YACK on: Immigrant Day
Grant Sanders
We held a poll on Monday of this week to see Immigrant Day - the work stoppage held protest of Bush Administration policies toward illegal immigrants - had any effect on the people of YACKon.com. The question was, "Have you noticed the immigrant worker strike on island?" Eighty one percent said they've noticed no difference. Eight percent noticed a slight difference. Nine percent were not sure. And one respondent reported seeing a significant difference. The Boston Globe on Tuesday featured a headline that said "Immigrant Day felt most in Latino areas," so I'm surprised the group did not sense more of a difference here on island. Maybe it's because many of us work on, and our lives revolve around, our computers and not the real world where the actual, every-day labor gets done. Or maybe we just don't care about this stuff much. Hard to say.

I was speaking to a friend of mine from Chile last summer and he told me that there are around 900 people living on Nantucket from Latin America. To say nothing of the people here from Jamaica, Eastern Europe and other regions. One could easily estimate that 10 to 15 percent of our year-round population is a citizen of a country other than the US.

It's pretty clear to see why the Bush administration is making such a big deal about immigrant workers and illegal aliens. I mean, if I were embroiled in an unpopular war, with senior staff members resigning left and right, a stagnant economy, and the possibility of starting a third war in the Middle East, I'd be trying to draw the entire nation's attention away from that, too.

"Hey, look over here!! We've got illegal aliens!! Yeah. Pay no attention to the whole Middle East thing. That's not important. There's a guy from El Salvador working at a Denny's washing dishes for minimum wage and he's here illegally! Can you believe that? We have to do something!"

In a 2003 article in Free Inquiry magazine, writer, Lawrence Britt made an interesting comparison. He looked at the fascist regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet, Franco and Suharto and then compared 14 points that were common among these five fascist states to the US under Bush. The correlation is so complete that it would send a chill down the spine of even the most hard-line, old-school, Reaganera conservatives. (Read about it on the web and link to the original article here: http://www.oldamericancentury. org/14pts.htm) One of those 14 points is the act of identifying enemies and creating scapegoats as a unifying national cause. In a typical fascist state, the people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe, be it racial, ethnic, religious or ideological. In the case of the Bush Administration and the neoconservatives, there are two enemies of the state that have been targets. Liberals (those scurrilous turncoats who continue to promote the most insidious and dangerous of concepts: peace) and illegal immigrants (anyone entering the country illegally could be a terrorist, you know).

Here on Nantucket, where the massive, belching money machine is stoked by immigrant workers from around the world, we are less likely to identify immigrants as the enemy. (Although that does not stop the discrimination; remember the Brazil Mart fiasco from last May?) Immigrants are too important to us. I challenge anyone to go into any place of business on island and not find at least one person who was born elsewhere and speaks English with an accent. I'm wondering how many illegal aliens we actually have here. Of course there are some, but are they a large percentage of the people here from other countries or a small, closeted group? I have no idea. I also wonder if the federal government's limit on the

number of H-2B visas has caused an increase in the number of illegal workers coming to Nantucket? Shortages have been known to cause black markets.

I do know one thing, however. If we were to remove even a small percentage of our immigrant workforce from the island, the repercussions would spell truly hard times for the rest of us. We live in a service economy. Take away 10 percent of the people who run our cash registers, drive our delivery trucks, work as bank tellers and trim our hedges and who will take their place? Many small businesses would not be able to meet the demand. Service would suffer. And how long do you think our wealthy summer visitors would put up with that? Long enough to go online and book a four week vacation rental on the Vineyard or the Hamptons. Local businesses would have to hire more expensive workers (with, gasp, benefits) and raise prices to meet fixed costs. And the Nantucket poverty line would rise along with those prices. What happens then? Foreclosures? Mass exodus? A softening of the real estate market? Local businesses closing?

Interestingly, the island I know seems rather blas about the whole thing. None of this appears to be as scary to most islanders as (the dreaded) stop sign on Old South Road, a possible ban on nub scallops, or the prospect of installing our first stoplight. Truth is, our immigrant worker population - this 10 to 15 percent of our community - is something that rarely occupies our thoughts. Look at our YACK poll. 81 percent didn't even notice the work stoppage. But it happened. Something to think about.

YACK on.

Grant Sanders is the Host of YACK, the Nantucket Online Community at www.yackon.com and his great grandparents came to the USofA from Alsace with thick German accents. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of the Nantucket Independent.

I