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June 02, 2005
Hands Across the Ocean
Supposedly, the gap between the United States and Europe has never been bigger. But for anyone who’s spent any time talking to anti-immigrant activists in the U.S. these days, the parallels with the attitudes of the French and Dutch “no” voters are striking.
Low-wage competition, cultural subversion, Third-World criminality…the fears resound in an echo chamber that stretches from Utrecht to Raleigh, from Denver to Nancy.
It would be as big a mistake to exaggerate the resemblances as it is to ignore them. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s closest U.S. equivalent, Patrick Buchanan, is a marginal figure and will remain one. And the North Africans of Holland and France are pushed to the edge of those societies in a way that America’s Latinos, even the illegal ones, are not.
And yet…when a politician as shrewd and determined as Hillary Clinton makes clear that she has zero sympathy for illegal immigrants, when George W. Bush all but abandons his plans for comprehensive immigration reform ( “I'll continue working on it. You don't have my pledge that Congress will act, because I'm not a member of the legislative branch,” he said at a meeting with Mexico’s Vicente Fox last March), and when the anti-immigrant “real ID” bill sails through Congress, it’s fair to conclude that the politicians are getting nervous.
The idea that the rich favor illegal immigration because it provides cheap labor, including nannies and gardeners is heard frequently in the U.S. these days. It is just true enough that the argument can’t be dismissed out of hand – much like the view that the French political class is out of touch with ordinary people.
Posted June 2, 2005 06:52 PM
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