The point isn't to convince YOU, it's to convince the 70+ million Americans who just voted a Nazi-loving pedophile rapist into the presidency AGAIN.
They clearly don't give a fuck about human rights, so you point out the thing that they MIGHT POSSIBLY CARE ABOUT.
(even if they prob don't)
The sad and frustrating reality is that if this was going to work, it would have years ago, but business owners will keep doing exactly what they're doing and just replacing their workforce as they always have. I understand we like a little schadenfreude, but it's very fleeting here for sure.
Every time I see one of these memes I cringe. In my rural county, it’s poor whites who do all those jobs. And they cheer on the mass deportations thinking it will mean more jobs/better money for themselves.
"haha when he deports people your groceries will cost more"
bit more concerned that real people's lives and family are being torn apart and the only thing that happens if they stay is they keep getting exploited.
For people with zero empathy, it really seems like the only possible way to get across any notion that they're supporting the wrong things.
Even though we know that the price increases & *record profits* will actually be due to corporate greed blamed on other factors, just as it was with eggs.
100% agree! Although we probably at some point should be talking about creating a proactive guest worker program and/or immigration pathway as COVID continues to disable Americans. Everyday the number of people who can stand for a length of time decreases, most sectors will likely need more workers.
I think it says a lot about the other side that the wallet is what matters the most here. I don’t care for this tactic, but frankly, the GOP as a whole isn’t very swayed by empathy these days, so I get why it’s a thing.
We have to live in the world that exists & not the fantasy we wish it was. Most Americans are not convinced by arguments based on empathy towards strangers. They are convinced by things that affect themselves, their loved ones, & occasionally their community. If you want to win, use what works.
No, but there’s a big, stupid, tuned-out demographic who doesn’t know what a tariff is and who votes solely based on the grocery prices they’re promised. It might be convincing to those.
When the migrant workers are deported guess what happens to the COST of everything? Yes it goes UP. Then MAGA's will have plenty of jobs in the fields working for $5-6 dollars an hour.
I'm glad I'm not the only one a bit disturbed by these messages. Stereotyping Illegal immigrants as farm workers and cheap labor is kind of messed up. Heck the richest man in the world is an illegal immigrant.
So much. I get why advocacy groups use the economic argument for immigration, but it always feels like having a debate on someone else’s terms. People deserve respect, safety, etc because they are people. Their contribution to “the economy” is secondary.
It's so gross that these people need the suffering of others to affect them and their bottom like for them to give a shit. Why can't we just have basic human compassion and kindness? Immigrants are valuable because they're people, not because they're our slaves, and we shouldn't celebrate slavery
Thanks for the perspective. I saw the Movie A Day Without a Mexican years and years ago, and that was the major takeaway I got from it (we can't afford to not have them work for us and do the shit jobs). You're right - it should be about the people, not what the people can do for us.
I get it since it’s appealing to people who has no humanity or decent in their hearts, but it is pretty fucked to view people losing their homes and even families in many cases as an expense
I am glumly practical enough to feel that if it helps to prevent deportations, I will grasp at any straw, but it’s so goddamn dehumanizing, and makes people that much more likely to see other people as harvester robots.
Sometimes you have to appeal to the people who definitely do not have anti-racism at the top of their priority list, and showing them how this will negatively impact them immediately is a way to do this. It would be nice if people could couch it a little better, though.
I've seen so many times "what will happen if they deport migrants who do the work Americans don't want to do?" used as an argument against deportation. It's gross.
You're absolutely right, at the policy level, when it comes to corporations and policymakers. But if you're messaging to JoDean down the way, who doesn't really operate at that level and who definitely thinks 'deport 'em all' will ease his 'economic insecurity,' "this hurts you now" can help
You’re almost certainly right. Probably if it was gonna work, it would have already. I am still grasping at straws hoping they’ll keep us from sliding off the cliff.
I’m not well versed in these issues but I’ve been assuming Republicans are less interested in actually deporting large numbers of people than they are in terrorizing a permanent underclass with ever-fewer rights via the credible *threat* of deportation, but I dunno
It would be cool if the messaging were a little more explicitly "If you're not already opposed to this, it means you're a selfish, shitty person, but even selfish, shitty people like you should oppose this because it impacts you negatively."
Nah. For-profit prison labor.
The Fourteenth has an exception for prisoners. Round up a bunch of brown folks, declare them "illegals" and therefore not worthy of due process, then put them to work in the fields. Boom, same folks in the field, but now they're slaves.
