Racial thuggery -- turning immigrants into scapegoats for the nation's problems -- is likely to persist until Americans' fears about their economic future abate, says a UC Davis law scholar. Politicians help fuel the isolationist and xenophobic tendencies by blaming foreigners for U.S. economic and social ills. "This misdirects the attention away from the real problems. Recently the U.S. Department of Education reported that one-half of all adult Americans are functionally illiterate. And while our manufacturing sector has become more productive, technology is displacing hundreds of thousands of workers. These are the problems we should be honestly facing," says James Smith, law school lecturer and director of UC Davis' Immigration Law Clinic. As long as the economic slump lasts, steps toward militarizing the U.S. southern border and "immigration bashing" will continue, Smith says. He points out that Congress adopted policies within the past decade welcoming immigrant labor. But with the economy suffering, politicians on the left and right now blame immigrants for the situation.