I'm pretty much middle of the road on the immigration issue. Organized labor along with the vast majority of Americans don't want corporate America outsourcing or insourcing skilled jobs that could be performed by American citizens. Hiring immigrants from underdeveloped nations has a long term effect of depressing American wages, thus transforming our entire economy into Wal-Mart business model of a serf driven economy where educated workers, skilled trades workers and unskilled and uneducated workers are all paupers under the same feudal oligarchy of global capitalism.
I'm not overly concerned about Mexican farm laborers crossing the border from Mexico to harvest our crops. It's a waste of time and taxpayer to build the Tortilla Curtain along our southern border.
I am concerned that those global corporations who are given the gift of unlimited access to the lucrative American consumer market, also provide decent paying jobs to Americans. WalMart didn't become a retailing giant from having full access to the Chinese consumer market. If WalMart wants to hire Chinese prison camp slave labor to produce their goods, let WalMart relocate to China where the socialist tax rate is 90% and the Chinese government is the technical owner of any corporation that does business there. If WalMart wants to hire Chinese and sell American, they should be slapped with a hefty job protection tariff for Chinese manufactured goods they want to sell in America.
The current immigration flap is relevant to the larger big picture of mega-monopolies and the global migration of capitalism. Rupert Murdoch is an immigrant from Australia who migrated to America to establish vertically integrated media monopoly based on the WalMart business model.
In theory, Mr. Murdoch was subject to the same immigration laws as Hispanic folks in Mexico or black folks who live in Caribbean nations. But they aren't enforced the same way.
I'm friends with a reggae performer named Winston Rodney who lives in St. Ann's parish in Jamaica. Winston performs under the name of Burnin' Spear and every time Winston wants a 30 day work visa to tour as a musical performer in the United States he has to jump through hoops to get approval for his visa. Apparently American authorities fear that Winston will use his short term work visa to overstay his welcome and cheapen our bleached white culture with his music. As one American immigration official put it on a visa denial for Winston, "Burin' Spear is noted for his marijuana use and his radical Negro protest music." Stamp his dossier as "undesirable."
Fortunately Winston got a 60 visa to tour and record in the United States this summer but only after his American label accepted full legal responsibility for Winston's behavior should he go underground, launch a terrorist attack on America.The funny part about Winston's dilemma is he regards his trips to the Untied States as a "necessary evil" to promote his musical career but is never happy until he touches ground in his native Jamaica and is back in his modest home in St. Ann's parish.
Contrary to Winston's visa woes,inbound tourists from the USA are welcomed with open arms by the Jamaican government. If you are a white American tourist looking for some action at the Hedonism Resort in Mo Bay, no problem, mon. If you are a black Jamaican national who wants to tour American with an internationally acclaimed reggae band, forget about it.
If you're Rupert Murdoch, the King of All Media,no questions asked,"Will you be needing full American citizenship with that green card, Mr. Murdoch?
Rupert Murdoch gets his green card and settles in America and within 15 minutes of stepping off the boat, has Congress deregulating the media and trashing the Fairness Act so he can take over the American media on to make it a another business division of his global right wing brainwashing operation. And Murdoch is still at it chipping away at our free and independent news media one law at at time.
The New York Times (6/25/07):
In the fall of 2003, a piece of Rupert Murdoch’s sprawling media empire was in jeopardy.
Congress was on the verge of limiting any company from owning local television stations that reached more than 35 percent of American homes. Mr. Murdoch’s Fox stations reached nearly 39 percent, meaning he would have to sell some.
A strike force of Mr. Murdoch’s lobbyists joined other media companies in working on the issue. The White House backed the industry, and in a late-night meeting just before Thanksgiving, Congressional leaders agreed to raise the limit — to 39 percent.
A freakin' strike force of lobbyists, ladies and gentlemen! An elite team of Murdoch lobbyists in full SWAT gear storming the lobbies of Congress with tear gas and riot batons to club those legislative obstructionists into submission!
