deeply impacted by the lack of a path to citizenship.

The vast majority of illegal migrants — at least 9 million — worked through the claimed strike because they are poor, desperate, and diligent. On February 7, Reuters described one of the migrants who was delivered to a slaughterhouse by the tactic alliance of coyotes, progressives, cartels, and President Joe Biden’s federal agencies: At age 16, when most kids in the United States are halfway through high school, Amelia Domingo found herself working on chicken processing machines in this farm town and deep in debt to loan sharks in her native Guatemala. After borrowing $10,000 for smugglers to get her through Mexico, Amelia crossed into Arizona last February and turned herself over to [Customs and Border Protection] immigration officials.

They led her, she said, from a crowded border facility to a shelter for unaccompanied minors. After about a month, officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees shelters for migrant children, released her to a sister here in Alabama. [...] One day, she said, she hopes to return to Guatemala. First, though, she must continue wiring most of her wages home, where her parents pay off the loan sharks and what she said is a dizzying interest rate of 10% per month. She’ll return, she said, “if I ever have the means.” Legal migrants worked during the claimed strike. “We support the rally, but, like a business, we have to be open,” said Juan Carlos Romero, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. He heads the local Mexican Business Association.” The claimed protests were touted by the pro-migration editors at the Google advertising company: Migration moves money, and since at least 1990, the federal government has tried to extract people from poor countries so they can serve U.S. investors as cheap workers, government-aided consumers, and high-density renters in the U.S. economy. That economic strategy has no stopping point, and it is harmful to ordinary Americans because it cuts their career opportunities and their wages while it also raises their housing costs. Extraction migration also curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, and widens the regional wealth gaps between the Democrats’ coastal states and the Republicans’ Heartland states. An economy built on extraction migration also radicalizes Americans’ democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture and allows wealthy elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society. Unsurprisingly, a wide variety of little-publicized polls do show deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.

The opposition is growing, anti-establishment, multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity that Americans owe to each other.

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