Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Immigrant rights activist seeks sanctuary from deportation in Chicago churchChicago immigrant rights activist Elvira Arellano started making national headlines in mid-August when she skipped a deportation appointment and took refuge in Adalberto United Methodist Church. Los Angeles homeless advocate Ted Hayes, who opposes immigration, brought her more publicity when the Minuteman border vigilante group flew him halfway across the country to try to disrupt the church's August 27 services by confronting Arellano. Although the Chicago Tribune's Andrew Wang framed the church's refusal to admit Hayes as "closing off an activist's debate," the church's pastor, Reverend Walter Coleman, says he was concerned for everyone's safety: "The Minutemen, underneath, are a very violent, racist group."Hayes, whose chief claim to fame is being an outspoken black Republican, claims that illegal immigration has lowered wages and pushed African Americans out of the building trades and service jobs that were our opportunity to have the American dream. Illegal immigration has also strained education and healthcare services in distressed communities, disproportionally affecting African Americans.But should we believe Hayes? In a 2005 Wall Street Journal profile, Hayes comes across as ignorant of economic issues. The profile quotes Hayes calling for parental responsibility to halt violent crime and extolling the civility-instilling virtues of cricket lessons for inner-city kids. But neither the Journal nor Hayes mentions the wealth and income gaps between black and white, except to pooh-pooh the problems and the people who respond to them by "demanding government programs and blaming white racism." Contrast United for a Fair Economy's Chaka Uzondu, who points out that black poverty is largely the result of "social policies that have created wealth for whites, while simultaneously blocking wealth creation for African-Americans and other racialized peoples" and that it is the actions of the government and the "corporate class" that lines their pockets who are making sure that, however immigration is shaped, it will hurt the poor and not the rich. Hayes' Minuteman supporters reveal themselves to be just as ignorant of the economics of immigration as Hayes himself. Minuteman Brian, who refused to give his last name, told MSNBC "I understand why [Arellano] wants to be here. Unfortunately, she came illegally, got caught with Social Security fraud and was asked to be deported." If Hayes and the Minutemen are primarily concerned that immigration harms the economic position of black citizens, they should be glad that Arellano and other undocumented workers use false social security numbers. As United for a Fair Economy's Jeannette Huezo and I report, the Social Security Administration reports that it receives about $7 billion per year under false Social Security numbers, while Medicare takes in $1.5 billion. The typical undocumented worker will never see a penny of his or her Social Security or Medicare contributions in benefits, so that's free money for those programs.(This magazine's May/June 2006 issue discusses similar phenomena in the context of the Canadian guest worker program.) Which is only one reason that the nine black members of Clergy Speaks Interdenominational who showed their support for Arellano on August 24 are the real advocates of civil rights in this situation, not Ted Hayes and his Minuteman allies. Speaking of civil rights, one thing for which Arellano has drawn a lot of fire is commenting that she thinks of Rosa Parks as a role model. Reverend J. Leon Thorn, pastor of St. James AME Church on Chicago's South Side, was more civil than most (Hayes especially) in his response to this. The Chicago Tribune's Oscar Avila reports that Thorn agrees that many African-Americans do not like the comparisons to Parks because, unlike Arellano, the civil-rights icon was law-abiding until confronting a law now universally viewed as unjust. Thorn said Arellano should not have entered the United States illegally but says African-American leaders should support her efforts to fix a 'broken' immigration system. 'We need to stay united as a people. If we don't stick together, God help us all.'But Thorn, though sympathetic, is still wrong. Someday, current U.S. immigration and foreign policy will also be "universally viewed as unjust." Latin Americans don't immigrate to the United States because they love the idea of stealing jobs from American citizens; they do it because the U.S. and, to some extent, other developed countries have skewed the rules of international trade in ways that impoverish their countries more every year and give them few options but to migrate. (See http://faireconomy.org/doubletax_immigrants.html; http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0506toc.html.) Reforming immigration law itself won't be enough to right the injustice, and even the proposed reforms don't go in the right direction. Uzondu writes Many people are angry with President Bush because he supports a temporary worker program. To them this is 'amnesty,' perhaps for Bush it is 'compassionate conservatism!' Really, it is neither. This Bracero-like program (guest worker) is exploitative. Corporations looking for people to work at the lowest possible wages can hire immigrant workers and then deport them to their countries of origin after they are no longer desired.The president of the AFL-CIO believes this, as well, and that any guest worker program will thus be bad news for labor unions. The Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations also opposes guest worker programs on the grounds that they are designed to divide and conquer. (Read more about their struggles in Dollars & Sense's upcoming September labor issue.) Technorati Tags: immigration, Elvira Arellano Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Hurricane Katrina survivors still rebuilding -- support their work!Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast a year ago tomorrow, and the survivors are still rebuilding. You can support their work by donating to the grassroots organizations that Dollars & Sense highlighted in our March/April issue, and by asking other people to do the same.Printed and tri-folded, this pdf makes a flyer that you can distribute. Or you can download the file and email it to your friends. Thank you for supporting these important organizations. Technorati Tag: Hurricane Katrina Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Senate rejects minimum wage/estate tax billOn August 3, Senate Democrats declined to swallow the poison pill that Republican legislators were offering them -- the bill linking an increase in the minimum wage to cuts to the estate tax that passed the House on July 30.OMB Watch has a good analysis that breaks down the costs that the estate tax cuts would have imposed. Frist opened floor debate ... insisting, if not threatening, that this would be the Senate's last opportunity, perhaps assuming that a majority supporting each of the parts translated into a majority supporting the whole. It remains to be seen whether the Democrats will continue to make the right kind of hay out of this cynical manipulation as the mid-term elections approach. Let's hope we hear them insisting at every opportunity that this was an open attempt by Republicans to undermine the increase in the minimum wage that Democrats have been working for. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). D&S on 88.1 WMBR's SpherioTune in to 88.1 FM, WMBR today at 4 for an hour of Dollars & Sense on Spherio. If you're not local, you can listen live online at http://wmbr.org/Collective member Liv Gold and I will be in the studio to talk about what Dollars & Sense does, what it's like to be involved, and what D&S is up to next -- which includes the September labor issue and a project to promote left economic reporting. John Miller will be calling in to talk about his column, Up Against the Wall Street Journal, and tell a little about D&S history. And July/August contributors Betsy Bowman and Bob Stone will be calling in to talk about Venezuela's Cooperative Revolution. Spherio is a forum for exchange bringing together local commuinities and the academia around issues of cultures, societies, and politics important to our Hemisphere. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). Econamici: The White Man's Burden by William Easterly
In his well-written, passionate and witty new book, The White Man's Burden (from the Kipling poem), development economist William Easterly explains "Why the West's efforts to aid the Rest have done so much ill and so little good": First, third-world poverty does not arise from lack of capital, or incapacity of local populations. It arises from bad government, or more colorfully, government by "gangsters," "warlords" and "kleptocrats." Often, that bad government is a colonial legacy. The wealthy French slave colony of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, ended in the rebellion of 1791-1804--leaving perpetual war between former slaves and a mulatto elite. Colonials drew arbitrary straight lines on a map--creating national boundaries that put together slave raiders and their victims, like the Northern and Southern Sudanese, or separated coherent groups like the Kurds. Then, as a strategy for control, the colonials pitted groups against each other, such as Tutsis versus Hutus. Second there is the utopian arrogance of "Planners" as Easterly labels them: academics like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia, or officials and staff of the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, or Western governments. Planners create grandiose programs, eg. to "end poverty," without investigating conditions on the ground or obtaining advice, requests, or feedback from intended beneficiaries. Then, they provide the assistance to and through those same bad governments--which they may try to "reform" by imposing complex conditions and detailed reporting. When the assistance doesn't produce results, the conditions aren't met and the reports don't arrive--the Planners claim "progress" and continue the program. Joseph Stiglitz and others criticize the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for imposing cruel conditions on third-world beneficiaries. There are widespread calls for third-world debt relief. Easterly goes further: Much lending is worse than wasted. Not only does it fail to reach the poor, but it helps bad rulers retain power, repeatedly bailing out the likes of the Duvaliers and Mobutu. Aid also reflects Planners' economic and ideological priorities, not those of recipients. (Surprise!) It's not just aid in the form of subsidized cotton exports or engineering contracts with multinational corporations. Easterly fulminates at AIDS assistance directed to treatment instead of prevention. Resources to treat one HIV-infected individual could avert thousands of infections if spent on condoms or on inexpensive medicine to stop virus transmission from mothers to newborns. Throughout the book, Easterly highlights successful small projects of enterprising locals, whom he calls "Searchers." Unlike Planners, Searchers carefully check out their "customers" and experiment with ways to deliver what the customers want. Successful outside aid is aid that supports such narrow local initiatives, primarily in health and education, where success can be measured. In Bangladesh, the "People's Clinic" trains teenage girls as bicycle paramedics. In Ethiopia, a British NGO enables Ethiopians to pipe clean water to poor villages. Born poor in Ghana, Patrick Awuah had the luck to win a scholarship to Swarthmore, where he studied engineering and economics, and the further luck to become a Microsoft millionaire. He returned to Ghana to found a private university, providing free tuition to poor students. As for you and me, Easterly recommends a website, www.globalgiving.com. Here, Searchers can post their projects, and we can browse for projects by type and area of the world, and read about other contributors' experience with particular projects. I just contributed to a Lebanon relief fund. Along with Helping Others Help Themselves by David Ellerman (which I discussed a few months back) The White Man's Burden belongs on the reading list of courses on third world economics or politics. Polly Cleveland More Econamici Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). The Short Run: Trouser TroubleTrouser TroubleAn item from "The Short Run" in the July/August issue of Dollars & Sense. An incident at the recent World Cup competition reaffirmed the power of advertisers in sports. On June 16th, about 1,000 fans watched a match between the Netherlands and Côte d'Ivoire at a Stuttgart stadium in their underpants because their trousers had not been allowed in. The orange lederhosen the Dutch fans were wearing in support of their team bore the name of Bavaria, a Dutch beer. But Bavaria was not an official World Cup sponsor, so officials from soccer’s governing body, FIFA, confiscated the pants. European Sponsorship Association chair Nigel Currie said, "Sponsors pay huge amounts of money, and it is all about TV exposure." Sure--and some fans got more exposure than they bargained for. Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!). |
