(CNN) -- On the eve of President Bush's inauguration, a poll shows the nation is split over whether he has united or divided the nation, but a majority believe his inauguration festivities should be toned down because of the war.
During the 2000 campaign, Bush promised to be a "uniter, not a divider."
Forty-nine percent of 1,007 adult Americans said in phone interviews they believe Bush is a "uniter," according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday. Another 49 percent called him a "divider," and 2 percent had no opinion.
And it takes some kind of "uniter" to bring a half million angry Americans into the streets of a single city.
LOS ANGELES - Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators protested moves to impose stricter U.S. immigration laws in California on Saturday, while President Bush urged wary Republicans to take up his proposal.
Thousands of people across the country protested Friday against legislation cracking down on the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States…
Immigration is looming as a key issue in the November midterm elections in which Republicans are seeking to hold on to their majorities in both houses of Congress. But the politics of border security have created competing pressures for Republicans.
Bush views the guest-worker program as way of courting Hispanic voters in key states like Arizona, New Mexico and Florida. But some conservative Republicans are focusing on enforcement as constituents vent frustration at what they see as a strain on schools, hospitals and other local resources from illegal immigration.
It's the kind of reception we're only used to seeing Bush get in foreign countries! Every foreign country.
WASHINGTON - Anticipating turbulent debate over immigration, President Bush has urged Congress to grapple with the emotional issue in a way that avoids pitting groups against each other…
Immigration is a divisive issue for the country, and Republicans in particular. It splits two main GOP constituent groups — businesses and social conservatives.
Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. Maybe Bush really is a "uniter". Just not for him. When you think about it, he has, in a short five years, united nearly everyone against him.
And it's horrible what he's suggesting. It isn't rooted in any kind of practical compromise or concern for any immigrants--legal or illegal. People have no idea how horrible what he's suggesting is or how horrible he is for wanting it.
Even the economy has taken a hammering. Saudi Arabia has 25 per cent of the world's oil reserves, but the average Saudi woman has six children, and state funds have not kept pace with the population boom. Incomes have fallen by about two-thirds since the Eighties, and unemployment is up to 30 per cent. Saudi women and children beg at traffic lights, a sight unthinkable just a few years ago. Meanwhile, more than 4,000 princes live lavishly at state expense, and millions of foreign "guest workers" from Asia, often treated like servants, keep the country running by taking the jobs Saudis are unable or unwilling to do. Foreigners make up a staggering 90 per cent of all employees in the private sector.
In Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, and the UAE and whatever other oil-rich countries which are governed by pampered and powdered and obscenely wealthy princes, where poor Philipinos and Malaysians are imported to clean houses and cook food and pick up the garbage and act as servants, those people are called "guest workers" because there's no literal translation into English for what they really are:
Slaves.
They don't get to vote. They don't have any rights. They get paid just enough to stay alive, but not enough to quit if they feel like it. And if they try something irritating to the aristocracy, like unionize or demand anything, well, that's the great thing about "guest" workers, isn't it?
You can deport their asses. You can kick them the fuck out of the country. Unlike bothersome citizens.
And this appeals to Bush Republicans. A subsistance level workforce, which you can put on a slow boat to the Soloman Islands if they start bitching about minimum wages or health care or a seventy hour work week. Cheap servants to cut your grass and clean your toilets who, finally, you don't have to hide from the INS.
And you don't have to lie anymore on your tax returns.
I'm wrong? Even the fucking name is the same. That's a coincidence? They got slaves in Kuwait called "guest workers" and Bush, whose family has about fifty years of close personal ties to filthy oil rich mid-eastern sheiks suddenly comes up with an immigration program called "guest workers" out of the blue?
Not likely.
I kind of get a kick out of this. Because it's got Republican heads exploding. On the one hand, Republicans get a lot of mileage out of promoting xenophobia and racism and paranoia about dark skinned foreigners taking your job and sucking up your hard earned tax dollars. On the other hand, the backbone of the Republican party, the real financial arm of the Republican party, depends on illegal immigrants for their cheap labor.
So it makes me laugh to watch the bigots and extremists struggle to comprehend the dirty little secret of the Gee Oh Pee--it loves and needs Mexicans streaming across the same border fat white, gun toting volunteers are guarding like their white teenage daughters virginity depended on it.
But the American people haven't even grasped the full horror of this thing. We're blissfully ignorant of the best part! Once Bush gets this thing, there are going to be a lot of American employers crying out for the need of "guest workers" to do jobs that Americans won't do.
We're going to need a lot of brown skinned bodies.
More than just naturally and illegally cross the border.
And we're going to need someone to connect "guest workers" with employers who need them.
We'll need multi-national companies--like, say, Haliburton!--to actively "recruit" dirt poor people in India and South America and the South Pacific and bring those people by the boatload to America to work, like in Saudi Arabia, pretty much as servants.
Yeah, it's awful. It's a spine breaker for labor in this country. Once employers can legally employ "guest workers" for jobs Americans are unwilling to do, guess what? Employers will make sure nearly all their labor intensive jobs are so lousy that no Americans will be willing to do them.
Pay, benefits, conditions will plummet to the point where no Americans will be willing to do them, or, if they are, they'll have no choice but to do them at "guest worker" terms. Take it, or leave it. You don't want it? A "guest worker" will do it. It'll be the death of labor in this country.
But, beyond that, after nearly two hundred years? It will be the rebirth of the North American slave trade.
The Rebirth of the North American Slave Trade indeed. What puzzles me is how they are going to define "jobs that no Americans are willing to do". I'd bet there's not a job in America that some American doesn't do. And if even one American does it, how can they say that an American won't do it? Now, don't get me wrong. I'm sure the Bushies will come up with some stupid rationalization. But I expect there might also be a court challenge or two. Maybe we could change it to "to do any job that an American would do if a 'guest worker' wasn't already doing it".
Posted by: Neil Shakespeare | March 27, 2006 at 01:07 AM