“It’s not about racism, it’s about law and order.”

“It’s not about racism, it’s about law and order.”…a response to the immigration marches I read last month.

Now of course the true debate around ‘illegal immigrants’ are neither that they are immigrants (concerning racism) nor that they are illegal (law and order). What this is all about really concern economics, not law or ethnicity.

but now someone has gotten it all right, but so wrong:

“The rich, they’re totally oblivious to this situation—what the illegal immigration, the illegal housing, the day labor is doing to us [‘us’ being legal middle class citizens trying to exist]…Everyone’s exploiting these people [immigrants]—landlords, the contractors. And now we [middle class Americans] can’t afford to pay taxes. People like me who want to live the suburban dream, we’re being pushed out unless we join the illegality.” (NYTime Frontpage story)

Yet the speaker of these words, while properly diagnosing the problem as economically driven big business exploitation on both sides of the border, thinks the solution, the way to save these immigrants is to throw them out. He is trying to only buy from American owned, larger chain businesses who he thinks only employs legal workers. But could it be that the very American Dream of the middle class is producing its own nightmare lived out before them, exploited laborer who they think are ruining their lives.

What we really need to do is join the illegality of the situation, join with and support the illegal immigrants against the exploitation in general, rather than merely undergirding American exploitation against legal workers. By joining the illegality, I don’t mean going and breaking the law, but standing against what ‘law and order’ is meant to protect, the economic status quo.

-soon i’ll relate this to ‘workers rights’ movements and ‘civil rights’ movements and how they are being played off each other in relation to ‘illegal immigrants.’