Letters
Immigration Backlash Your report on the immigration backlash [Nov/Dec 1995] was intriguing, especially the argument made by Ratl Hinojosa and Peter Schey that low-cost Mexican labor is the key...
...David Stoll New York, New York Puerto Rican Attitudes WX hile Howard Jordan's article "V "Immigrant Rights: A Puerto Rican Issue...
...Over 500,000 people-15% of the island's population-is "foreign born," including 150,000 North Americans...
...Yet I feel that the only way to protect U.S...
...David Fontdnez New York, New York...
...citizen can live, work and set up a business on the island, often to the irritation of many Puerto Ricans...
...More than 200,000 Dominicans -thousands of whom are undocumented-currently live in Puerto Rico...
...In conclusion, may I suggest that the many costs of immigration are why, as the Report introduction states, "the progressive response to the backlash has so far been muted...
...Obviously, without the resulting downward pull on low-end wages, the U.S...
...I was surprised, however, by how the editors, in their introduction to the Report, reduced the entire immigration debate to "backlash" and "folk myth," as if there were no intellectual room on the left to question the supposed benefits of rising immigration flows...
...was objective and informative, it was incomplete...
...Judging from the worried references to African Americans, Puerto Ricans and other Latinos who fail to perceive that they benefit from rising immigration levels, your authors are aware that they are not a very popular vanguard...
...For all of these reasons, NACLA should not use the campaign to nullify Prop 187 to discourage debate over the larger issues posed by immigration...
...Unless Hinojosa and Schey can convince me otherwise, I doubt that any common good is served by providing suburbanites and labor contractors with fresh supplies of ultraexploitable labor...
...It did not address the immigration debate in Puerto Rico, and how that shapes so-called "Puerto Rican ambivalence" towards immigration among Puerto Ricans living in the United States...
...This raises another assumption running through several articles: that people of color should swallow their doubts and instead look forward to the benefits of building up large racial voting blocs...
...This preemptive attitude seems to come out of several assumptions running through the issue...
...Some Puerto Ricans, especially lighter-skinned ones, look down on Dominicans, who tend to be of darker complexion...
...The reason is that NACLA is defining "progressive" contrary to how the majority of working people perceive their interests, regardless of color...
...mainland, we must take into account the role that Puerto Rico plays in the international division of labor...
...wage levels is to control the flow of non-native labor...
...The reaction of Puerto Ricans on the island against these Dominicans is not unlike the reaction of U.S...
...For example, labor scarcity would force wages to rise...
...Many came in rickety boats in search of their "visa para un sueiio" (visa for a dream) as Juan Luis Guerra puts it in one of his songs...
...One is that supporting border control is by definition racist (if you're Anglo) or buckling under to racism (if you happen to be African American or Latino...
...The island operates as both a labor magnet and a labor exporter...
...If border control is, by definition, racist, then it would seem that the only moral position in immigration debates is acceptance of an open border...
...Isn't this what the left used to want...
...Victims in one context can become victimizers in another, and vice versa...
...To the contrary, more debate is badly needed, especially on the left...
...As a consequence, any U.S...
...To grasp the complexity of the immigration issue and the effect it has on Puerto Ricans both on the island and on the U.S...
...Perhaps this is a result of approaching such a complicated bundle of problems via a single debate, over Proposition 187 in California...
...residents against immigrants in the United States...
...Unions might find it easier to organize workers...
...Latinos are not the threat to American culture that white racists think they are, despite the highsounding rhetoric of some Chicano activists...
...This is identity politics, of course...
...Nonetheless, Dominicans are blamed for taking away jobs from Puerto Ricans, as well as for the high crime rate on the island...
...Right-wing demagogues might find it harder to play the race card...
...Hopefully, Mike Davis will update us on how well it is working in southern California...
...What we have instead is a complex chain of victims and victimizers that stretches all the way back to sending communities and forward to future generations...
...While many Dominicans use the island as a stepping stone to the United States, a good number decide to remain on the island...
...Dominican immigrants in Puerto Rico tend to have low-wage positions as housekeepers, janitors and construction workers-jobs which most Puerto Ricans on the island don't want...
...Immigration Backlash Your report on the immigration backlash [Nov/Dec 1995] was intriguing, especially the argument made by Ratl Hinojosa and Peter Schey that low-cost Mexican labor is the key to economic renaissance for the United States as well as Mexico...
...economy would look different...
...I've hardly been alone in opposing Prop 187, for some of the same reasons laid out by your contributors...
...The tensions between Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in Puerto Rico also have racial connotations...
...Under the current colonial arrangement between Puerto Rico and the United States, Puerto Rico has no jurisdiction over immigration...
...Contrary to the implications of the issue's cover-a border crosser who is being frisked with his arms up like a crucified Christ-the undocumented are not the only victims of the great immigration game...
...Although I approach the topic from a somewhat different perspective, I would, in the end, agree with Howard Jordan: immigration definitely is a Puerto Rican issue...
Vol. 29 • March 1996 • No. 5
