Even Senator Mike Rounds has to admit that Donald Trump’s rabid and thoughtless xenophobia is hurting South Dakota businesses:
Members of the South Dakota congressional delegation are working to cut through the partisanship, educate colleagues on the need for guest workers and improve the logistics and stability of the programs. But several recent reform efforts have been stymied by congressional gridlock and a reluctance by the Trump Administration to prioritize improvement of legal immigration programs that aid states like South Dakota.
“It’s been several years in a row that we’ve had this challenge,” U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, said in an interview with News Watch. “We’d sure like to get it back to where it was a stable program and one in which people recognized the need for it and understood that this is a legal visa system that actually works and that it is not part of the illegal immigration problem” [Bart Pfankuch, “Immigration Debate Hampers Guest Worker Programs Critical to SD Business,” South Dakota News Watch, 2019.04.25].
Instead stoking xenophobia by throwing five billion dollars at a macho wall that won’t keep people out, a sensible administration would focus on crafting sensible immigration policy that would more efficiently let willing new Americans in. They’d generate wealth, pay taxes, and safely fill all those empty spaces in our workforce and declining rural communities.
Maybe instead of five billion dollars for concrete and steel slats, we could spend a hundred million to double the number of border crossings, then spend another hundred million to pay 2,000 South Dakotans $50,000 a year to work at those border crossing, help process immigrants faster, and hand everyone of those immigrants a $1,000 housing voucher and a $100 bus ticket to Sioux Falls, Rapid City, or Aberdeen (their choice!), along with the link to SouthDakotaWorks.org so they can look up and apply for jobs on their phones on the long ride north.
It’s either that or start offering cleaning staff more than $10.55 an hour…
[Dani] Banks operates the Holy Smoke Resort, a seasonal Keystone business with 26 full-service cabins and 21 sites for recreational vehicles that is usually open from April to October.
Due to delays in getting workers under the H-2B visa program, Banks has been unable to open the resort and is losing money every day.
“We’ll get open almost a month late this year,” she said. “I’m not open because I can’t get my cabins ready to go with just me and one employee.”
For nearly two decades, Banks has used the H-2B visa program to hire up to five housekeepers from Mexico who live in RVs on her property and keep her cabins clean and ready to rent. This year, if they come, they will be paid $10.55 an hour, a wage set by the government [Pfankuch, 2019.04.25].
…or dairy workers more than $14 an hour…
Lynn Boadwine is a prominent dairy farmer from Baltic who often struggles to find enough qualified workers….
Boadwine is anticipating the arrival of seven to 10 H-2A guest workers in May who will make about $14 an hour and be allowed to stay until December.
Boadwine advertises locally for open positions at the dairy but doesn’t have much success [Pfankuch, 2019.04.25].
Funny that the free market is failing so miserably to meet labor demand here in good capitalist South Dakota and under the good capitalist South Dakotans elected to sit in his Florida country club and torpedo our workforce expansion with his xenophobic outbursts.
Last math note: Suppose there are a thousand full-time jobs aching to be filled in South Dakota. Give us our population-proportional share of the money Trump would waste on the wall, $13.6 million, and we could increase the hourly wage for each of those positions by $6.80 an hour. That redirection of our national wealth from a useless government construction project to private-sector employment wages would produce an even bigger premium if applied to seasonal wages.
Remember America first. Foreign workers are stealing jobs from America? Magat? Well, maybe we are too harsh on Drumpf….. maybe not. https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/busted-trump-resorts-rejected-dozens-us-workers-hire-low-wage-foreign-workers/
Plus, Drumpf has yet to repatriate any of his businesses off shored to make more profits and pay no taxes.
Most rational people realize that blind hatred or fear toward any group, including immigrants, is immoral and not something they want to be known for. And I daresay, with no survey to back me up, that the vast majority of South Dakotans who have experienced interaction with immigrants (whether documented or not) through work, play, church, school, or any other encounter, have had positive experiences. As a whole our experience with individual immigrants has been good over the years.
