LatinaLista — Today is World Refugee Day.
When we think of refugees these days, it’s usually the images in Africa of the different tribes that have been displaced because of war and famine, but we know that refugees exist all over the world — even in the United States.
The dictionary defines refugee as : one that flees; especially : a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution
Danger has come to mean not just physical danger but danger from severe economic downturns, famine or family or community abuse or a number of different reasons that puts the quality of life at an inherent risk for these people.
In 2002, when Congress passed the Homeland Security Act, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was appointed the new custodians of what the Department of Homeland Security labels “unaccompanied children.” Some analysts feel the more correct term is “separated children.” Each label refers to children who are under 18 and at the time of their apprehension, by either the Border Patrol or DHS officials, are not with a parent or legal guardian.
13-year-old Jose must return to his native El Salvador without his mother.
(Source: Loudoun Times)
That was the case of Jose Andrade. Jose was left behind in El Salvador by his mother who came to the US looking for work. When she arrived, she was granted a visa to work legally in the country but five years passed and Jose missed his mom.
He was staying with an aunt but that family took the money Jose’s mother sent him from her job in the U.S. and pulled him out of school to do errands for the family. When Jose’s mother found out, she knew she had to bring him to the US but there was no way to do it legally.
So, at 11-years-old, Jose and two cousins set out from El Salvador through Guatemala and Mexico for the U.S. At the Texas-Mexico border, Jose was caught by border officials and housed in a youth detention center for 9 days until his mother traveled from Virginia to pick him up.
From the moment she picked him up, Jose was classified as a refugee.
In the three years since he’s arrived, in between attending immigration hearings to clarify his status, Jose has thrived in school, is popular with his teachers and became a Boy Scout. Now 13-years-old, Jose knows English and wants to be a policeman, but it’s a dream that is highly unlikely.
Jose’s privileged refugee status has come to an end and DHS says it’s time to treat him like any other undocumented immigrant — deport him back to where he came from — all by himself.
Jose has until July 16 to stay with his mom. His lawyers were able to have Jose granted “voluntary removal” which means that the family has exactly 120 days left before Jose leaves. Though his new status allows him to come back and visit, his mother says there’s no way he can because of the cost and danger involved.
Yet, when Jose turns 18, another five years, he can apply for a visa but seeing that there’s already enormous backlogs in getting immigration papers processed (some estimates at 10-15 years), Jose may not see his mother again until he’s in his 30s.
And Jose’s mother can’t return with him because she still can work in the US and will need that money to send to Jose back in El Salvador and help out with her family expenses in this country which include two US-born children.
Understandably, Jose doesn’t understand why he can’t stay with his mother, and frankly it doesn’t make sense that he cannot.
His mother can legally be in the country so it’s not a matter of rewarding illegal behavior by allowing Jose to stay — it’s a matter of doing what’s right.
Any policy that has as its sole purpose to separate children from their parents is not a good policy and it’s shameful that our court system can’t see through the ludicrousness of this situation and do what is right.
What is right about sending a 13-year-old boy back to live with extended family members when he can live with his own mother?
What is right about upholding an immigration law that does not value the sanctity of family?
What is right about punishing a child simply because he wants to be with his mother?
If Jose stays, he’s already shown that he will be one of those kids who will make the most of his educational opportunities here, not to mention become an asset to his community.
When he returns, who is to say he won’t be afflicted with depression or suffer in other ways because no one can care for a child better than a mother who loves him.
“I want to be with my mom,” Jose said. “I want to develop a career. It’s not good to have to leave when your mother is here.”
Amen to that!
Comment(54)
miguel
Anti’s… the law is the law right? Compassion has no place in this country.
Frank
What was wrong with the mother in the first place to desert her son and come here? She seperated herself from him!
miguel
Frank asked: What was wrong with the mother in the first place to desert her son and come here? She separated herself from him!
So, If she thought that this country might take her baby in, as we have been known to do in the past,(“Give me your tired, your poor, yadda,yadda)had any value or compassion in it. A false promise of hope?
