Of nativists and capitalists

A comment regarding Liz Parker Siebeck's Oct. 24 letter on Elgin's immigration policy.

Nativism is that narrow, seemingly self-protective insistence that earlier immigrants have more of a right to live and work in the U.S. than do later immigrants. Nativist arguments hinge on the question of legality - as a fetish, it seems to me, to ward off reality.

Many Mexicans and Central Americans have Indian blood in them. Unfortunately, these people, the oldest of the old immigrants, from Asia in an ice age, are the focus of nativist attack because they are also the newest of the new.

As for the rest of the immigration issue: It's economic, or more precisely capitalist - a consequence of a system, ours, always seeking to employ the cheapest labor.

Rooting out and repatriating all 12 million undocumented workers and their families and driving up the cost of labor - would capitalists enjoy that? Do those that hire labor care about the citizenship of the person, of the body that the labor is contained in? To them, isn't the worker just profit-producing meat? And the more available meat the better, to keep the price of meat low.

Hardworking, diligent meat at that, to be had cheap. The nativist is stuck on 'illegal' - as though people could be illegal. The capitalist is stuck on 'profit-producing meat.'

Workers follow the wealth. The wealth, capital, concentrates in the U.S., but moves freely across borders. Labor does too - despite nativist and other restrictions. To understand the contradictions inherent in our social system is also to recognize that a nativist may not also be a capitalist.

Rex Burwell

Elgin