Here is my theory to explain how South Dakotans recently have developed anti-immigrant attitudes despite this history.
Smart xenophobes and folks who seek to make a buck off irrational fears recognized this attitudinal problem. Thus, they came up with an idea to undermine our positive experiences and interactions with immigrants on a step by step basis.
Step 1 – Focus attention on individuals, especially “gang members,” who have been charged with dangerous criminal activity who happen to be immigrants or have foreign origins. Gin up fear and hatred of these individuals by emphasizing their “illegal” conduct to convince the rubes and marks that this is a greater problem than it actually is.
Step 2 – Use allegations of noncompliance with immigration laws and rules that require people to cross the border at designated locations and require visa renewal, as a vehicle for an expanded use of the label “illegal” activity.
Step 3 – Adopt terms and phrases that fail to distinguish between a non-violent misdemeanor of crossing the border at an undesignated location or non-compliance with the administrative visa renewal rule from actual serious offenses, such as murder, rape, drug dealing, sex trafficking, and other similar crimes. Regardless of the seriousness, lump it all together with the designation “illegal” conduct.
Step 4 – Advance a dehumanization process by labeling any immigrant who is alleged not to have complied with the border crossing or visa renewal rules an “illegal immigrant,” thereby creating the false image that his conduct is no different than violent criminal behavior.
Step 5 – Sweeten the efforts to dehumanize by adopting a Star Wars or Star Trek concept labeling immigrants as “aliens,” followed with the frequent use of the term “illegal alien” (highly derogatory term used constantly on many popular Fox shows, such as Hannity).
Step 6 – Gradually begin to include refugees and asylum seekers in the group of people labeled “illegal immigrants” or “illegal aliens,” including even those who have never been accused of noncompliance with border or visa regulations, such as people waiting or stopped in Mexico who hope to come the the USA.
Step 7 – Broaden the derogatory and dehumanizing labeling and name-calling to non-immigrants whose have immigrant parents, that come from south of our border or from countries our President publicly call “sh..hole countries.”
Result – Once this derogatory and dehumanizing terminology infects our public discourse, including even being included in various online dictionaries, a major f..king over of our minds begins to change how we see our fellow human beings.
People in South Dakota who in the past have always had good interactions and experiences with immigrants gradually begin to think that all or most immigrants are dangerous and less than human.
These changed attitudes and beliefs result in monetary contributions and votes for anti-immigrant candidates and groups. New irrational anti-immigrant laws begind to find public support even though such laws actually hurt the state and inflict damage to the moral values and financial interests of South Dakota voters.
I sincerely wish I was wrong, but I am hard pressed to find another objective explanation for the changes in attitudes of formerly good, caring South Dakotans that I have witnessed since Trump entered politics and was joined by sycophantic republican officeholders, such as Thune, et al. Absent the success of such efforts the irrational dehumanization of people for merely seeking freedom, safety and economic security seems inexplicable.
I found 1.5 Billion spent unnecessarily by Americans including the trumpers in South Dakota. You’re gonna like this stupid crap.
“If you were thinking about buying a washing machine sometime in 2017, you may have been tempted to wait a little while for prices to fall. After all, prices had been dropping for about five years, so unless your current washer was inoperable, there was little reason to make a purchase in haste.
Hopefully you didn’t wait too long. Following the late-2017 announcement of tariffs on all washers imported to the United States, prices increased by about 12 percent in the first half of 2018 compared to a control group of other appliances. In addition, prices
for dryers—often purchased in tandem with washing machines—also rose by about 12 percent, even though dryers were not subject to a tariff. ”
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_RB_HortacsuTintelnot_041619_V03.pdf
Man, ya gotta love it, retailers could smell the profit and they stuck it to all of us rubes.
Great team and even greater Americans. “The University of Virginia men’s basketball team has said it won’t celebrate its national championship win at the White House with President Donald Trump.