She left him to have him survive! All is not well in the world. Her family did not do right. She still tried to provide.
laura
An unbelievable story. Someone should write a book about that immigration judge’s life. There must be a key somewhere to the depth of inhumanity of which that judge was capable.
Evelyn
She was probably looking for a way to better herself so her son could also live a better life. She could have done that just fine except…..I’ll just let you read the following.
Death Squads in El Salvador:
A Pattern of U.S. Complicity
by David Kirsch
Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1990
In 1963, the U.S. government sent 10 Special Forces personnel to El Salvador to help General Jose Alberto Medrano set up the Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista (ORDEN)-the first paramilitary death squad in that country. These Green Berets assisted in the organization and indoctrination of rural “civic” squads which gathered intelligence and carried out political assassinations in coordination with the Salvadoran military.
Now, there is compelling evidence to show that for over 30 years, members of the U.S. military and the CIA have helped organize, train, and fund death squad activity in El Salvador.
In the last eight years, six Salvadoran military deserters have publicly acknowledged their participation in the death squads. Their stories are notable because they not only confirm suspicions that the death squads are made up of members of the Salvadoran military, but also because each one implicates U.S. personnel in death squad activity.
The term “death squad” while appropriately vivid, can be misleading because it obscures their fundamental identity. Evidence shows that “death squads” are primarily military or paramilitary units carrying out political assassinations and intimidation as part of the Salvadoran government’s counterinsurgency strategy. Civilian death squads do exist but have often been comprised of off-duty soldiers financed by wealthy Salvadoran businessmen.
It is important to point out that the use of death squads has been a strategy of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. For example, the CIA’s “Phoenix Program” was responsible for the “neutralization” of over 40,000 Vietnamese suspected of working with the National Liberation Front.
Part of the U.S. counterinsurgency program was run from the Office of Public Safety (OPS). OPS was part of U.S. AID, and worked with the Defense Department and the CIA to modernize and centralize the repressive capabilities of client state police forces, including those in El Salvador. In 1974 Congress ordered the discontinuation of OPS.
In spite of the official suspension of police assistance between 1974 and 1985, CIA and other U.S . officials worked with Salvadoran security forces throughout the restricted period to centralize and modernize surveillance, to continue training, and to fund key players in the death squad network.
Even though the U.S. government’s police training program had been thoroughly discredited, the Reagan administration found other channels through which to reinstate police assistance for El Salvador and Honduras. Attached to this assistance is the requirement that the president certify that aid recipients do not engage in torture, political persecution, or assassination. Even so, certain members of Congress showed concern over the reinstatement of police aid to repressive regimes. In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Senator Claiborne Pell (Dem.-Rhode Island) asked, “I was talking about cattle prods specifically. Would they be included or not?”
Undersecretary of State for Latin American Affair Elliott Abrams replied, “Well, I would say that in my view if the police of Costa Rica, with their democratic tradition, say that for crowd control purposes they would like to have 50 shot [sic] batons, as they are called in a nonagricultural context, I would personally want to give it to them. I think that government has earned enough trust, as I think we have earned enough trust, not to be questioned, frankly, about exporting torture equipment. But I would certainly be in favor of giving it to them if they want it.”
Death Squad Members, Testimony
Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, a soldier in the First Infantry Brigade’s Department 2 (Intelligence), is the most recent Salvadoran to admit his involvement in death squad activity. At a November 1, 1989 press conference Joya Martinez stated that certain military units in Department 2 carried out “heavy interrogation” (a euphemism for torture) after which the victims were killed. The job of his unit was to execute people by strangulation, slitting their throats, or injecting them with poison. He admitted killing eight people and participating in many more executions. He stated that the Brigade Commander had sent written orders to carry out the killings and that the use of bullets was forbidden because they might be traced to the military.
Joya Martinez also claims that one of the U.S. advisers working with the First Brigade sat at a desk next to his and received “all the reports from our agents on clandestine captures, interrogations…but we did not provide them with reports on the executions. They did not want to hear of the actual killings.” U.S. advisers authorized expenses for such extras as black glass on squad vans to allow executions to take place unobserved; provided $4,000 for the monthly budget; and conducted classes in recruiting informants and conducting intelligence reconnaissance.