But seriously folks...Rupie had a $250,000 book deal as a "gift" for Senate power broker Trent Lott that was the deal maker on the most recent legislation to allow Murdoch to set a higher limit on the number of television stations Murdoch could purchase:
New York Times:
One leader of the Congressional movement to limit ownership was Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi. But in the end, he, too, agreed to the compromise. It turns out he had a business connection to Mr. Murdoch. Months before, Harper Collins, Mr. Murdoch’s publishing house, had signed a $250,000 book deal to publish Mr. Lott’s memoir, "Herding Cats," records and interviews show.
You don't have to be Judith Reagan, former Harper Collins wunderkind editor to know that a book about cat herding by Trent Lott isn't going to rocket to the top of the Times Bestseller List.
Rupert Murdoch is the short span of 20 years has singlehandedly transformed our once independent press into a cesspool of tabloid journalism and an instrument of shameless propaganda for ruling class. In Murdoch's world there's no more room for a dogged Woodard & Bernstein tag team journalists meeting in parking garages with Deep Throat to get the goods on a corrupt President to protect truth, justice and the American Way. I get nostalgic for the good old days of a free press and fearless investigative reporting.
This era's rogue president and Nixonian demon of corruption, George W. Bush, smirks at the assembled journalists, while his staff passes out the canned questions for the them to ask at the president's press briefing. Any spontaneous question that deviates from the script, and the president pushes the silent alarm button on the podium to have the Secret Service discreetly escort the ruffian reporter from the building. That ruffian didn't play by the White House rules and after Karl Rove calls the editor of his newspaper, that so-called journalist won't be able to find work in this town covering the spring flower show for a garden club newsletter.
How has Rupert Murdoch managed to trash the Fairness Act, deregulate media ownership, and make Congress and the FCC his errand boys, in the 20 short years since he entered this country as a humble immigrant with a green car? That's easy: Rupert Murdoch is the King of All Media and he makes his writes his own laws and regulatory rules and his errand boys in Congress pass them.
New York Times:
The American newspaper industry has never seen a publisher quite like him. Mr. Murdoch has long been a pivotal figure in England and Australia, and in the dozen years since he has moved his base of operations to this country, he has insinuated himself into the political and financial fabric of the United States. His businesses have thrived in a highly regulated environment in part because of his remarkable ability to mold the rules to fit his needs.
If anyone tries to step in tries to stop the King of All Media from taking over America, as Ted Kennedy did, Murdoch begins his own personal vendetta against that politician:
New York Times:
Then Mr. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, stepped in. Mr. Kennedy’s liberal politics had made him a target of Murdoch-owned news media outlets, particularly The Boston Herald, which often referred to Mr. Kennedy as "Fat Boy." He engineered a legislative maneuver that forced an infuriated Mr. Murdoch to sell his beloved New York Post.
Murdoch bought back the New York Post five years later just to show Fat Boy. Rupert Murdoch wasn't going to let some has-been liberal Kennedy clan member in the People's Socialist Republic of Taxachusetts stop the King of All Media.
Remember in the 1980s when the Japanese economy was robust and Japanese businesses were buying American real estate and taking over American owned companies. Remember how conservatives were infuriated that foreigners were taking over our economy?
Those Japanese business syndicates in the Eighties had about 1% of the political and economic influence that Rupert Murdoch wields in American in the year 2007. Where's the conservative outrage? Could it be that the King of All Media is a right wing white guy, just like them, and conservatives only reserve their outrage for immigrants that belong to non-white racial minorities?
No way Jose! That just couldn't be because conservatives keep telling us how racially colorblind they are! Conservatives don't just love Rupert because he's "white like me"; they love Rupie because he's ultra right-wing white guy who owns Fox News a stable of tabloid newspapers and trash TV. stations that make the Murdoch Media Group the journalistic equivalent of the Wal-Mart of All Media. Rupert Murdoch, King of All Media, another humble immigrant who rises up to become the media king.
Aside from being xenophobic yahoos, conservatives are flat-out stupid. They worry that a Mexican stoop laborer who makes 4 dollars an hour picking grapes is more of a threat to our economy that the Australian born King of All Media who makes $40 billion a year by telling us on Fox News how we're supposed to hate them Mexican immigrants.