Propaganda on “New Foreign Aid” –
A Veiled Racist Attack Against
Immigrants from the Third World

At the height of the emotional issue on immigration and the Great American Boycott mass actions nationwide, The Los Angeles Times ran a five-part series entitled, “New Foreign Aid.” The series of feature articles ran from April 16, 2006 before the May 1, and featured the Philippines, Mexico, Haiti and other countries which send thousands of immigrant workers to the United States every year.

The recurrent theme that ran through the articles curiously focused on the fact that “the world immigrant workers send home billions of dollars a year eclipsing all government aid. The funds arriving in trickles eased poverty and drive growth.”

Trying to be objective, the articles hammered on the poverty of the nations concerned and the sufferings of the people and as the title goes, they stressed that the money being earned by hard work of immigrants are America’s “new foreign aid.”

What the articles do not mention is that the policies of neo-liberal or “free market” globalization – liberalization, deregulation and denationalization – being foisted by the US and other advanced capitalist countries on the poorer countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the like have wrought widespread destruction of the productive forces and economies of those countries, causing massive dislocations and loss of livelihood and homes and destruction of the environment for millions of people and forcing them to migrate just to survive.

The influx of immigrants to the US and other advanced capitalist countries redounds to the benefit of those receiving countries at the expense of those societies that are subsequently unable to provide them gainful employment. Once in the US and the West, migrant professionals suffer de-skilling and are taken advantage of, and migrant workers in general are oppressed and exploited as cheap labor.

We, in the Coalition in Defense of Immigrant Rights (CDIR), therefore, protest such allusions to the hard-earned work and the money earned by immigrant workers being alluded to as “new foreign aid.” This description is not only unkind but shows deep racism among the writers who vainly tried to show as does the mouthpiece of white reactionary politicians Lou Dobbs, that immigrants steal away America’s money and resources, that they do not spent it in the U.S and sent them back home for their families, and hence they are “unpatriotic” and “treasonous.”

How can they allude to the earned remittances of these workers as “new foreign aid” when it is neither given nor earned freely nor given free by the capitalists and big business but paltry payment for slave labor that people earn that does not duly compensate for all their hard work?

The bias of The Los Angeles Times writers proves and highlights the racist orientation deeply ingrained among America’s ruling class. It might be true that the Civil War ended more than a 150 years ago but not only is the Confederate flag flying in some Southern states but racism is alive and being peddled by a very reactionary section of the ruling class that is now mounting concerted anti-immigrant racist attacks both in the media and in all levels of society.

We condemn such propaganda being peddled as “objective reporting.” Such allusions have no place in a society that purports to be democratic and free of racial bias. Such racist notions must be criticized and exposed roundly for what they truly are: worthless crap. #

It's better than "foreign aid", which often ends up enriching American companies indirectly. Remittances by immigrants go straight to the people, who then use it to enrich their lives and put dollars into the local economy. Eventually, these dollars come back to America or another country which uses the American dollar.

The author makes some good points, but misses the larger issue of what drives the enormous influx of what amount to economic refugees into the U.S. The core problem is failed governments, like that in Mexico, who have grown so corrupt they've succeeded in destroying their economies. One unintended consequence of permitting the exodus of economic refugees is that it blunts pressure for change in the countries of the victims.

You say that governments have "grown" corrupt, but, I think governments start out "corrupt". The form of government that dominated the planet was monarchy, tsarism, or dictatorship. By the standards of democracy, they are "corrupt."

Second, the standard of what we call "democracy" in the US were created by people who left their homelands. They were Englishmen who didn't fix the corrupt government of England; instead, they left England, colonized another contient, and broke away from England. Then they proceeded to invade the continent, killing a most of the original inhabitants along the way, and creating a racial slave caste whose labor grew the "democratic" nation.

The story of Mexico is no different. Spaniards invaded, and decimated the indigenous population. They created a racial and religious caste system, and collaborated with the church to establish a far-flung network of missions to regulate the domain, and enslave the remaining indigenous population. Eventually, the people revolted and created a so-called "democracy" that remains racist to this day.

Governments start corrupt, and respond to pressure from below.