Another Salvadoran soldier, Ricardo Castro, is the first officer to come forward with information about death squad activity. Castro graduated from West Point in 1973 and was a company commander in the Salvadoran Army. He translated for several U.S. advisers who taught, among other subjects, interrogation techniques. Castro claims that one U.S. instructor worked out of the Sheraton Hotel (taken over briefly during the November 1989 FMLN offensive) and emphasized psychological techniques. Castro recalled a class where Salvadoran soldiers asked the adviser about an impasse in their torture sessions:
He was obviously against torture a lot of the time. He favored selective torture…. When they learned some thing in class, they might go back to their fort that night and practice…. I remember very distinctly some students talking about the fact that people were conking out on them…as they were administering electric shock. ‘We keep giving him the electric shock, and he just doesn’t respond. What can we do?’…. The American gave a broad smile and said, ‘You’ve got to surprise him. We know this from experience. Give him a jolt. Do something that will just completely amaze him, and that should bring him out of it.”
Castro revealed that he held monthly briefings with then deputy CIA chief of station in El Salvador Frederic Brugger who had recruited him for intelligence work after meeting at an interrogation class. Castro also claimed to have knowledge of the perpetration of large massacres of civilians by Army Department 5.
In December 1981, he met in Morazan Province with one of the officers that the U.S. instructor had advised. “They had two towns of about 300 people each, and they were interrogating them to see what they knew. Since I…knew something about interrogations, he said he might want me to help. The Major told me that after the interrogation, they were going to kill them all.” Castro was, however, reassigned and did not participate. Later, his pro-government mother told him, “You know, son, these guerrillas, they invent the wildest lies. They say that in December, 600 civilians were killed in Morazan.” “Oh, shit, I was hoping I’d been dreaming it,” he thought. “I later found out, they did go in and kill them after all.”
Rene Hurtado worked as intelligence agent for the Treasury Police, one of the three Salvadoran paramilitary forces. After a falling out with an officer, he fled to Minnesota, took refuge with a Presbyterian Church congregation, and began describing routine torture methods used by paramilitary forces. These included beatings, electric shock, suffocation, and mutilation. He described techniques such as tearing the skin from ” interrogation” subjects, sticking needles into them, or beating them in such a manner that lasting internal injuries but no telltale external marks would be sustained. According to Hurtado, CIA employees and Green Berets taught some of these torture techniques to the Treasury Police in Army staff headquarters.
General John Vessey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was particularly disturbed by the implication of the Green Berets and initiated an investigation. The investigator from the Army Criminal Investigation Division stated, “My job was to clear the Army’s name and I was going to do whatever [was] necessary to do that.” Hurtado refused to cooperate with the investigator on the advice of a member of Congress whom the church parishioners had called upon. When the investigator was told this by the minister, he responded, “Tell Mr. Hurtado that the Congressman has given him very costly advice. When I went to El Salvador to investigate his allegations, at the advice of the U.S. Ambassador, I did not talk to members of the Salvadoran military. If I go again and talk to the military, we don’t know who will be hurt, do we?”
Following revelations of U.S. involvement in death squad activities, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees reported on allegations of U.S. complicity in death squad activity. The Republican-dominated Senate panel confirmed that Salvadoran officials were involved, but denied any direct U.S. role, keeping certain portions of its report classified. The House Committee stated that, “U.S. intelligence agencies have not conducted any of their activities in such a way as to directly encourage or support death-squad activities.” Rep. James Shannon (Dem.-Mass.), who requested the inquiry, commented that the report was “certainly not as conclusive as the committee makes it sound.”
