The Racial Solidarity Case for Immigration “Reform”

Immigration “reform” has something to do with amnesty for the 11 million or so who are now here illegally, but it has a great deal more to do with drastically increasing the future flow of legal immigrants. The Senate’s bill would authorize tens of millions of new immigrants over and above present levels, almost all of them–contrary to breathless news accounts of Mark Zuckerberg’s lobbying–low-skill. Why would anyone consider this a good idea? It will crush America’s working class by increasing unemployment and driving down wages. It will strain the nation’s welfare and health care systems to the breaking point. So why does anyone support it?

Candid answers to that question are hard to come by, but former ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis let the cat out of the bag at this year’s Congressional Black Caucus political conference. It’s all about racial solidarity, and political power:

ACORN’s former CEO Bertha Lewis urged Africans-Americans to support increased immigration as a strategy to gain political power.

Bertha Lewis

“We got some Latino cousins, we got some Asian cousins, we got some Native-American cousins, we got all kind of cousins,” said Lewis, who spoke Thursday at the annual political conference of the Congressional Black Caucus.

“Cousins need to get together because if we’re going to be [part of the non-white] majority, it makes sense for black people in this country to get down with immigration reform,” said Lewis, whose ACORN group was formally disbanded in 2010 after a series of scandals. …

Lewis did not mention solidarity with whites, or with people who define themselves as Americans, in her appeal for power.

Others at the conference seconded Lewis’s racist remarks:

[H]er appeal for non-white solidarity was backed up by New York Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke.

“What will happen with comprehensive immigration reform will be a new landscape of humanity in the United States of America,” Clarke told the attendees.

“America is a shape-shifter, and based on who’s here, in what numbers and at what time, determines the political outcomes,” she said. Blacks should cooperate with Latinos, she said, adding “we all have skin in the game, literally.”

The racial appeal was echoed by William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO. “If we are going to be the new majority, we’re going to have to start acting like the new majority and start setting the new rules,” he said.

Once Congress approves an immigration increase, minorities should demand more, said Chicago Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a leading advocate of the pending Senate bill,

“The next day after we pass it, you know we’re not going to be satisfied, we’re going to come back,” he said. “We’re going to have a civil rights act, we’re going to have a voting rights act…. Nobody is leaving this fight once we conclude this first chapter,” he said.

“Hopefully, in 30 years, [we] can bring immigrants … from all over the world,” Gutierrez said.

The irony, of course, is that African-Americans–those who have jobs, or want jobs–will be devastated by the influx of new immigrants more, as a group, than anyone else. But Bertha Lewis and some members, at least, of the Congressional Black Caucus don’t care about that. They are all about welfare, and political power.

The Democratic Party’s selling out of America’s working class is one of several scandals associated with “comprehensive immigration reform.” It is noteworthy that in Great Britain, the Labour Party has not been willing to betray its historic constituency. Labour’s leader, Ed

Miliband, is an unabashed socialist, but he also understands that massive low-skill immigration will devastate Britain’s working class:

In his boldest pledge on the issue to date, the Labour leader said he would impose curbs on the number of low-skilled migrants allowed to enter Britain.

This would result in a reduction in the total number of people moving to the UK, he said. …

“I do want to get low skill immigration down and therefore overall immigration down, yes,” Mr Miliband told the Andrew Marr show on BBC One. …

“In our first year in office we will legislate for an immigration bill which has secure control of our borders, cracks down on exploitation of workers coming here undercutting workers already here, and says to big companies that bring in people from outside the EU that they can do that, within a cap, but they have got to train the next generation.” …

Mr Miliband insisted tightening the rules on immigration was important to make the economy work “for working people”.

The leaders of the Democratic Party aren’t too dumb to figure this out, they just don’t care. Their priority is political power: they know that a massive increase in low-skill immigration, with the resulting skyrocketing unemployment and depressed wages, will create Democratic majorities for generations to come.