I don’t pay much attention to the Seattle Times, accept maybe to scan the front page when I’m passing a newsstand on my way to work at the airport; I once read that a friend of Mark Twain advised him to stop reading newspapers, because what he read made him so angry; I generally find it sound advice. Unfortunately other people do buy the paper, and I happened to encounter a week-old edition with a story of slight interest that continued on an inside page. As I was fumbling with the newsprint, the editorial page came in view; I observed an op-ed written by one of the people who is responsible for my present contempt for the paper. I have to admit that I had forgotten how much distaste I feel for Froma Harrop, a syndicated op-ed writer working out of Providence, Rhode Island. It isn’t all that surprising that Times would feature her for so many years. For a newspaper in an allegedly “progressive” city, the Times seems to want to play both sides of the fence—“liberal” on gender and gay issues, yet more than willing to throw racial red meat to the more “conservative” audience, such as allegedly corrupt black community leaders and “criminal” Latinos; the paper seems to believe that hatred toward Latinos and acceptance of the worst stereotypes sells its over-priced, shriveled-up little scandal sheet—and Harrop does her best to help spread that message.
Harrop pretends to be a “populist,” which apparently means someone who is ruled by their emotions and prejudices. During the Bush years, Harrop was still liable to say that Bill Clinton and his “big government” policies were responsible for the country’s increasing budget and debt problems. The absurdity of that argument—when one of the rare balanced budgets this country has seen was in the last year of Clinton’s second term in office—should make any rational-thinking person cringe. She was, however, a Hillary Clinton supporter; she also opposes affirmative action, because she feels white women are the principle victims of it. Naturally, she doesn’t take into account that white women were the principle beneficiary of affirmative action (until they didn’t need it any longer). After Clinton lost to Barack Obama in the primaries, Harrop apparently decided that Obama was the “affirmative action” candidate who unfairly stole Hillary's glory, so she did the next "logical" thing--becoming a John McCain supporter, even "advising" him on health care policy.
But Harrop’s number one issue—like the Times’—is immigration. The above mentioned op-ed continues Harrop’s anti-Latino propaganda. She has long criticized Obama on most issues, but on this occasion she had something “nice” to say about him, praising his administration’s more “effective” approach to illegal immigration; of course this praise came before the revelations of his illegal immigrant uncle. Harrop went on to parrot her usual misinformation about “Mexicans” driving downs wages, which is why we need to drive them all out. This is a complete misrepresentation of reality; the U.S. imports most of its apparel and consumer electronic devices from Asia. Why? Because they are manufactured by cheap labor, with workers making a few dollars a day in some places. How can the U.S. compete with this? Nobody likes low wages, but realism tells us that for the U.S. to compete with these foreign sources, they must keep costs down. It is a fallacy to believe that if Americans on the lower-end of the pay scale make an extra dollar an hour they will willingly buy higher cost American-made products—especially when retailers are trying to maximize their profits by selling low-cost Asian-made goods. The world is apparently much too complicated for people like Harrop to understand—and the people she patronizes are of no help to her “cause.” What this country needs to do is develop new products and technologies that are home grown—something which it did in the past, but has passed-on first to Japan, and now China and Europe.
Harrop has made many plainly racist accusations in the past. She, like most nativist xenophobes, accused Latinos of being responsible for the population “explosion” in the country. As usual, this flies in the face of facts. Since the “amnesty” of 1986, the population of the U.S. increased by 64 million—50 percent more than the total number of Latinos in the country, including illegal immigrants. Harrop also blamed Latinos for resource and water wastage in the Intermountain West. Huh? What about people who own large homes that waste electricity and lawns that need to be watered constantly? Industries that refuse to "go green"? But no—illegal aliens crowding in one-bedroom dwellings, in ditches or tents are to blame. I once complained to the Times about a piece Harrop wrote about urban sprawl; "Mexicans" yet again are here, there and everywhere are consuming resources and generally making nuisances of themselves.
