Immigration Boycotters to Learn the Tactic Doesn’t Work

Born in Ireland long ago, the “boycott” is an economic tactic designed to support a political strategy. Since it was first employed against Charles C. Boycott (a rather ruthless English land agent in Ireland), it has been used all over the world with far better press than it deserves. Boycotts are ineffective against national governments, take ages when employed at lower levels, and impose greater hardship on the protesters than they inflict on the powerful. The “Day without Immigrants” boycotters have yet to learn this.

The most famous boycott of them all, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was one of the few successes this tactic has ever had. After Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man, the black population of the city simply quit using public transportation. Here, the target was the city of Birmingham, reasonably powerful, but not sovereign and, therefore, unable to use unlimited force. Nonetheless, the black community had to arrange for private carpools for thousands of workers, and a great many of them wound up walking miles to work. The bus company was mildly inconvenienced financially. What eventually broke the city fathers was the bad press and their seeming impotence to force people onto the buses. Still, the protesters had to hold out for 385 days.

So taking a day off work and screwing up the traffic patterns of America’s big and not-so-big cities doesn’t seem to have the same conditions for success. The organizers of the boycott clearly are hoping only for a media success and to get sympathy from the uncommitted for their cause. This is not a bad approach, but it really doesn’t get the job done.

What it creates is a backlash, that will be played out by the nativists in politics like Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, a conservative Republican. He claims, and he may even be right, that every protest makes the immigrant cause less popular among citizens (that is, those who can vote for those who make the laws). While the protestors were doing their thing, counter-protests attracted small numbers of people who are angry at them. This will spread.

There is, or course, a better and more American way than taking to the streets (which seems strangely French to most Americans). The immigrants and their supporters should stay at work and donate one day’s pay to candidates who will run against legislators like Congressman Tancredo. They should, to put it bluntly, buy their own damn congressman. People power doesn’t work in America because most Americans think the system is fair. Protesting in the streets is right on the line of breaking the law in the minds of many. So, if one really wants a resolution of the immigration issue that gives illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, the best way to achieve that is through electoral politics. Immigrants can’t vote, but they can donate.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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