My chat with Numbers USA's Roy Beck: Those 200,000 immigration marchers are all 'thieves'
Here, as promised, is my interview with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, at yesterday's March For America in D.C. Judge for yourself how the exchange went.
A couple of the more interesting exchanges:
Beck: But the fact is, is that the amnesty that's being promoted here allows the people to steal the thing they came to steal. People come here illegally --
Me: So you're calling them thieves.
Beck: They are thieves.
Me: [Laughter]
Beck: Of course they're thieves. No look. What is a thief? A thief is somebody who takes something that does not belong to them. They come here and take jobs that do not belong to them. They take wages from the most vulnerable members of the society.
So the thing is -- I'm not saying -- I think most of them are probably good people. I think most of them don't even think of themselves as thieves. They've been taught since they've been young that that border isn't really that important. I don't blame them, I blame our government. But the fact is, those are people who came to steal a job, and what everybody's lobbying for today is to keep the job that they stole.
This, from a guy who leads off the "About Us" section of the NumbersUSA website proclaiming: "No to Immigrant Bashing."
Dunno about you, but calling 200,000 people -- no, make that 12 million -- "thieves" sure sounds like immigrant-bashing to me.
Also, I got a kick out of this exchange:
Me: Do you guys think you could get 100,000 people out here to rally against amnesty?
Beck: No. See, the trouble is, there's no amassed money to be made from bringing immigration back down to traditional levels. The uh -- I mean, the kind of money it takes to put on one of these things is just gigantic.
There's so many people making money off of high immigration, they can afford to do that. Our people are just unemployed people all up and down the line. And they would have to pay for it all themselves. Now they could get here, but they couldn't do this kind of -- this kind of expensive thing.
Yeah, because those 100,000 and more are drawn from all over the country just because their costs get covered.
Restrict the international flow of capital, not people. The transnational corporations are the thieves.
Repeal NAFTA and the WTO.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
NumbnutsUSA?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Let's be honest here. The problem just isn't illegal day laborers either. Corporations are legally importing thousands of engineers, scientists, and other skilled workers from Asia and Europe.
to eliminate the office professional class.
Some stuff you can't make up!
the exporting of jobs to totalitarian China, who can set the wages to a fraction of what is paid over here.
going on, i made the comment once already, china does not allow independent trade unions, what would eugene debs, or big bill haywood think about that?
I wonder what Native American Indians think when they see white people like this asshat slam 'illiegals' being in the country....
White people are here because of illiegal white immigration..
White settlers stole land from Native Americans, and had a policy of geonocide against the American indiginous people (The Indian Removal Act of 1835, Trail Of Tears, etc)
So whites need to STFU about 'foreigners' flooding into America..
They're taking jobs that are being given to them by employers. You can't steal what is given. It is the employer that is the magnet that attracts the illegal worker. The cure is to fine the employer sufficiently to destroy the incentive to hire the illegal worker. The onus is on the employer. If there are no jobs, they won't come.
--edit - wasn't intended as a reply
that would be bad for business, and we can't have THAT!!
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
The employers are stealing a segment of the American economy from Americans. The employers are stealing a large portion of the infrastructure by paying poverty-level wages and forcing the rest of America to subsidize their payroll costs via the social safety net, especially in industries which eventually make employees ill. The health care bill is subsidizing the stock market profits of these turds, and you won't hear any Tea Partiers addressing that hideous little factoid. The employers are stealing from the non-religious, Protestant, Jewish or pagan unemployed to subsidize the pedophile Catholic church.
The Mexicans are refugees, whether illegal or otherwise. But, sugar, if Americans can't get amnesty for the petty paperwork or unfunded-household-mandate infractions, violations, and misdemeanors created by unemployment and poverty, which further restrict our employability, I'll be damned if I want amnesty for those who unwittingly created the problem.
There were no laws to break so it wasn't illegal.
Native Americans stole land from other Native Americans and had vicious wars, using a club with a rock built into the head, and was used by both Incas and Aztecs.
There was no policy of genocide but relocation. Although it's a marginal distinction its the difference between the ghettos and the death camps. Much of the deaths on the Trail of Tears was due to putting Central Plains Indians into areas like Florida where they had no resistance to the disease. Medical science hadn't advanced far enough to recognize that possibility. Likely it killed a few whites too.
And countries are held only by those strong enough to hold them, the Amerindians were not, we were. Border lines are arbitrary even in Europe, generally with the Westphalian Treaty that ended the Hundred Year War. But fighting in such areas as the Alsace and Lorraine and some of the northernmost lands continued for centuries.