Oh sure, eventually, but it's a lot easier to start with the immigrants. Just vanish them into a truck, give them work coveralls, and put them in the field with a rifle-toting deputy.
The worst part? Nobody would notice. When was the last time you paid attention to farm workers?
why aren't we demanding
🍅better pay & working conditions for ag workers
🇺🇸more efficient, fairer paths to citizenship
🕊️stabilizing the countries people are emigrating from
Well, and treat humans like humans even if they can't work. Reducing immigrants down to their usefulness as workers means someone's grandma is going to be first on the chopping block.
I agree. This sucks.
We shouldn't glorify people taking advantage of anyone and giving them low wages they can't live on.
Saying people are using the poor for cheap labor and unfair wages isn't a good thing and I don't get why people think these messages are somehow pro immigrants.
Same, but I think it has more potential to land with people on the right and cause real problems for the Trump administration than the obvious moral issue does. Depressing, yes.
It’s also this off-putting, currently popular genre of liberal/center-left meme: “Those who voted for Trump will suffer under Trump, and I’m smug and happy about that”… It’s speculative Schadenfreude, and it’s not healthy or helpful.
And so the only arguments that might work reinforce the problem.
That post election postmortems for Dems invariably lead off with “Dems treated THOSE people like humans, what if they don’t do that?” leaves me at an utter loss.
13th Amendment.
Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/
They court the vote of Centrists who don't view immigrants as people but a utility to be used. The Centrists will only care bc of the things mentioned in the article
I hate it because it’s not true, but it’s also harmful in other ways. I see liberal/resist types leaning in, and it’s harmful. They’re making the (GOP) argument for H-2A expansion and wage suppression.
It also portrays rising food costs as a labor cost issue, and we know that is simply not true.
Worse, it reduces mass deportation to a problem for capitalism. Instead of neighbors, friends and family members we are talking about the price of cereal.
Some liberal/resist types go so far it’s blatantly racist w/stereotypes about needing immigrants to cut the grass and clean the toilets.
On the one hand I hear you. Reading between the lines on stuff like this, I feel like it's an attempt at messaging that will get through to them. I think a lot of us are just so tired of trying to explain empathy to them we are damn near broken.
We've tried "consider the human" that "they are just trying to feed their families" and long ago gave up on "an arbitrary line between the US and Mexico doesn't consider more than a millenia of most migrant workers heritage"
Seeing Google data on people doing research AFTER they voted...
"It's a LEOPARD!"
"You have a face too."
... You'd think it would work.
But nope, they really, really, just want to see someone's face eaten by the leopard, no matter what.
It never fails to make me angry,esp when it comes from my fellow people. They are people,not commodities. Argues that we need people from elsewhere bc they can be paid much less w/ much less protections/benefits than is found acceptable by citizens. Bc that's still better than wherever they're from.
This election has made me so bitter and despondent, because it seemed to confirm that most people don't care about anything other than how much their eggs cost. How effective is appealing people this way if they don't care about their neighbors, friends, and family members? 1/2
If telling some of these low-information voters (putting it charitably), "Hey, bananas will be too expensive if you mass deport people," works, then so be it. I agree, though, that seeing it from ostensibly progressive (read: neolibs) sources is not the way to do things.
“You won’t have a name as you ride the big airplane, all they will call you will be deportee”
Woody Guthrie, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos/Deportee
The more things change….
And the reason we bring up cleaning toilets etc is bc trump made a point of telling ppl that these immigrants are taking their jobs. Immigrants work way harder than ppl born here. There are way too many jobs that aren’t good enough for ppl born here. If you know what I mean.
These ppl who are neighbors or friends and who have come here to work and make a life will be deported but that takes money and there’s already talk of detention facilities. Texas is offering locations. Who do we think will pay Texas for the use of these locations. These poor ppl will be locked up
So the farmers won’t lose their pickers? They won’t have to find workers? Won’t have to pay higher wages and then raise the prices of their food? The supply and demand of food won’t be affected? There won’t be any labor shortages if we spend money to deport a million ppl a year?
It also falsely portrays these industries as pro-immigrant, whereas we would already have immigration reform if big corporations wanted it, but these food and service industries thrive and benefit off a workforce living in precarity and fear over immigration status, suppressing wages and organizing
There's absolutely a reason these industries support anti-immigrant politicians.
It's because a criminalized workforce is effectively disenfranchised, and cannot report abuse, exploitation, safety violations, wage theft, etc for fear of incarceration/ deportation.
There are industries that depend very heavily on immigrant labor. The solution, IMO, is to stop throttling legal immigration, and create a non-punitive route to full citizenship for the people who are already here building and living in our communities.
