Historians recall the 1966 election, in part, for its epic battle between avowed racist Lester Maddox and closet neo-racist Bo Callaway.
Lester won, but it was the last time Democrats would unite around an avowed racist. Four years later saw the election of Gov. Jimmy Carter, and a gradual retreat among Democrats which continues to this day.
Georgia took a similar leadership role this week when its legislature approved SB 529, a rather stiff anti-immigration bill, and brought to the fore a new Maddox, Sen. Chip Rogers. Among its sillier provisions is one to impose a 5% tax on all out-of-the-country (Mexico) wire transfers, when the person placing the order can’t prove they are in the country legally. I called it the "stick to your mule" bill, since all you need to avoid the tax is to know someone legal who will place the order for you.
In passing the bill, pro-business Republicans who really paid for this legislature were silenced, possibly by promises that enforcers would not really go after farms and homebuilders. They were told that this was the price of maintaining their majorities, and that Democrats would be fooled into taking the immigrants’ side.
Maybe. It’s very hard for me, as a Georgian, to see a system whereby a large group of people are given no status, yet continue to work under exploitative conditions, as anything other than racist.
The argument being made by immigration supporters is that Mexicans are taking jobs Americans "do not want to do." Well, yes and no. They are taking jobs, at wages and under working conditions native-born Americans will not accept. They are working very hard in conditions Americans would find violate their rights.
In Georgia, today, Mexicans are the new niggers. Black folks resist exploitation, many employers will not accept the idea of offering living wages and good working conditions, and so a new underclass is imported.
Unlike most, I think this issue actually cuts both ways. I know why
Republicans are split. Nativists don’t want the jobs Mexicans are
doing, not really, but they feel compelled to fight for their culture,
like Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York. Business interests don’t
want to lose the extra profits Mexican labor represents. A lot of
plantations could not survive the end of slavery.
On the other hand,
as a Democrat, I can see both sides. Immigrants are not the only folks
being exploited here, and I’m not one for exploitation. Blacks and poor
whites who might take those jobs are not the only people being
exploited. Everyone who wants Americans to have a decent living, to be
One Nation Under God (and not two or three), should see the depressive
impact of this new underclass.
There are Democrats, in fact, who support immigration reform. Andre Walker, who writes the blog Georgia Unfiltered, is one. There are many others. And Chip Rogers
(he’s in the second picture above, at a Gainesville forum, defending his bill to an audience
that included many Mexican-Americans) obviously feels he has a winner.
In the near term, I’m afraid he does. In the longer term, the Democratic response needs to include a higher minimum wage, with strict enforcement, and guarantees on working conditions, so native-born Americans will take the jobs that Mexican immigrants now hold, or so that incentives are created to designing machines that do those jobs.
