June 24, 2003

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Estrada Nomination; Let the CHiPS Fall Where they may

From: Wolfgang Zernik

Joe Guzzardi's piece on The Black Caucus [Why The Black Caucus Looks The Other Way On Immigration] was very well researched and written. It is right on target except for the big elephant in the room which you and other writers on VDARE.COM consistently manage to ignore: illegal immigrants are welcomed because in many cases they are better workers than the Americans (particularly Blacks) that they have displaced.

Joe writes very typically:

"Legal and illegal immigration has undercut blacks from the jobs they once held in meat plants, service industries, and on construction crews. In many cases those were union jobs that paid good wages with full benefits. Now those jobs go to illegal aliens who work for pennies above the minimum wage. "

Now if you are going to claim that the only reason that employers prefer illegal aliens is that they are cheaper you are going to have to prove that!

Personally I believe that this claim is quite false.

Here are just a few examples:

1. In domestic service, where blacks were often employed in the past, almost everyone now hires immigrants from Latin America or Asia whether legal or not. The reason is that they have a better attitude and are more honest and reliable. If you needed to hire a nursemaid for your children, would you hire a black woman today? I suspect you would not. It has nothing to do with salary.

2. In lawn and gardening maintenance, all of the people I see doing this here in Pennsylvania are speaking Spanish. They do good work and they have a pleasant attitude. You don't feel at risk to have them around your property. It has nothing to do with salary either.

3. In child adoption (admittedly off the subject but very relevant) I see many Asian or South American children adopted by white families. I see no black adoptees at all, even though many are available. [VDARE.COM NOTE: Depends what you mean by available. In fact, white couples find it very hard to adopt black children, thanks to the National Association of Black Social Workers, which has been fighting against white adoptive parents since 1971. Congress outlawed this form of reverse discrimination in 1995, but that doesn't mean it stopped.] The reason is that we white Americans tend to like Asians and Latinos. We do not much like or trust blacks and we prefer not to have them around.

No wonder that The Black Caucus or even VDARE.COM does not want to discuss the elephant in the room. It is much safer to blame the whole problem on low salaries. But that's not the main reason - is it, Joe?

Peter Brimelow comments: AHEM! You can tell that Wolfgang is an (legal) immigrant. The natives are much too cowed to say this sort of thing.

But, even if it's true that Hispanics are better workers than blacks – in the immigrant generation at least – the fact is that American blacks are here. They are American citizens. If they did not face immigrant competition, they would be, on the margin, more likely to be employed and drawn into the majority culture.

Things weren't always this bad. It was precisely the fidelity of black domestic servants in the South that Booker T. Washington cited in his great 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech as one of the reasons Americans should halt the First Great Wave of immigration.