I wrote to the Times on another occasion questioning why they continued to publish Harrop’s op-eds when it seemed that every other week she was bashing “Mexicans.” Someone with an anti- Mexican fixation scapegoating them for anything and all was clearly a racist. This person with this odd, foreign name doubtless believes that her “people” came to the country the “right” way, which until 1924 meant the price of ship fare and brief stop at Ellis Island. The U.S, has never had a comprehensible immigration policy in regard to Latin American; today Euro-elite Latinos are first in line, while it is nearly impossible for Latinos with indigenous blood to immigrate legally, which why they do so illegally. Yet this country starves for their labor; the purpose of current immigration policies is simply to keep their numbers under control. The vast majority of undocumented workers in this country are here to work and support their families; they are not responsible for vast increases in crime as Harrop has claimed on many occassions; in fact we see that the kind of anti-Latino sentiment she subscribes to is causing violent crimes against Latinos, particularly in states like Georgia. As far as being a burden to the "system" as Harrop subscribes to, know one really knows; one study has shown that what illegal immigrants may pay in taxes is as much as $16 billion in excess of what they derive from government services.
Here are some Harrop commentary from the past:
“David Paul Kuhn well captures my long-running frustration in trying to work around The New York Times’s agenda when the subject is immigration. He shows how the paper lumps together legal and undocumented immigrants to underplay the damage caused by illegal immigration. In this case, the piece slyly implies that illegal immigrants do not depress the wages of America’s low-skilled workers…The game, also blatantly played in countless editorials, is to portray the controversy as being pro-immigrant versus anti-immigrant —rather than over the true source of public anger, which is illegal immigration. As Kuhn points out, legal immigration enjoys widespread support.”
First, as I’ve stated before, street corner workers doing yard work do not “depress” wages, cheap foreign product made by cheap labor does. But for this so-called “liberal”—and for others, like Thom Hartmann—propaganda works when facts do not. The fact is that given the level of hate propaganda, those who have immigration on the brain tend to lump all in the same group. And if the NY Times has an “agenda,” it is an attempt to humanize people, many who traveled great distances through many hazards—even life-threatening—to get here. These people deserve more consideration and respect than people who demonize them, like Harrop, who spends her life making a great deal of money creating essentially nothing useful.
Harrop also criticized the NYT’s again for an editorial entitled “Study Finds Young Hispanics Face Obstacles to Integration”:
More than one in five American children are Latino. While 92 percent of them are citizens, 58 percent live with one or more foreign-born parents.
“Readers are no doubt scratching their heads, wondering what percentage of those foreign-born parents are in the country illegally. If immigration status weren’t germane, there would be no purpose in the “while” clause, noting that the great majority of Latino children are citizens.”
Note that Harrop doesn’t actually address the thrust of the study, rather fixates on a passage which she attempts to insert her own “facts” to avoid the problem. Why do Latino youths face obstacles to integration? How about prejudice, demonization and scapegoating from people like Harrop?
“Latinos should darn well vote” goes another bit of Harrop’s patronizing tripe. Like they “owe” Democrats? For what? Latino voters saved Sen. Harry Reid’s arse in 2010, and what are they getting for it? Nothing. If the vote doesn’t come out in 2012, Harrop can more properly blame paladins of paranoia and hate like herself, who have allowed a public acceptance of numerous voting laws passed by Republican-dominated state houses that disenfranchise millions of mostly Democratic-leaning voters, as detailed in the current issue of Rolling Stone. Anti-Latino immigrant fanatics like Harrop have created an atmosphere where the false belief that illegal immigrants are also illegally voting prevails, without a shred of evidence, and has allowed the passage of photo ID requirements that directly affect young voters, voters in poor neighborhoods, and in some states ex-felons who have served their time—obviously in the belief that most are minorities likely to vote Democratic.
Harrop also whined about a guest worker program in Utah: “Guest-worker advocates, writes an approving editorialist for The Wall Street Journal, believe that ‘the most responsible way to shrink the illegal alien population without hurting the local economy is by giving foreign nationals wider access to the state's labor markets.’ The writer calls the law's opponents ‘immigration restrictionists.’…Gosh, Utah is now setting up a formal partnership with the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon to grease the pipeline of foreign laborers. Native-born and otherwise documented workers, hold your tongues. You don't want to be called a ‘restrictionist,’ do you?”
Why does Harrop hate “Mexicans” so much? Oh never, mind. She wouldn’t tell us the real truth anyways. She has claimed that Americans support legal immigration. Well, only if they are not “Mexicans,” apparently. One-in-nine resident of Asian heritage are illegal immigrants, but she apparently likes them.
“But the NY Times also likes this end-run around federal laws that limit the number of immigrants that may enter this country legally ---- laws designed to protect the wages and benefits of U.S. workers. How nice to treat the long-suffering, low-skilled American as invisible and shroud that neglect in pious humanitarian sentiments.”
