Monday, March 24, 2008

Two Articles at MRZine

Immigration: The Facts Lead Us in a Different Direction

The Center for Immigration Studies gets extensive media coverage as the intellectual, objective arm of the anti-immigrant movement. But how well do its conclusions stand up to scrutiny?

by Jane Guskin, MRZine
March 11, 2008

In November 2007, the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors reducing immigration, released a report entitled "Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America's Foreign-Born Population." The report was covered widely in the media, and the author, Center staff researcher Steven Camarota, was given many opportunities to repeat his main theme: that immigration in the United States is now at unprecedented levels, and the new immigrants "create enormous strains on social services" because many of them are uneducated. [...]

Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2008/guskin110308.html

Talking Immigration with Mr. Block

The irony of all this is that the wage issue is just where pro-immigrant forces have the strongest argument, if only they are willing to use it.

By David L. Wilson, MRZine
March 6, 2008

The comic strip adventures of Mr. Block first appeared in 1912 in publications of the Industrial Workers of the World. With his thick, cubic head, Mr. Block, the creation of IWW cartoonist Ernest Riebe, typified a classic type of US worker: scoffing at the idea of working-class solidarity, Mr. Block always sided with his employers against labor organizers, convinced that subservience would make him rich, happy, and possibly president of the United States. Ignoring warnings from Mrs. Block and other workers, in the last frame of each strip he ended up crushed by the bosses he had so loyally supported.

Mr. Block is alive and well a century later in the debate over immigration. [...]

Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2008/wilson060308.html

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