News Gloss

Department of Hypocrisy & Insecurity

Bernard Kerik, a nominee for head of Department of Homeland Secuity, hired an immigrant without papers, and so withdraws, for pure publicity reasons. He said so, and most of the commentary has been about Bush's "publicity mistake". Kerik himself has been available for hire by public relations firms since he left public office.

Which means that politics is all about publicity. Which means that the issue of immigration is not about what's good for people, but about what's good for publicity.

So the Department of Homeland Security, with its newspeak name and Kafkaesque treatment of people, is partly about propaganda. But the DHS exists also to keep wages low in countries made poor, on purpose, by US policy. And because of that, the DHS cannot be about 'security', since it exists to hurt people. It certainly doesn't "protect americans", since it destroys work in the US by depressing wages elswehere.

The rich & powerful, in the US & elsewhere, wrest money & resources from the rest of the world, to keep the majority of the global population poor (see NAFTA, for example), and then they make it nearly impossible for people to come to wealthy countries to work.

It is illegal in this country to do the most natural thing imaginable -- bring your friends from poor countries to live & work with you here. It is so hard, that individuals rarely succeed. Sometimes corporations do it, but generally, with better communication and flow of capital, it's less expensive to open branches overseas. Especially for manufacturing & service jobs, but increasingly for white collar work. The policy of "keeping people where they are" curtails everyone's freedom, including that of US citizens, and is done on purpose.

The primary reason to keep overseas wages low, is to increase corporate profits across borders. The US government frightens the local population with images of hoardes from overseas. Which lets them build a Department of Homeland Security, to keep the majority of the world's population from threatening profits of the ruling class. This actually stops free markets, and keeps the world from becoming a level playing field. Because a level playing field would be disasterous for corporate profit.

posted by Greg Bryant @ 1:51 PM