People like Harrop just slaughter me. Isn’t it loverly that we live in a country that relegates an entire segment of the population to a permanent underclass that is “long-suffering” and “low-skilled?” Harrop’s “empathy” is more likely to excite incredulity from the very people she patronizes—mainly minorities. By the way, Harrop’s hilarious reference to immigration laws that are supposed to “protect” wages and benefits is only worthy of more incredulity when we realize that, once more, that the greater threat is jobs moving out of the country because of low-labor costs elsewhere, and this is what the domestic economy must compete with. So what’s her plan about that? Harrop’s contempt of “humanitarian sentiments,” merely reiterates her lack of simple human decency.
“Poor immigrants: Asset of Burden?” Harrop admits that most Latinos are hardworking, but naturally she seems to assume that most of them are uneducated and illiterate, and have nothing of value to contribute. “Much of the demand for labor is really for cheaper labor that undercuts the most economically vulnerable Americans.” Actually, that is not true. Today, most of the jobs going wanting are technical, scientific, health care and other skilled jobs that there are not enough qualified “natives” to fill. Note that Harrop doesn’t suggest that we need to do something to improve the education system in the country. It’s odd, but in the male-dominated college and university environment in the decades following WWII, engineering and sciences were the avenues to exciting careers when horizons seemed endless; today, women like Harrop dominate college classrooms, and there is much less interest in the more advanced fields.
“Mass immigration has hastened the declining fortunes of our low-skilled workers.”
More ignorance. In the past, the American economy needed immigrants in order to grow; the more people, the more workers, the more money made. During the Clinton administration, there was a net of 22 million jobs created. In the past, immigrant labor tended to fill the lower-rung positions that gave “native” workers, regardless of their skill level, the opportunity to advance as businesses grew. In the 1986, the year of the “amnesty,” the unemployment rate was 7.0 percent. By 1989 it was 5.3 percent. The presence of illegal immigrants thus had no direct bearing on the unemployment rate; the indication is that they were located in areas where there was demand for labor. Illegal immigrants do not go places where there is no work—and natives in impoverished, high unemployment areas have the unfortunate habit of staying put, waiting for work or collecting various forms of public assistance.
“It's true that immigration has cost Mexico many of its most ambitious people. At the same time, it helps the Mexican elites get rid of potential malcontents who would demand needed change…More questions: Immigrants may help solve the problems of a declining population, but wouldn't educated foreigners do that best? High-tech professionals from India or Romania have skills that our economy most needs. And they are less likely to tap welfare benefits.”
Here we see Harrop muddling about aimlessly, trying to justify her bigotry. First she says that “ambitious” people have left Mexico. Good or bad? Hard to say. If “potential malcontents” are not “elites,” who are they? Is she talking about the people who are not “white?” Educated immigrants are best, she says. Perhaps—except that it again begs the question why Harrop thinks so little raising-up the native population out of poverty and despair. Why should people from India and Romania be taking the best jobs?
More Harropsisms:
“Poor immigrants, be they legal or illegal, should be treated with dignity. Portraying these hard-laboring people as some sort of criminal class is plain nuts.” Harrop should take her own advice.
“The American public gets to decide who comes here and how many, not would-be immigrants.” Before there was as "American public," there were indigenous peoples who didn't get to decide anything--the "public" just took what they wanted; the same treatment was accorded to Mexicans who were residents of the territory extorted from Mexico by an expansionist-minded U.S.. And who is the “public” anyways? People like Harrop and Pat Buchannan, who thinks that non-whites are “out to destroy the country?”
“While the demand for workers should inform these decisions, American employers have no God-given right to cheap labor.” Maybe not, but again it exposes Harrop’s ignorance about economic realities. It’s either “cheap” labor here, or no labor at all, since it will have gone off to some foreign land.
More mindboggling Harrop hypocrisies: “Bush was a fan of the cheap labor that illegal immigration fostered, but he did have an abiding respect for the aliens themselves. In pushing his own comprehensive immigration reforms, he warned against ‘harsh, ugly rhetoric.’ But now that rhetoric has busted through the gates, and responsible Republican leaders will have a hard time corralling it. This obviously isn't helpful to their party's long-term prospects.”
Harrop, the alleged “liberal” who supported John McCain in 2008, has been on the leading edge of the “harsh, ugly rhetoric” she supposedly is decrying. It “busted out” of her “gate” years ago, and she still finds it impossible to “corral” it in.
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