Robert Reich: The Xenophobe Party

[marmar]

The Xenophobe Party
Monday, April 22, 2013


The xenophobia has already begun.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today urged him to reconsider immigration legislation because of the bombings in Boston. “The facts emerging in the Boston Marathon bombing have exposed a weakness in our current system,” Paul writes. “If we don’t use this debate as an opportunity to fix flaws in our current system, flaws made even more evident last week, then we will not be doing our jobs.”

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), senior Republican senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is responsible for an immigration reform bill, is using much the same language – suggesting that the investigation of two alleged Boston attackers will “help shed light on the weaknesses of our system.”

Can we just get a grip? Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a naturalized American citizen. He came to the United States when he was nine years old. He attended the public schools of Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from where I lived. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://robertreich.org/post/48640198120

[pipoman]

1. Yeah Bob, It's too late

to fix the damage you have done...that being the traitor to labor that you are...you can write reasonable pieces til the cows come home, but now you are just another wanker with a keyboard...too bad you chose money and influence over Democratic/liberal values when you had the chance to make a difference, and continue to deny the role you played in destroying US labor with rethug ideology..how about starting with acknowledging you were wrong and asking forgiveness rather than standing firm that you were right in the face of facts as they are...reminds me of another Bob..

[ctsnowman]

2. +1

[xchrom]

3. du rec. nt

[Cleita]

4. Reich is being so polite. Just call them the bigots and racists that they are. n/t

[pampango]

5. Quite true. republicans, particularly their base, do not trust anything about foreigners:

their immigrants, their poverty, their trade, their religion, their democracy or lack thereof.

Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement are more likely than all other Americans to support reductions in foreign aid.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/03/04/will-budget-cuts-isolationism/

Playing to ignorant prejudice, these (conservative anti-immigration) groups falsely suggest that immigrants are “takers”. ... Mainstream economists have thoroughly debunked this general stereotype of immigrants as takers, finding that immigrants are a net positive for the economy and pay more into the system than they take out.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2013/02/08/52377/immigrants-are-makers-not-takers/

... one ideological doctrine about which there is almost full consensus regarding its importance for understanding the far-right worldview, it is that of nationalism.

http://www.ctc.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ChallengersFromtheSidelines.pdf