Varelli, Carranza, Montano, and others
Frank Varelli is the son of a former Salvadoran Minister of Defense and National Police commander. When Varelli’s family came to the U.S. in 1980, Varelli started working as an FBI informant. Years later, he publicly revealed his role in FBI covert operations against domestic organizations opposing Reagan’s Central American policy. He has also asserted that the Salvadoran National Guard gave him death lists which he compared to lists of Salvadorans in the U.S. awaiting deportation back to El Salvador. Varelli believes some may have been killed on their return to El Salvador. He reported these contacts with the National Guard to the FBI.
Former Colonel Roberto Santivanez claimed that the then chief of the Salvadoran Treasury Police, Nicolas Carranza, was the officer most active with the death squads. Colonel Carranza is also alleged to have received $90,000 annually from the CIA. Carranza has confirmed the close working relationship of the paramilitary forces with U.S. intelligence. “[They] have collaborated with us in a certain technical manner, providing us with advice. They receive information from everywhere in the world, and they have sophisticated equipment that enables them to better inform or at least confirm the information we have. It’s very helpful.”
Carlos Antonio Gomez Montano was a paratrooper stationed at Ilopango Air Force Base. He claimed to have seen eight Green Beret advisers watching two “torture classes” during which a 17-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were tortured. Montano claimed that his unit and the Green Berets were joined by Salvadoran Air Force Commander Rafael Bustillo and other Salvadoran officers during these two sessions in January 1981. A Salvadoran officer told the assembled soldiers, “[watching] will make you feel more like a man.”
Above are the accounts of the death squad deserters. Non military sources have also reported the participation of U.S. personnel. For example, another (highly placed anonymous civilian) source maintained that Armed Forces General Staff Departments 2 and 5 (organized with help from U.S. Army Colonel David Rodriguez, a Cuban-American) used tortures such as beating, burning and electric shock. U.S. involvement has also been asserted in sworn accounts by some victims of torture. Jose Ruben Carrillo Cubas, a student, gave testimony that during his detention by the Long Distance Reconnaissance Patrol (PRAL) in 1986, a U.S. Army Major tortured him by applying electric shocks to his back and ears.
Various sources have reported the use of U.S.-manufactured torture equipment. Rene Hurtado, for example, explained, “There re some very sophisticated methods…of torture..[like the machine] that looks like a radio, like a transformer; it s about 15 centimeters across, with connecting wires. It says General Electric on it….”
Many other documented accounts of brutality by U.S. trained and advised military units exist. Indeed, the elite Atlacatl Battalion has been implicated in several massacres over the past ten years and members of the battalion have been indicted for the November slayings of the six Jesuit priests and two women.
It is widely accepted, in the mainstream media and among human rights organizations, that the Salvadoran government is responsible for most of the 70,000 deaths which are the result of ten years of civil war. The debate, however, has dwelled on whether the death squads are strictly renegade military factions or a part of the larger apparatus. The evidence indicates that the death squads are simply components of the Salvadoran military. And that their activities are not only common knowledge to U.S. agencies, but that U.S. personnel have been integral in organizing these units and continue to support their dally functioning.
This is an excellent reason why we must talk about the past and keep remembering it, so we dont make the same mistakes again.
Frank
There are millions of so-called heartbreaking stories within the illegal immigration issue. If you make exceptions for one in all fairness you have to do the same for all the others. All we can and should do is follow our immigration policies and and make sure that other countries know that we will ahere to them and hopefully it will be a deterred to others who think they can come here under the guise of “compassion.”
Evelyn
Good news
Alipac 2 dozen strong
William Gheen, President of ALIPAC, truly is the leader of a national movement. A movement of two dozen people that is.
It was May of 2008 when ALIPAC announced the launch of a North Carolina “campaign to thwart illegal aliens and their supporters”. Soon after they bullied a local Charlotte newspaper columnist, Mary Schulken, for writing an article entitled “This Tide of Meanness has to Stop”. All of it building up to a big rally to pressure North Carolina legislators to support a horrific “attrition through enforcement” agenda. Here’s how the rally went:
Immigration Rally in Raleigh Draws Sparse Crowd
RALEIGH – About two dozen people gathered in Raleigh on Wednesday to encourage state lawmakers to do their part in supporting immigration enforcement measures and to make North Carolina a less-attractive state for illegal immigrants.