Maybe someone told the Amerindians to STFU about foreigners, and now look at the situation they're in.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
blankets with anthrax, forced marches, forced relocation to barely liveable areas. if it ain't genocide, what is it?
Some stuff you can't make up!
Supply one piece of evidence after the French and Indian war where there was an actual case of disease ridden blankets use to sicken them.
Even then, people knew that once a pandemic started, it was hard to contain.
You even got the disease wrong, the rumor was it was smallpox.
There were outbreaks of smallpox but that was primarily due to their never having the disease on this continent before, and some of the settlers were carrying, but had developed immunity to it over the centuries. This is another example of future advances in medicine figuring out.
I'm certain there's no coincidence that soon after Typhoid Mary, that's when we started having immigration laws, partially to prevent the introduction of disease.
Yellow Fever that whiped out much of the World's Population was due to army camps where diseased chickens and pigs were raised in pre WWI camps, and then all the soldiers went back to their own countries as carriers.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
i forget the figure, but out of something like 367 different treaties the white man made with the people, something like 3 were honored. what europeans did to the native americans stopped short of genocide, but just barely, you can slice it any way you want it.
There was fighting on both sides, and the nature of such fighting is to claim the other precipitated it, thus violating the treaty.
So winners always claim the most pristine purpose and punish accordingly. Did the Germans really owe so much money in reparations after World War I, because they bore more of the burden of why it happened? Or was it merely the multi-polar realm of power that was in place in the world at the time, with mutual defense treaties falling like dominoes?
Oh yeah, in my French and Indian war example there's no indication they went beyond the talking stages, because the fear of contagion spread.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
really good book, "the arms of krupp" tells all about how the germans first learned to make arms from invaders.....
Pork-rindsight?
Study the symptoms not the virus...
Post-Civil-War, Thomas' Brigade, a predominantly Cherokee Confederate force from the reservation, founded by and led by the reservation's founder, Col. Will Thomas. When his men surrendered to the Union, they were given smallpox blankets which they took back to the Smoky Mountains. Many, if not most, had white relatives, and both Cherokee and whites died by the hundreds in what was known as "the plague". Two were my great-great grandparents.
the civilized tribes had their lands stolen in the south, and were relocated to oklahoma, known at that time as indian territory.
in their eye about Oklahoma, and soon the Southern tribes were pushed onto ever smaller land so the territory could be opened up. And don't get me started on the tribes that were native to Oklahoma...
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
When they landed in a shit heap that had NOTHING on it, the whites finally left them alone. Until, that is, OIL was discovered on their land. The Osages got rich, the whites got jealous, and the killing began all over again. Except this time it was underhanded assassinations, rape, poisonings.
Yeah, white people just wanted the Natives to be happy. My ass.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
was an abrogation of treaty rights, known as Nunna daul Isunyi—“the Trail Where They Cried”, among the Tsalagi people. but that is not what this post is about.
Actually supposedly our family has some Cherokee blood in us.
However, we're primarily Picto-Celtic.
The family was split by Hadrian's Wall, each side protecting their own side, but still loyal to the family overall.
Because one of our ancestors, a Baron, rendered fealty to King Edwards Longshank, to presumably increase his estate holdings, and because Longshank wasn't strong enough to hold on to the territory, our family has largely been seen as outside of the typical English/Scottish structure, and our support sought as neutrals.
Even when the Stewarts took over Scotland they made everyone use their coat of arms and tartans with the only exception being our family, but no reason was given other than a vague, "They respected us."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vAHBUve4gY
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
very close relations, intimate in fact, are clan carmichael; bonnie prince charlie and all that.
but you are right in that when europeans came over here, there were no laws, i just think whites could have dealt a lot more fairly with the native americans, and with some other races, come to think of it.
There was no policy of genocide but relocation
That would be the reason for all those blankets infected with smallpox that were given out to Native people, would it? And all those raids and attacks against villages filled with innocent women and children, eh? And the relocation would be the reason for all the mutilated corpses left behind as warning to others, yes? Because the white men just wanted the Natives to have a nice happy life on some godforsaken stretch of empty land where it was damn near impossible to grow crops or feed themselves, so they would have to make do with measly government handouts that were near starvation levels.
Right. Good to know, Kimosabe.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Mon, 03/22/2010 - 18:47 — ysbaddaden
Mon, 03/22/2010 - 19:01 — ysbaddaden
You seem to be a graduate of faux news, just keep repeating something ill-founded until everyone thinks it's the truth, especially after it's already been addressed.
