from "illegal alien" to surgeon!

[R_P_A_S]

I have mixed views about this story. A couple of months ago we had a thread that talked on what really is pro-immigration and not. Some of you focus on the fact that pro immigration is being pro capitalist.. in a way.. since many people make the argument that "immigrants help the economy" and as communist, obviously we don't want to help the capitalist economy. in fact here is the thread, because it got quite extensive... RED IT HERE! (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=64620&hl=)

And also the whole farce of "The American Dream"...

Well, what do you make of this story by NPR? thanks!
From illegal alien to surgeon! (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10013111&ft=1&f=1021)

[Raúl Duke]

Winning in Capitalism (aka achieving the "american dream") is like playing the lottery.

You might win....but the odds are very much against you.

And the odds have kept on getting bigger and bigger; at least thats what some trends show.

Also, for every winner, there are many more losers.

After all, capitalism depends on the exploitation of labor. So the system needs "losers" to keep it running.



He signed up for English classes at a community college, where a teacher encouraged him to attend the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley on a scholarship, Quinones-Hinojosa developed a passion for the scientific method. He went on to Harvard Medical School, where he eventually delivered the commencement speech. It is also during this time that he received his U.S. citizenship.

I wish the article elaborated on this point. Exactly...how was he able to do it?

[StartToday]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13, 2007 07:51 am
I wish the article elaborated on this point. Exactly...how was he able to do it?
Yeah, from community college to UCB to Harvard? Perhaps he is exceptionally intelligent. But most people don't have genius IQs so I fail to see how that would count as the "American Dream" because that's basically just a myth of average people going from relative rags to riches based on hard work.

[sexyguy]

Anti-immigration campaigning is certainly used as right-wing rabble rousing divide and rule tactic by the ruling class – but “open all borders” idealism and pure ‘anti-racism’ campaigning are a big diversion from revolutionary politics too. Under capitalism, all ‘reform’ demands (‘left’ or black nationalist) only add to cynicism and hypocrisy

Notions that the jingoistic BNP (British National Party) and other right-wing campaigning against immigration (or the US vigilante anti-Latino border fence) can be countered by vociferous campaigning simply “against racism” and for better race relations are going to break down in futility because all relations under crisis-ridden capitalism are turning bad.

The same goes for the ‘Islamo-phobia’ being stoked up by the Blair poodles to Washington’s “war on terror” insanity, which feeds the general xenophobia so useful to the capitalist ruling class for diversionary purposes.

After generations of betrayal by the class-compromising Labour party and trade union movement, racist scare-mongering, trade and job protectionism (look at the US Democrat stance on this!) are going to sway an uncomfortable number of petty-bourgeois influenced workers, and the destabilising loss of their jobs and industries won’t be stemmed by reformism anyway – which can’t stop the slump, as boom turns to bust.
And advocating or endorsing mass immigration from the put-upon Third World to the richer imperialist countries is equally reformist nonsense.

The poorer countries lose a mass of people who should be weighing into the struggle for revolution in their own countries, are stripped of doctors, nurses, scientists and technicians for the benefit of the Western rich and middle class, and their remittances from overseas help to buy time for counter-revolution in their home countries. It is not a matter of therefore campaigning against immigration, but it is a complete idealist mockery of Marxist politics to campaign for it, or even for mass “asylum seeking”.
Lenin’s line was to argue for the socialist revolution in all countries, without exception.

Until workers states are established, the proletariat and its party should not take a line for or against any capitalist economic mechanisms in their unending global trade war, where mass people movements are used as “safety valves” to dissipate anger in the oppressed countries; as cheap labour for the rich countries; to undercut wages in the host countries, and for fears over all this to be used to be whipped up at any moment for racist rabble-rousing.

Therefore, when the ‘left’ falls for single-issue campaigning over any of this, all that happens is that the vicious circle is being stoked up.
And look at what unbalanced diversions from the real (racist) imperialist warmongering ensue: anti-fascist campaigners, such as UNITE, end up trying to beat back fascism by protesting at the handfuls of BNPers around the country, but completely fail to highlight that fascism springs from the very global economic disasters of capitalism, which is already seeing monstrous fascist torture and blitz savagery inflicted by Bush and Blair (a Labour prime minister) on Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Janus]

Perhaps he is exceptionally intelligent.


Originally posted by NPR
Hinojosa continued his schooling and became a teacher by the time he was 18

Not sure what sector he was teaching, but you definitely have to be pretty exceptional to be teaching at 18.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Sexyguy,

reform is never good enough, but we should support it because it temporarily makes the living conditions of the working class slightly better. If we let them say ban gay marriage on the grounds that we are not "idealists" then we become complicit with smashing woman's rights. If we let them build a wall on the border and continue to raid immigrant homes, grab a father or a mother, put a black hood on him, throw him into a van, and then drive away so that the family will most likely never see that father or mother again; that makes us complicit with Nazi-Style Gustapo raids and a rise of ultra-nationalism to distract the masses from the horrors that US imperialism has perpertrated on billions world wide and 10s of millions at homes

[sexyguy]

DFPW,

Fair enough. And communists should encourage workers to give assistance against these outrages as part of the revolutionary fight against imperialism.