The Cavaliers’ head coach Tony Bennett said his side “would have to respectfully decline an invitation,” in a statement shared to Twitter on Friday.”
Who would want to associate with Lumpy other than his Russian base? Geesh, what a despicable turdball.
The Strib has an article about a couple who moved to Minneapolis from NYC because they very much like it here. They’ve traveled the world and the USA and feel that Minnesota and the metro area is the best place to live.
https://short1.link/xEhee8
A couple years ago an East Coast travel writer listed a northern Minnesota county as the worst place to live in the USA based on a variety of metrics. Citizens of that county disagreed and invited him to come visit. He and his family now make that county their home.
How can SD attract US citizens like that? Well, the Strib is behind a paywall, but the couple from that article have a website, https://minnevangelist.com
where they list reasons they love this state. While there are many specifics, there are also general attributes that any place can emulate– even SD! Look under the “About Us” tab.
If SD attracted more in migration the state’s businesses could be less concerned about visa programs and more secure in their work forces. They’d probably have to stop voting R to create that change.
Dancer Rounds is so ensconced to visa machinations as governor (EB5 fraud debacle) and apologizing for Trumps bizzaro behavior (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/republican-senator-rounds-says-trump-lied-about-russian-meddling-during-helsinki-summit-as-a-bizarro-form-of-statecraft.html), he is trying to patch up his tattered reputation as cyber committee king saying it was no accident Russia did not get into 2018 voting booths. His cyber command shut down Russia’s IRA troll farm but only on the day of the election!!! And he keeps placating Trump who has throw out the two state solution for Bebe. https://www.rounds.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sasc-cyber-subcommittee-chairman-mike-rounds-hosts-informal-meeting-with-israeli-directorate-
Trump’s xenophobia is only a manifestation of his supporters.
The only way to keep South Dakota white is to keep it poor, sparsely populated and isolated from the country – and that’s clearly what South Dakotans want for themselves.
It’s sad, but today, the odds are that the fewer neighbors you have, the dumber you think and vote and there are very few exceptions to the rule. The majority of people who grow up and live in isolation suffer from handicapped communication skills due to a lifelong lack of human contact – which appears necessary to developing any sort of unique identity.
There is no way to repair rural culture from the in nor outside as they will proactively ostracize even their own neighbor for sufficiently challenging their dysfunctional philosophy on life.
Look up Borderline Personality Disorder, pair it with the 2016 election map and Trump campaign messaging and ask yourself: rural American culture or was it just Trump?
Xenophobia is an anxiety disorder, and I hope we all can recognize that it (like all phobias) is a mental health subject.
Ignore at yer own peril…. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/sheldon-whitehouse-roberts-supreme-court-lamps-plus.html
The Supreme Court’s Anti-Worker Rulings Are So Routine Now That We Hardly Notice Them. Big Mistake.
Part of the litmus test for wingnut justices, anti-worker, pro business.
Surprise! Sioux Falls is on CNBC’s list of 15 cities people are moving to because “business is booming and wages are rising.”
http://flip.it/y7hkf7
Adam, while I agree that racism and xenophobia are generally bad, and something to strive to rise above, education is a much better tool against intolerance than more intolerance. You are painting with an awfully broad brush and taking great leaps of logic when equating sparsely-populated, rural areas as a dysfunctional, broken culture that creates people with communication impairments and mental illness.
That kind of baseless drivel is just as deplorable to me than baseless claims that immigrants are the source of all evil. Please provide some kind of evidence for any one of your claims, including linking rural residents with “handicapped communication skills” due to isolation.
In my experience people can be just as isolated, or even more, in cities. The anonymity that can exist in large cities can separate people fairly effectively, despite the close proximity.
Racism and xenophobia are pretty common phenomena in human cultures everywhere, and throughout human history. It’s not a mental illness. It’s just “being an ignorant jerk” IMO.