North Carolina legislators must be shaking in their boots.
Brittanicus, a retiree who therefore can “spend ample time getting [ALIPAC’s] message out”, offers an explanation for the poor showing in the comments:
Is it any wonder that legal residents or citizens, will not attract attention of radical organizations from third world countries, by protesting[?] In California your marked for death by gang members who are protected by ‘Sanctuary laws’ like Special Order 40.
Profiles in courage, anyone?
Let’s contrast this fear of fictitious gang members, with what migrants and their supporters went through to march on May 1st of this year:
Migrants have survived the most powerful government in the world spending billions to stamp out their existence. They have survived thousands of raids terrorizing their communities and breaking apart their families. They have survived the hordes of nativists that have given up on mass deportation and settled instead on attrition warfare, in an attempt to make life so miserable for migrants that they leave on their own.
Roberto Lovato has a good piece on this, too, entitled, “Still They March: Nationwide Rallies Highlight Failure of War on Immigrants”. While the “national” group ALIPAC struggles to get more than 30 people to show up, the pro-migrant movement was able to get 30,000 people to show up just in Wisconsin. That’s right, 1000 to 1.
Let’s not forget to mention that one of those two dozen people at the rally was a law-breaker himself, Chris Simcox. Rep. John Blust, R-Guilford, says “the people coming into the country should have to follow the law” at the same time that he speaks alongside someone who was arrested for federal weapons charges.
This is just another lesson. Though self-proclaimed “anti-illegal immigration groups” are loud, they are a small and increasingly irrelevent minority. If retirees like Brittanicus are any indication, most of them probably spend more time commenting on immigration articles than anything else. They are William Gheen’s 80-year-old “internet fighter pilots”, who spend all of their time writing nativist comments online, at the same time that they are sustained by social security and the billions of dollars that migrants pay into it.
more related links at
http://www.citizenorange.com/orange/
Rumor is some of the 2 dozen were homeless people paid to hold signs.
Frank
ALIPAC has over nine thousand members. They find that the most effective way to fight illegal immigraton is addressing it with our congressmen. There are many other activist ways also. Marching in our streets and rallying isn’t very effective as the pro-illegals already found out. Why do something that has proven not to be effective already? No CIR has been passed so obviously ALIPAC’s and the rest of the anti’s in this country’s method is working.
Thomas
Hey she was the one who broke up the family first. She could always go with him along with her anchor children.
Evelyn
You say that the nine thousand members of ALIPAC find that the most effective way to fight Hispanic immigrants is by “addressing it with your congressman.”
Jamming phone lines on the hill and lying to congress about immigrants will always come back to haunt you because the dirt always comes out in the wash.
You also have your facts wrong. Immigrants and those who support equality and justice FOR ALL, did not march in the streets to promote CIR. We marched because our constution (by way of Hispanics) was attacked by the racists in congress. CIR came later as a fix to the broken immigration system. Here is the correct story.
How the pro-Migrant Movement Stopped Fascism and How to Finish the Job
by Juan Santos
2006 marked a sea change in US politics, but the decisive moment was not election day, it was March 25th, the day that over a million Mexican and Central America migrants and their Chicana/o allies marched in the streets of Los Angeles, following a march of similar magnitude in Chicago.
The movement was on – someone – millions of someones – sent a shocking message to the ruling elites of the most powerful empire in world history: The Republican juggernaut toward Fascism would stop at our door, and it would not take a single step further. Brown people throughout the US were on red alert: the racists behind the rise of the shock troops called the Cazamigrantes (the Minutemen) were moving in Congress to make every migrant in the nation – everyone without papers, and everyone who “assisted†them – a felon.
They would have unleashed a new wave of mass repression in the nation’s barrios, repression like the Zoot Suit Riots and Operation Wetback, making everyone with Brown skin an automatic target, a suspect in a felony, vulnerable to mass roundups and detention camps. Brown skin would become the new yellow star, one worn by every person of native decent in the country. The “Americans†– who are not “Americans†at all, but the descendants of foreign colonizers and conquerors, meant to declare this land off limits to the descendants of its original inhabitants, who knew no borders.