Mon, 03/22/2010 - 19:00 — derekthered
_________________________________________________________
It's also forgetting that the Europeans the AmerIndians first came into contact with were Spaniards, who burned them alive for committing the sin for refusing to convert, scalped them (both habits the AmerIndians were to pick up on), and these conquistadors are a part of the Mexican blood lines when they essentially created a peasant race by interbreeding with them, but not giving them the rights of Spaniards.
That's the Span in the Hispanic culture.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Amerindians left lots of corpses too, men, women and children.
They just couldn't do it at the level the opposition was using, even when they started using guns too.
Even before then, they dipped arrows in poison, so a slight scratch could kill. Shouldn't we be able to accuse them of using chemical warfare?
It's an insult to the Amerindian memory to try to pretend they were innocent victims when they were combatants.
And that being said, such arguments as y'all are using above actually supplies the rationale to keep them out, "for their own safety."
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Mr. Niewert, What is the answer? Do we eliminate any immigration laws and borders, and add these people to the rolls of the new healthcare laws? And all the children that were born to illegals while in the U.S., who are now citizens? I think Americans just want to think that they are being treated fairly. If you can explain to them why artificially depressed wages as a result of cheap labor is a good idea, why free healthcare, education and welfare for those who came here illegally, is a fair, good idea, then lets hear it.
The answer is simple: Increase legal immigration so that illegal immigration does not occur. If you did not know, the opportunities for "legal" immigration are nonexistent to those that came here illegally.(for the most part). And, by the way, the "children" that were "born" to illegals are as entitled to the same rights, according to our constitution, as any citizen in the united states.
Also: did you know that the majority of citizens of the united states are citizens just because they were born here? In other words, citizens of the united states enjoy the privileges of the united states out of pure luck.
Zackly right.
Our system, installed in 1924 under the aegis of the Immigration Act of 192, aka the Asian Exclusion Act, was created wholly as a xenophobic response to the "invasion" from the "Orient". It was fully believed at the time that Asians could never become "real" Americans, and would always be separate, so excluding them was considered the "rational" and "eugenic" solution.
That's where the term "illegal alien" comes from, you know -- the '24 act actually created the term. Asians were seen as "alien" variants of the human species.
Thus was embedded a system that deliberately made it difficult to even achieve citizenship, in stark contrast to how easy it was to become an American citizen prior to this act, especially for white Europeans. All those trick hoops and years of waiting that is the immigrant's lot not were in fact created quite purposefully.
Fundamentally, this isn't rational. We need a rational system that lets immigrant labor fulfill specific labor needs, especially for unskilled labor, but more generally for other industries as well, including higher-skilled areas as well, which have traditionally prospered from the cultural cross-pollination that occurs with hiring immigrant workers. Ask any economist: A steady and healthy flow of immigrants is fundamental to our economic health.
In order to make it rational, it also needs not to be so supremely difficult to become a citizen. I think if you come here and work your ass off, as these people, you have earned the shot by already proving up your worth.
I mean, what society wouldn't benefit from having new citizens with a serious work ethic?
BECAUSE IT PROTECTS EVERYBODY.
You really don't get the phrase "a high tide raises all ships", do you? If everyone has access to proper health care, then FEWER PEOPLE GET SICK. That means LESS CONTAGIOUS DISEASE and LESS DRAIN ON THE TAXPAYERS and LOWER MEDICAL COSTS OVERALL.
Because - surprise, surprise - regular checkups for healthy people cost LESS than intensive care for sick people. Isn't that amazing?
It's simple math, dude. Or did you skip school the day they taught that?
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
however, no kidding, the only time i see mexican men in my neck of the woods, they are wearing workboots, course its mainly in the daytime, work time, when i am out and about. i am not religious, but i am telling you, that they also seem pretty religious to me.
artificially depressed wages are definitely not a good idea, specially since i am hourly, the answer? probably not one good one, maybe a lot of things, content laws so that manufactured goods from mexico, made by mexican workers, must be certified to have been produced in a manner consistent with american labor laws. it is not just immigrants that hurt our economy, outsourcing does too.
maybe employers would not be so quick to ship jobs out of the country if it wasn't quite so lucrative. this idea might stem the outsourcing, plus pay mexicans south of the border more, so they can support their families.
we could also require ag producers to verify legal status, and use any fines to offset social costs. thing is, until wages equalize across the border, we would absolutely have to fortify the border, and think of the cost of that. we need to bring the wages of both countries up, because we have to face facts, unless we put americans back to work, we are likely to wind up as poor as the mexicans.
my big worry is our current account balance, we must start producing value-added prodcts, or we will continue to run a trade deficit year after year.
i don't know that this is about fairness so much as what works. education of anybody is going to help us in the long run, people are our most important asset, a lot of these machines we use from pizza ovens to industrial robots are getting more complicated all the time.
anyhow, this is something we are going to have to work on.