We should also be careful not to lend support to the idea that it is preferable for undocumented people to be held in work camps rather than internment camps as they are “processed for deportation.”
The infrastructure and legal precedent for prison slave labor exists and is primed for expansion
I'm ... glad? ... to see that my fear about this was not just me being paranoid. I mean, I'm old, I know history, I'm pretty sure I'm not really paranoid, but good to know ppl like you are on the look-out for it
It's people trying to *take the arguments as were presented to the MAGA voters* and push back within the same *framing* because that's what the MAGA voters think is true. Harris campaign found it was *extremely* difficult to convince people "things were better when Trump was president" wasn't true
Immigrants have been denigrated for so long to supply the things that ppl rely on, and now there will be a noticeable change. These memes point out the wrong of treating people as cheap laborers and the consequences of then deporting these ppl. Either way, their rights are violated.
It is absolutely racist and dehumanizing, but maybe it is the only language the idiots will understand. First appeal to their own self interests, and then work on their empathy?
I hate it because it glosses over the fact that it's cheap *because human beings are being exploited*, which is something I thought we were all against.
That said MAGA mindset is pretty sociopathic, so I think "this is going to make YOUR food expensive" is the only message they'll really listen to.
Stark reminder that Democrats no longer bother arguing that it's wrong to maintain a class of workers without legal protection. A strong guest worker path to legal residence disarms the RW claims of mooching and "nobody knows who they are/how many are here." But Dems abandoned that. Disgraceful.
It's definitely a terrible route for both moral and rhetorical reasons, but the impulse from liberals to harp on this is because they know conservatives don't give a shit about violence against brown people until it affects them somehow.
It's no good, but that's why they're trying this route
Lots of things go into the costs of goods and services. Over time price increases are a function of monetary & government fiscal policy (inflation), but wages are clearly a component of what things cost. Keep wages down & you improve profits or steal market share with lower prices.
I really want to brainstorm some better messages of 'American landowners/companies will use immigrant labor (either undocumented or visas dependent on an employer) as long as it is cheaper to use the threat of ICE/deportation to exploit vulnerable workers than to follow the laws'.
But making it clear that the issue is the exploiting people and knowing that people care more about cheap labor and anti-immigrant sentiment than 'maybe we should have jobs where all people are treated fairly'.
Right- because immigrants like my in-laws don’t exist. Those who after coming here go on to become an awarded DuPont chemical engineer and a school teacher of special needs kids.
The liberal conception of being “progressive” on immigration is that migrants should be allowed to stay because we need an army of borderline-enslaved, hyper-precarious people to keep delivering us cheap treats.
No you don’t have to play to the room. If a room is full of Nazis you don’t go start heiling hitler to make friends, you lock the doors to the room and [redacted]
We absolutely do not need to play to the room instead of telling the truth
This is not heil Hitlering anyone.
Am I’m not trying to make friends with Nazis.
I’m trying to do whatever it takes to stop this given we have no branch of the government on our side in Jan.
We don’t have keys to lock the damn door because too many people stayed home instead of voting 2 weeks ago.
You can instead reduce the emphasis given to the migratory status of these workers, and talk about it as a labour issue. After all, there's a lot of US nationals that work those jobs as well, and whatever affects their colleagues will end damaging them as well.
To clarify, I mean it’s true that humanitarian arguments don’t matter to some people. I don’t actually think this is a room we should play to, any more than I think democrats should throw trans people under the bus. Let’s have some principles and stick to them for once.
No one is being thrown under the bus by pointing this out.
Different messaging works on different people.
Or we can stick to one size fits all and lose.
If we start seeing entire ethnicities or nationalities as "the help", we already lost. Might as well join forces with the other side and call it a day then.
The room won't care. You're not going to win them over with this argument. We are probably not that far from being able to automate many of the manual jobs, does this mean we've got to deport the groups that fit the stereotype of doing those jobs?
First time I heard "nooo we cannot deport the help" (NOT a direct quote) from a fellow liberal was 13 years ago, and it rubbed me the wrong way back then too. Can't believe it's still alive and gaining traction.
Tbh even the joke about Melania and how she's proof that immigrants will do the work
"that Americans won't do" rubbed me the wrong way for all the same reasons. First of all, we *are* Americans. Second of all, leave us the hell out of this.
Well, the frickin MAGAs made their stand on Capitalism and lower grocery bills and we're calling out their bullshit. Personally, I'm for bring immigrants in, background check, vital information, SSN and a bus ticket. Let them go find jobs. Their work benefits us.