We knew this much: Fascism always targets the Other; the dominant group, the “Aryans†or “Good Germans†would remain oblivious; for them, everything would seem normal.
Police state conditions in the ghetto, the barrio and on the reservations had already become “normal.†The system had crushed the rebellions of the 60s and replaced Jim Crow segregation with 25 years of mass incarceration for Red, Black and Brown people. The white response was silence. Even after the mass rebellion in Los Angeles that spread across the nation, the silence surrounding our deepening oppression was thick as death.
Here in the “land of the ‘free’†with its “free press,†almost no one could have told you that our rates of incarceration are the highest in the world. No one even knew; they weren’t supposed to know that, just like no one was supposed to know – or care – about the concentration camps in Germany. The “War on Drugs†was the first giant step toward a police state in the US. Hardly anyone breathed a word. White people were not the target, after all. The target was the old, comfortable target: us. Millions were felonized and incarcerated.
Sensenbrenner’s bill targeting migrants was round two of a massive effort to felonize peoples of color in the US. This time the target was the most vulnerable of the vulnerable – people who had carried the slur “illegal†on their backs for decades, people without papers, whose most fundamental rights could be violated with impunity, who, according to the colonizer, had no “legal†right to even be here. The Nazi state had done just the same thing; their first targets were not Jews or Gypsies or Slavs, they were so-called “stateless people.†They wore the blue triangle in the German camps.
In 2006 it was up to us to act, to defend ourselves, and we knew it. No one was coming to our rescue. And no one, not even the mainstream Spanish language media, had any illusions about it.
And act we did, in city after city across the nation, in our millions, tens and hundreds of thousands – everywhere. The “Sleeping Giant,†it was said, had awakened, and had sent an unmistakable message, one that even redneck liberals like talk show host Ed Schultz could understand. “They can make trouble,†he said.
The struggle of the Chicana/o people against the Minutemen proved the point.
We proved it in Los Angeles, in showdowns like the Battle of Baldwin Park, where Chicana/o protestors drove the Minutemen from the street, outnumbering them six to one; in the violent standoff in Garden Grove, where a Minuteman supporter ran down several Chicana/os with his car, to be met by a hail of stones, and in the desert outside Campo, California, where scores of resistors walked boldly and empty handed into a Minutemen encampment, facing down an armed throng of racists and disrupting their efforts to hunt down migrants on the border – all showed clearly what the system might face if Chicana/os and migrants forged a united front of resistance in the face of escalating mass repression.
Plans were afoot to organize migrant defense committees, and to get ready for mass civil disobedience.
These early fighters set the stage for the mass marches to come, and the tone of resistance they set is what the ruling elites most feared – not the promise that we would organize ourselves to â€vote.â€
Many called it a “New Civil Rights Movement†– and they were both right and wrong about that. They were right, because of the massive outpourings and the spirit of determination to be free. Wrong, because our history is different from that of the Black nation in the US, and most of all, because the conditions we faced, and are still facing, are very different indeed.
The fifties and sixties were a time of worldwide anti-colonial rebellion and rising expectations around the globe; people expected to be free. The US and other colonial and neo-colonial powers were on the defensive around the world. Today, the US has its hands on the throat of the world, and with the Sensenbrenner bill they put their hands at our throats, too. War and repression abroad were mirrored by a growing mass repression at home: the nation was heading rapidly toward fascism. No one had a dream. The dreams had all been crushed, and the extreme Right was looking to make a decisive breakthrough in establishing a new kind of fascism here in the US.
We stopped them cold. This is very important to get. No one else had stood up, and once we were down, no one else would have or even could have stood up: the drive toward fascism would have all been downhill from there.
But the fascist juggernaut slammed into a Brown wall of resistance. Republican unity shattered, and the silence shattered with it. The Christian fascists had gone too far, and the nation turned on them, the way that school kids will turn on a bully when someone – finally – gives him a bloody nose.