At one point, my friend and I saw the mimes with the giant bodyguards and were quite curious who they were. Now I know. It's really a bad idea to go into a group of 200,000 people and call them "thieves". He shouldn't have been allowed there from the start. If he brushed with the wrong person, a mob riot could have ensued.
I support immigrant rights, but David Niewert clearly lost that argument. Shame.
The fact of the matter is this: the premise that groups like Numbers USA are based upon is mass deportation, which is impossible and extremely costly.
I know the facts of the matter, and I agree with you, but David Niewert wasn't making any arguments other than "Mexicans work much harder than Americans." You can tell that he was grasping at straws when he let out that obnoxious laugh as a response to Roy's argument. Overall, this was a disappointing interview.
I am not that much of a regular reader here, but it seems David is principally of the writing variety. I agree, it was not the most convincing, Gotchya, variety of an interview, but I did like how when David introduced the "construction worker" and then Roy Beck said that "well, that's more like agriculture." part.
Anyway, groups like Numbers USA are one of the principal reasons past amnesties have not worked--they are for severe restriction of legal immigration, which then leads to no concurrent increase in legal immigration with the amnesty, and the problem of an undocumented class comes up yet again.
Mexicans make lower wages, but are given elevated opportunities, including being given the answers, in advance, to forklift certification tests. Word from around here is that Mexicans on landscaping crews work equivalent to Americans, because they are heavily supervised, but that undersupervised Mexicans work less than Americans under the same conditions.
anti-immigrant is assuming that everyone who attends a pro-immigration reform march is illegal...
To the point that some idiots in my neck of the words have wanted the police to come to the local marches to harass the marchers about their own statuses...
I'm guessing most are either legal or American-born, mainly because people who are here illegally worry about being picked up on occasions much less obvious than a freaking immigration march.
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
It's OK to steal a job as long as you pay the fine? :-/
I like Alice's comment, up-top...
It's not the worker(s), it's the workings... and the motives are personal. F Koch Industries and their puppet Beck.
"Now this is Ted Kennedy's invention, in 1990 he did it as a disguise to get a bunch of illegal Irish in. So at the first few years, half of all the lottery went to the illegal Irish." -- Roy Beck
Study the symptoms not the virus...
"something that does not belong to them."
What the everliving FUCK? A job belongs to whoever GETS THE JOB. If I apply for a job, and get the job, then the job belongs to ME. Not to some guy down the street who didn't apply for it. What the hell is this bozo babbling about?
If these whining bitching Rethugs WANT all those dirt-paying, low-rent, no-benefits jobs that immigrants have to take, then LET THEM APPLY FOR THEM. If they get them, then the jobs belong to them. If not, THEY DON'T. And if they're too high and mighty to clean toilets for minimum wage or pick strawberries for $2 an hour, they should SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY.
DAMN.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
starting when they were kids... Anyway, Dad's gone now, but Mom occasionally will talk about it. Constant aching fingers from picking cotton, constant aching back from picking potatoes, etc. Having to sleep on a bed of hay in a small cabin because that's the only quarters the farm owner made available to the workers, etc. After 28 years of hearing these stories, I. Do. Not. Want. That. Kind. Of. Job. And most migrant farmworkers don't want their children to work those jobs either.
So it's laughably disingenous that these Repugs carry on about the stealing of jobs...
"The greatest tyranny is censoring information in order to be better able to control people." - Cristina Saralegui
if i made good money, but yeah, when i was younger i did a lot of the jobs, i will be honest with you, mexicans do now. roadwork, concrete, housebuilding; two days of bailing hay was enough for me, but if the pay had been better.....
did work in a bacon processing plant once, good job, nothing wrong with hard work, we just way undervalue it, not we, corporate farmers mainly, because really any farm that has survived this far, is pretty big business.
I picked apples in wa. state for a month,needing money to get back to so.cal after getting asked to leave canada.The migrants would start in Jan. in fl.,citrus.Work across the country following the harvest and end up in Wa.in Sept.Could be the hardest work I've ever done.You had to be FAST.And I was not.Picking before sun-up,eating apples all day untill you couldn't see anymore.This was 1974,I averaged $70-80 a day.I asked Juan(he had wife,two children)how much he could make a year?He said that the year before his family had made $94,000.And except for travel time,he had worked every day,but 19. He had my respect.