How many times has their shit been called out without a single dent being made in their consciousness? Calling them out don't do shit. Hey, here's a radical idea. Instead of having immigrants do underpaid labor for us why not support unionization globally?
This isn't a line of messaging. It's schadenfreude. It's fun to imagine the people who voted for all the suffering Trump plans to inflict experiencing even a little pain themselves as the result.
We don’t want good people vilified, dehumanized & disappeared or for our country to support slave-labor prison camps.
We want workers to be fairly compensated & appreciated for their work. We can’t afford the prices that would ensure both adequate compensation AND unchanged corporate profit.
It’s an uncomfortable & difficult to resolve reality. The exploitative system we have needs fixing. But destroying those workers & that system is detrimental to everyone & everything. How do we convince the masses to help stop the destruction, w/out advocating for the exploitative labor system?
Comments
They clearly don't give a fuck about human rights, so you point out the thing that they MIGHT POSSIBLY CARE ABOUT.
(even if they prob don't)
Late stage capitalism is really going awesome, isn't it.
bit more concerned that real people's lives and family are being torn apart and the only thing that happens if they stay is they keep getting exploited.
Even though we know that the price increases & *record profits* will actually be due to corporate greed blamed on other factors, just as it was with eggs.
So they can say they're pro suffering
So much wrong with this but my biggest problem is the idea that ALL immigrants do is pick produce and cut grass.
Here’s my take:
THEY’RE HUMAN BEINGS.
They deserve to have new opportunities and if that means living in a different country, give them a damn chance.
The Fourteenth has an exception for prisoners. Round up a bunch of brown folks, declare them "illegals" and therefore not worthy of due process, then put them to work in the fields. Boom, same folks in the field, but now they're slaves.
The worst part? Nobody would notice. When was the last time you paid attention to farm workers?
🍅better pay & working conditions for ag workers
🇺🇸more efficient, fairer paths to citizenship
🕊️stabilizing the countries people are emigrating from
We shouldn't glorify people taking advantage of anyone and giving them low wages they can't live on.
Saying people are using the poor for cheap labor and unfair wages isn't a good thing and I don't get why people think these messages are somehow pro immigrants.
On the whole they don’t believe in pluralism. They don’t see anyone else as being able to be American. Or human, really.
We can’t fix white people. And they clearly won’t fix themselves.
That post election postmortems for Dems invariably lead off with “Dems treated THOSE people like humans, what if they don’t do that?” leaves me at an utter loss.
250 years and we’re still at square one.
Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/
It also portrays rising food costs as a labor cost issue, and we know that is simply not true.
T H I S
T H I S
T H I S
Some liberal/resist types go so far it’s blatantly racist w/stereotypes about needing immigrants to cut the grass and clean the toilets.
Seeing Google data on people doing research AFTER they voted...
I'm still at a loss here.
"You have a face too."
... You'd think it would work.
But nope, they really, really, just want to see someone's face eaten by the leopard, no matter what.
Woody Guthrie, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos/Deportee
The more things change….
Instead of building up and bucking up, they're lashing out and it's telling.
Right and wrong aren't up for debate or subject to electoral mandates. Truly principled folks need to focus on the big picture now more than ever.
It's because a criminalized workforce is effectively disenfranchised, and cannot report abuse, exploitation, safety violations, wage theft, etc for fear of incarceration/ deportation.
You're both correct.
https://www.propublica.org/article/florida-immigration-bill-farmers-rick-roth
The infrastructure and legal precedent for prison slave labor exists and is primed for expansion
Democrats: Jokes on you! Now you can't brutalize them in these other ways!
That said MAGA mindset is pretty sociopathic, so I think "this is going to make YOUR food expensive" is the only message they'll really listen to.
It's no good, but that's why they're trying this route
That line of thinking is Bad Actually!
Not the dehumanising policy and rhetoric
Nice 🙃
Ya gotta play to the room
We absolutely do not need to play to the room instead of telling the truth
Am I’m not trying to make friends with Nazis.
I’m trying to do whatever it takes to stop this given we have no branch of the government on our side in Jan.
We don’t have keys to lock the damn door because too many people stayed home instead of voting 2 weeks ago.
Different messaging works on different people.
Or we can stick to one size fits all and lose.
And the people one think would be target for that kind of thing will NEVER care about any of it.
Tbh even the joke about Melania and how she's proof that immigrants will do the work
We want workers to be fairly compensated & appreciated for their work. We can’t afford the prices that would ensure both adequate compensation AND unchanged corporate profit.