Dems Also to Blame for Playing Language Game

When I blogged about Mississippi Republicans using coded anti-Latino rhetoric to their advantage, my editor offered up a challenge: are Democrats doing the same thing, just less explicitly?

At first I figured they weren't, mostly because Democratic platforms have focused on punishing employers, not workers, for hiring illegal immigrants--a more legally sound and non-exploitative method of addressing the issue. But recently, I read Democratic candidate for governor John Arthur Eaves' campaign "issue" page on illegal immigration and was shocked by how obviously Eaves had pandered to anti-Latino (not just anti-illegal immigrant) sentiment. He implies-- no, scratch that-- right out says that Mississippi would be in better shape without the labor of Spanish-speaking immigrants who re-built the Coast. How is that possible? Because, Eaves states, Missisippi citizens, not illegal immigrants, would have exposed themselves to toxic levels of waste and done the dirty work of gutting houses, clearing debris, and building casinos-- reducing Mississippi's unemployment rate (the highest in the South, Eaves notes) in the process:

At the Mississippi Press Association’s convention at the Beau Rivage Casino on June 22, 2007, (Gov. Haley) Barbour said, “When I became governor, before Katrina, Mississippi had probably the smallest percentage of illegal or legal immigration by Spanish speakers in the country. We just had very few. Since Katrina there’s been a gigantic influx and… I hate to think where the coast would be if they weren’t here.”

I know where we’d be. We could have record employment instead of the highest unemployment in the South. We could be leading the region in job creation and recovery. We could have built homes for the 70,000 people still living in toxic FEMA trailers.

By specifically quoting Barbour's nod to Latinos, Eaves ensures that his carefully articulated "issue" is one not just of employment and immigration, but of race, too. When he says "We," he means "non-illegal immigrant," but he also means "non-Spanish speaking" and (with the possible exception of Equatorial Guineans) "non-Latino."

Aside from the explicitly racial element of Eaves' argument, it contains several other problems: 1) Unemployment in Mississippi existed long before Latinos arrived. Blaming it on a particular ethnic group, aside from being misleading, prolongs the state's history of racism--something that is a more accurate reason for unemployment in the first place. 2) The Mississippi Coast could not have been rebuilt at the rate it was without illegal immigrant labor. Eaves' perplexing argument that eliminating all illegal immigrants from the re-building process would have served not only to replicate the monumental feat (without the monumental source of labor) but also to accomplish the rebuilding of another 70,000 homes is disingenuous at best. 3) Many illegal immigrants who worked to rebuild the Coast at breakneck speed are, ironically, out of work now that they've completed this task so well. Eaves' proposal to solve the problems of Hurricane recovery and unemployment with one (citizen-only) stone wouldn't change the fact that, once the work is done, so too are the jobs.

Eaves, who is waging an uphill battle to defeat Haley Barbour in Mississippi's gubenatorial race, should not resort to an illegal immigration talking point of half-truths to unseat the governor. By doing so, Eaves taints his otherwise honorable attack on Barbour's unequal treatment of Katrina victims, by pandering to feelings of fear, hatred and racial inequality.