....the fools do not realize,a population that can ,..... not paticipate .............in the 'economy'...,can not keep it viable!..........."we are listening,.......and we're not blind.,......this is your life....this is your time."
I do a job that normally is given to immigrants. One Hispanic family sent their 8-year-old over to pump the location and other details out of me, so they could get the job out of my hands. This phenomenon is not isolated to Mexicans, though--I am aware of at least 3 American families who keep an eye on those who score out of the "hidden job market" and then find someone there to raise a big crop of lies on the job so that another of their bunch can replace the hapless surveilled worker.
ANY person that is doing a job that the society needs should be respected and the job should come with a living wage.. if that isn't the case, then something's wrong..
that people come to the US and take jobs which many Americans now refuse to do because of wages and conditions and these jobs are actually an improvement over the desparate circumstances in the immigrants own countries has to tell us something..
We are now importing miserable class conditions which should be an anethema to our democratic values.. But it shouldn't be a matter of either getting rid of desparate immigrants or of accepting those conditions.
I think Alice above makes the most salient points.. The transnational corporations are theiving from working folks everywhere and we end up blaming each other rather than those who brought us WTO, NAFTA, World Bank, IMF etc. to circumvent the protections that people won under the nation state construction .. Modern nation states now have some protections for people, so capital is changing the game. And while I'm more of a Democrat than anything, it was Bill Clinton who bullied NAFTA through- so let's not make it just a Repug thing.
These people wouldn't be coming here if MNCs didn't kick them off of their land and sell pineapples for 5 cents to drive everyone else out of business.
And if you cross the border for employment, you're a thief? WTF?
the ones who use fake ss numbers and steal others identities
the ones who belong to local gangs
but the real thieves are the corporatists who set up this system to destroy the middle class
is a slippery slope argument...
It always makes me chuckle a bit when these people start the 'you're all thieves' bit. Who stole what, exactly? If we want to start really talking about who stole what, the conversation goes south pretty quickly. What these loonies mean is...how dare you steal it BACK.
I came to my current workplace and "stole" a job that hadn't previously "belonged" to me. And your point is...?
So by way of his thinking, that would make Columbus and all the original settlers thieves, right?
I don't think it's valid though. He mentions Canadian and Irish tech workers working in the US. Unfortunately I believe it is the H1B visa that is doing more to harm what remains of tech jobs in the US; Legal workers, not illegal workers. This affects me personally.
This liberal Democrat is against the flood of illegal aliens. These people are not immigrants. By calling everyone an immigrant, you grant them a status they do not have. Illegal aliens broke the law to get here and stay here, and there are so many that we aren't even sure of their numbers. I think having 10-20 million (or more!) unregistered illegals is appalling. And if you want to know the effect of the illegals, look at California. A large percentage of the prison population and those using social services are illegal aliens, and the rest of the state (that means you) is paying for it.
They also bring a flood of methamphetamine and brown heroin, and further overload social services with Anglo addiction problems. My suspicion is that they sell the drug to someone with a desirable job, and then report to HR that the individual needs to be drug tested, and then continue selling them the drug after they are fired.
In Dalton, GA with its huge illegal population, illegals advertise "chiva"--heroin--on their car's rear windshields and cruise the city selling their wares with no police investigation or interference whatever.
The illegals are so brazen that the last half-dozen or more meth lab busts I've seen on TV news were flying the Confederate flag outdoors. At least one source of local gossip alleges that Jeff Davis' descendants are big in meth and cocaine.
People need to watch Beck's video "Immigration by the Numbers" on YouTube. Anyone who thinks we can continue to allow a million legal immigrants into this country without overloading the infrastructure is still living in 1820. I can be anti-immigration without being anti-immigrant. Do we really want our border control to be lowering our standard of living until it is so bad that the desperately poor in other countries will see no point in coming here? Think how many homes, schools, roads and utilities we need to add each year to absorb these people. Are we so blinded by the lure of cheap labor and the growth syndrome that we cannot see there is no long term goal or plan? We absorb a million a year but the earth's population grows by 75 million a year, are we deluded into thinking we are helping the overall situation? Sure the individuals that come here from poverty have a better life but at some point we have to address the world situation and help improve quality of life in those third world countries that keep sending wave after wave here.
Impractical, Expensive, and Ineffective
me-oww!
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