Al Sharpton and Wal-Mart's Lee Scott allies for immigration bill
Among the various Americans who appeared before the La Raza conclave recently were Al Sharpton, shameless race-huckster, and Lee Scott, who is the CEO of Wal-Mart, chief purveyor of cheap Chinese disposable merchandise.
What can these two have in common? They both demand that Congress pass 'immigration reform', known in plain English as amnesty for illegal aliens. And they want it passed now.
Why is amnesty important to these two? For Scott, the answer is obvious: new markets. With 14% of his customers being Hispanic, and with that number growing as the invasion from the South continues, naturally he knows there are more customers where those came from, if we could just get rid of those pesky nitpicking distinctions between legal and illegal, citizens and invaders. So open the gates, put out the welcome mat, make 'em all citizens now, says Scott.
He also offers one rather novel excuse for promoting open borders: his Mexican-American granddaughter. Now we've talked before about the 'immigrant grandfather/grandmother syndrome' but this is the first I've heard, at least from a public figure, of the Hispanic granddaughter syndrome. But I expect we will hear it more frequently as intermarriage becomes more commonplace. Loyalties and allegiances will change as families become intermingled. I've seen it happen in some families, whose members married Hispanics. It changes things; because of Mexican in-laws other family members have had to learn to bite their tongues and hold back their true feelings on illegal immigration for fear of offending or alienating the spouse or the outmarried family member. Two such marriages I know of have since ended on the rocks, but the sensitivity is still there, and the inhibitions on the subject of immigration have remained.
In a sense, this is what is happening on a national scale, with unprecedented immigration, and I am sure this is part of the Open Borders' zealots plan. Most Americans will have some contact in some way with illegal and legal Latinos -- as co-workers, employees, neighbors, customers -- and relatives, as barriers to intermarriage drop. The same with Moslems and other immigrants. And the national debate is muted as we have to become sensitive to the 'others' among us whose feelings might be hurt if we express any impatience or anger with the changes to our country. We will all gradually accept that our national family is 'diverse and inclusive' and we will get used to it. And we'll curb our tongues and adjust.
But no doubt Wal-Mart honcho Scott and his counterparts in the global corporate world have no real allegiances to this country anyway; they are all citizens of the world. Greed is the universal language.
But what is Sharpton's angle? What is in it for him? Illegal immigration will hurt blacks in some ways as much or more than it hurts the rest of us, because immigrants legal and illegal are in competition for the jobs which blacks have often held. They are also competitors for affirmative action, minority scholarships and other benefits, and social programs which used to be heavily used by blacks primarily: Section 8, Medicaid, AFDC, food stamps, WIC, and all the rest. There are finite dollars there and immigrants keep on a-coming. How Sharpton thinks this will help blacks is beyond me. The only rationale I can see for his actions is the belief that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' Which of course is not necessarily true. The enemy of my enemy can also be my enemy. And there seems, in the real world, to be no love lost between Latinos and blacks.
One unexpected effect of this news about Wal-Mart openly embracing amnesty is that it is opening the eyes of some of Wally World's most rabid defenders on the 'right.' It used to be that if you wanted to anger a Republican, you just criticized Wal-Mart and watched tempers rise. Now, many former Wal-Mart cheerleaders are disillusioned.
Global capitalism, once a sacred cow for many 'conservatives' is now being seen for what it is: an amoral machine whose interests all too often are at odds with those of the American people.
