Anarchogeek

There is a “work” related show on the local public radio station, kalw which i listen to as my alarm clock. KPFA in berkeley doesn’t come in on my radio for some reason, so i listen to it online.

This morning i woke up to a rant about the “The effects of illegal immigration on your worklife(sic) and on the American workforce.” It was one of the most bigoted arguments against immigration i’ve heard, worse than the tripe which Fox News puts out. While at the same time as he was spouting lies, he claimed that he wanted a n ‘honest’ debate as worthy of public radio.

Here were some of his main points.

• Illegals broke the law to cross the border, therefore don’t care about any laws in society.
• Illegals take government services they don’t pay for in taxes.
• Illegals are destroying the health care system by using the emergency rooms
• Illegals use fake id’s, further proof of their desire to disrespect the rule of law.
• Illegals are hurting legal construction workers who have to compete with low wage day laborers.
• Illegals only immigrate if the are the least educated and least skilled people.

To respond:

• NAFTA and the Trade Agreements have changed the economy and passed laws which force people to cross the border. Undocumented immigrants i know are MUCH more law abiding, they are scared shitless of being arrested and deported, so they follow the laws VERY closely.
• He ignores that undocumented who are not day laborers, but have regular jobs, pay in to social security with fake numbers, money they will never get back. It’s probably true that most undocumented immigrants don’t pay income taxes, but they would be exempted because they don’t make enough money. They do pay sales taxes, property taxes via rent, and most other taxes.
• Undocumented Immigrants use emergency rooms like the poor, because we have a broken health care system, not the other way around. Undocumented Immigrants, and all of the working poor in this country, have no access to affordable health insurance.
• The need to use fake id’s is a result of the laws, not the immigrants desire to deceive and engage in identity theft.
• Day Laborers, along with farm workers, are the most marginal immigrant workers. The solution to keeping construction workers paid at high levels is the carpenters union addressing and organizing these immigrants.
• Immigrants are poor, uneducated, unskilled. This is just racist. This is in fact where Marty Nemko is most racist. I know undocumented immigrants who have Phd’s, are doctors, are engineers, chemists, computer programmers, and other highly skilled workers. They are forced to work in low skill and low pay positions because those are the are the only jobs which allow workers without legit papers.

The most interesting thing is he actually knows he is a racist and classist. He knows that he’ll face this kind of criticism. In fact he said this near the end of the program about the charge of racism. “It just stops us in our tracks, we either get stopped down, or we lash back. When ever we have a conversation with regard to race, we say you’re just being racist or classist.” So he knows what he is, but claims the label just is not something which is proper to use. Even though he just spent an hour insulting immigrants.

After all that he says “Let us have a fully open discussion which is not based on anecdotes, let’s be statesmen about it.” He of course filled his hour long rant with misinformation, stereotypes, and lies based on a racist and classist vision of the world. Marty Nemko should loose his radio program. It’s the worse program on KALW in terms of quality, full of half thought out declarations and saccharine cooing over his wife.

I’m doing my part to google bomb his name, racist, please spread the link. For anybody who wants to hear for themselves, it looks like he’ll be posting the program online here.

In: Uncategorized | | #