Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2000 11:42:30 -0400
Subject: RE: HOW MANY FOREIGNERS DO YOU LET IN?


Dear listmembers:
I've only been skimming the immigration discussion because after a couple
of exchanges it seemed to be hackneyed--browns convincing "whites" of
complexity etc. There is FAR more movement of population within Asia and
Africa than there is to "white" lands. Is that an area of concern or
doesn't it matter? 
Malini



At 02:42 AM 7/31/00 -0400, you wrote:
>I agree with Sangeeta that this is somewhat more interesting of a debate
>than the usual citation-swapping and has certainly helped me formulate some
>of my own ideas on the issues raised but I do have to say that there are
>ways that this kind of discourse/provocation is gendered and I find myself
>frustrated when members respond to Eric w/thoughtful, well-substantiated
>posts and yet some of their basic points are repeatedly overlooked.
>Unfortunately, my email won't be particularly thoughtful since it's way too
>late in the evening for coherence but here are a few thoughts about the
>discussion:
>
>Eric wrote:
>>Only yesterday, I translated at work a short news item saying that a Dutch
>minister sees a looming imbalance between jobs and people to fill them and
>suggested taking on some 7 million (I seem to remember) foreign workers over
>the next 50 years to fill up the Dutch workforce. This idea is fine on
>paper, but it doesn't take account of the factor I mentioned previously: how
>many foreigners can a country absorb before you get social problems?
>
>Eric, your question surprises me because it seems you have already answered
>it. I would assume that there is a correlation between the need for 7
>million workers and Dutch emigration? As David Cummings pointed out
>>actually more people leave the UK then enter each year...some problem. Also
>I have pointed
>out that the EU needs immigration for the economy to expand.
>
>This is *such* an important point that is still being overlooked despite
>David's reminder. It reminds me of the debate in New Zealand a few years ago
>where particular politicians (like winston peters) were voted in partially
>because they drew upon anti-Asian immigration sentiments. The fact that the
>NZ gov't had actively 'recruited' wealthy SE Asian immigrants was erased;
>the fact that more NZers were leaving NZ than Asians were entering was
>erased. Conservative white NZers complained that Asians were "taking over"
>"their" country during one of the more active moments of Maori sovereignty
>agitation. The focus on racialized immigration (apparently the white South
>Africans who were also emigrating to NZ weren't a problem) not only
>contributed to a kind of divide and conquer mentality (Asians as threat to
>Maori sovereignty) but projected the country's internal racial anxieties
>onto an 'invading' racialized other which needless to say deflected
>attention from the repercussions of the invading, non-racialised British-NZ
>'norm'.
>
>I've strayed a bit from the politics of UK immigration but my point is that
>Eric your emails suggest a transparency to whiteness so that western
>Europeans and Brits remain fixed and rooted in their homogenous cultures
>(when Dave points out Brits are migrating and I would add even though we all
>know this that the UK had its own 'diaspora' although colonist discourse has
>naturalized white presence in the most far-flung places of the empire) and
>all other immigrants become racialized, marked, almost contaminating. This
>is reflected in the subject line of your email. And it has been mentioned
>before. I appreciated Amandi Esonwanne's point:
>>As far as I know, the aborigines of America and Australia did not put any
>numerical restriction on European immigrants.
>
>I realize Eric that you are translating for the media which of course will
>not raise these kinds of questions--are more Dutch emigrating? Why is it
>that the formulation of UK immigration in your email is concerned with
>racialized migrations--when I would not be surprised to see that white
>Canadian, US, NZ and Australian immigrations to England are also very high.
>When Clinton was voted in all the media hype was about Haitian refugees to
>the US--deeply ingrained in the discourse of (HIV) contagion but the
>mainstream media never dared to mention that 90% of these refugees were sent
>back--thanks to the Clinton/Bush/Reagan interdiction agreement. Ok it's late
>and I am losing coherence. But the point is that what you are translating
>brings up far more interesting questions through its *erasures* than the
>usual white transparency-homogeneity/racialized contagion discourse that you
>are circulating. Liz DeLoughrey
>
>
>
>
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