Gluesenkamp Perez invokes rural and working-class folks in relation to stance on a secure border

A. Martinez of NPR's Morning Edition interviewed Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez today regarding "centrist Democrats" stance on border security.  That is, they want the Biden administration to tighten it, partly because of the scourge of fentanyl and its consequences in districts like hers.  Twice during the interview she came across the phrase, "rural and working-class" communities.  In the latter mention she adds, "and the trades."   

This quote provides further context: 

GLUESENKAMP PEREZ:  You know, these policies like Title 42, I mean, I think it's been one of the fundamental mistakes around immigration, is to debate whether or not an immigration policy is, you know, motivated by racial animus. By the way, I think a lot of them are, but a lot of people in rural and working-class communities like mine, we come from communities that have been hollowed out by fentanyl, and so we're watching our cousins, our neighbors, our coworkers overdose and die, and we are demanding operational control of the southern border. That can't wait for a perfect immigration policy to come along.  (emphasis added)

MARTÍNEZ: Did you think that the way Donald Trump's administration used Title 42 was an effective way to stem immigration?

GLUESENKAMP PEREZ: I don't think it's a question of stemming immigration. I mean, immigration itself is not the problem. The problem is that the U.S. does not have operational control of the southern border, and so a lot of Americans, a lot of American politicians have had this real focus on the very visceral images of the humanitarian crisis of the southern border, but what they're not seeing is what it's like to live in a country that is being run by a cartel. And so Biden needs to exercise his existing authority under Remain in Mexico, and Congress needs to give him back the presidential expulsion authority under Title 42.

One of the interesting things about the first long quote is how she suggests that immigration policy is influenced by racial animus--but also that there are other considerations, like the devastation being wrought by fentanyl, which Gluesenkamp Perez suggests is coming across the Southern border.  In other words, we can hold both of these notions--perhaps both of these truths--simultaneously:  some people advocating greater control at the Southern border are acting on racial animus, but they also have legitimate concerns about what is happening at the border, including fentanyl that may be coming through that border.  

This duality is something I suggested in this recent publication regarding why many rural residents support Trump:  they may both experience economic distress and racist impulses.  It does not have to be an "either or."  Also, as I have suggested elsewhere, if we are going to use terms like "racial animus," we should define them--that is, we should develop a shared definition.  That has not happened.  In fact, I have not seen any media outlet--or any academic--take that task seriously.  

Prior posts featuring Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez are here, here, here, here, here and here.   More still are here (including those on right-to-repair).  

Meanwhile, here's a report on Americans' broad support for enforcement of the nation's immigration laws. 

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.  

Blue-collar workers in the news, especially following Biden's State of the Union address

The New York Times ran two stories by Jonathan Weissman in quick succession last week.  The first was headlined, "Biden Aims to Win Back White Working-Class Voters Through Their Wallets," ran on February 8.  Interestingly, the print headline was a bit more direct about the class issue, "Biden Aims Pitch at White Voters without Degrees."  The subheads are "A Vow to Lift Wages" and "Speech Outlined a Path to Increase and Improve Blue-Collar Jobs."  Here are some key excerpts: 

With his call for a “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America,” President Biden on Tuesday night acknowledged rhetorically what Democrats have been preparing for two years: a fierce campaign to win back white working-class voters through the creation of hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs that do not require a college degree.

Mr. Biden’s economically focused State of the Union address may have avoided the cultural appeals to the white working class that former President Donald J. Trump harnessed so effectively, the grievances encapsulated by fears of immigration, racial and gender diversity, and the sloganeering of the intellectual left. But at the speech’s heart was an appeal to Congress to “finish the job” and a simple challenge. “Let’s offer every American the path to a good career whether they go to college or not,” he said.

In truth, much of that path was already laid by the last Congress with the signing of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, a $280 billion measure to rekindle a domestic semiconductor industry and the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $370 billion for low-emission energy to combat climate change.

The second story by Weissman ran two days later under the headline, "As Federal Cash Flows to Unions, Democrats Hope to Reap the Rewards."  The dateline is Bridgeport, West Virginia, population 9,325, part of the Clarksburg, W.V. micropolitan area, and it leads with the story of Mark Raddish, the grandson of a coal miner who has recently gone to work in the green energy sector.  Raddish followed his grandfather's advice not to become a coal miner.  Instead, he got "an eduction and land[ed] a pipe fitters' union job" that then went overseas.   

[Raddish then] took a leap of faith late last year and signed on as West Virginia Employee No. 2 for Sparkz, a California-based electric vehicle battery start-up. The company was enticed here, in the wooded hills outside Bridgeport, W.Va., in part by generous federal tax subsidies and in part by the United Mine Workers of America, which is recruiting out-of-work coal miners for the company’s new plant in a faded industrial park.

It is no accident that this plant, rising in place of a shuttered plate-glass factory, is bringing yet another alternative-energy company to rural West Virginia. Federal money is pouring into the growing industry, with thick strings attached to reward companies that pay union wages, employ union apprentices and buy American steel, iron and components.

President Biden and the Democrats who pushed those provisions are hoping that more union members will bring more political strength for unions after decades of decline. White working-class voters, even union members, have sided with Republicans on social issues, and still tend to see the G.O.P. as their economic ally, as well.

Pitting rural against urban, black against white in the safety net work requirement debate

I blogged last week about the high-profile media attention being showered on a proposed Michigan law that would exempt counties with high unemployment rates (8.5% and above) from work requirements being imposed on Medicaid.  Then a related piece was published in the New York Times Upshot.  In "Which Poor People Shouldn't Have to Work for Aid?" Emily Badger and Margot-Sanger Katz quote Heather Hahn, a senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services and Population at the Urban Institute.

The problem, Ms. Hahn and others say, is that geography captures just one kind of barrier to employment. “If you’re taking only the geography as the structure,” Ms. Hahn said, “it’s really overlooking the much more obvious racial structure.” African-Americans who face racial discrimination in the job market are more likely to have a hard time finding work. 

And people who can’t afford cars and live where public transit is inadequate have a harder time. So do the poor with criminal records, or those without a high school diploma, or people with problems securing child care.

Policies that exempt high-unemployment places, but not people who face other obstacles to work, selectively acknowledge barriers for only some of the poor. In effect, they suggest that unemployment is a systemic problem in struggling rural communities — but that in poor urban neighborhoods, it’s a matter of individual decisions.

They then quote David Super of Georgetown Law, who studies public benefits programs.    

The hardships of areas that have seen industry leave are very real; the hardships of rural areas that have had jobs automated away are real.

* * * 

But so are hardships that come from a lack of child care or transportation, he said. “It is troubling that one set of conditions are being taken seriously and another are being scoffed at.”

One thing both Hahn and Super seem not to realize is that public transportation and child care deficits are much more acute in rural communities than urban ones (a point made, with lots of data back up, in my 2007 piece on welfare reform as a mismtach for rural communities."  And the problem of criminal records  looms large for the chronically unemployed in rural places, too.  Employers don't want to hire these folks, even when they are white.  (And I do acknowledge that the criminalization of poverty and the war on drugs have had a disproportionate impact on communities of color).

I agree that we should attend to all of these barriers to employment, but the "rural v. urban" and "black v. white" framing is divisive.  It echoes the "who's worse off" or ranking of oppressions frame that has become too common amidst the proliferation of identity politics.  It fails to seek common ground.  Which reminds me that today is the second Monday in the 40 days of action invoked by the revival of Martin Luther King, Jr., Poor People's Campaign.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.