Now, the Democrats – the Republican’s silent partners in the “War on Drugs†and in fascistic legislation like the Patriot Act – have turned their gaze back our way, promising “comprehensive immigration reform.â€
Their first priorities are a border sealed with guns, more raids like the recent attacks on Swift packing plants, and a “guest worker†program much like the infamous guest worker program in racist South Africa under Apartheid.
No matter what the Democrats say, no matter what they “promise,†this is no time to play by the rules. The whole premise of playing by the rules is drenched in racism and can lead nowhere but to a deepening oppression. Let’s look at the covert racism, and the openly imperialist perspective, in these remarks by liberal icon Ted Kenney:
“Mr. Kennedy, a Democrat of Massachusetts, said opponents ‘misleadingly categorize our efforts as an ‘amnesty.’ Legal status, he continued, “must be earned by proving past work contributions, making a substantial future work commitment, and paying monetary penalties. It is not a guarantee of citizenship, but an opportunity to continue working hard, start playing by the rules, and earn permanent residency.”
Kennedy, here, would have us believe that migrants must “earn†the right to be here – he implies that migrants are freeloaders without a substantial commitment to work, that migrants are people who don’t “play by the rules,†and that they should be fined for failing to play by the rules.
But the rules are made by and for the ruler’s benefit, not ours. Kennedy is clearly in a position to know that millions of people in Mexico have been driven from the land in the vast capitalist conspiracy called NAFTA; he surely knows that the main beneficiaries of their dispossession have been the capitalist elites of the US, he surely knows that these people have been and continue to be driven here so that Kennedy’s own class might profit. He knows that the whole set up of the Mexican economy is rigged to maximize foreign profit and to minimize the ability of the Mexican people to accumulate capital within the borders of Mexico itself.
Kennedy cannot be ignorant of the recent history of his own government in sponsoring death squad regimes in El Salvador, or the US backed genocide in Guatemala, both of which produced waves of refugees heading North.
But Kennedy’s logic is to blame the migrants themselves for the causes and the effects of capitalist globalization and for mass state terror sponsored by the USA.
From Mexico to Panama to Venezuela to Guatemala to Nicaragua, Iraq and Iran, US capital and power routinely crosses third world borders to steal resources, gut economies, undermine or overthrow governments, and sponsor death squads and regimes of torture. Those responsible have the audacity to call someone crossing their border in search of something so innocent as a job “illegals†and “criminals†who must pay a price for their “crimes†and “rule breaking.â€
This is where the scapegoating of migrants starts. It is meant to paper over the real crimes of the real criminals, while further persecuting their victims.
Kennedy’s logic is the same fundamental logic of racism and empire that permeates the arguments of extreme right wing elements like Congressmen Tom Tancredo, Jim Sensenbrenner, and their shock troops in the Minutemen and other racist vigilante groups like Southern California’s “Save Our State.†The problem isn’t – it “can’t be†– oppression – it’s Mexican and Central American “rule breakers,†an image that ultimately rests in the stereotype of the lawless, “savage,†brutal and drunken Mexican “bandito†and the “savage Indian.â€
To acquiesce at any level to this base line logic is to surrender the battlefield to our enemies, and to turn ourselves into beggars, begging a heartless system – one that recognizes no “rules†or limits at all in the pursuit of profit – for our most basic human rights.
No: we are not in a situation analogous to the Civil Rights movement; our situation would be better compared to the onset of Jim Crow than to the period of its formal demise. It is better compared to the period of the Weimar Republic in pre-Nazi Germany than to the situation of the US in the 1960s.
In today’s atmosphere we cannot allow the system free reign to reinforce racist stereotypes against our people at any level, much less to enforce them against us at the point of the gun called law, however “comprehensive†their aim.
In the wake of our victory in 2006, the terrain has changed, new balances are being struck, and powerful elements are seeking to gain as much ground as they can in an effort to keep the door open for more measures like the Sensenbrenner bill in the future. Our strategic imperative is to slam that door on them, once and for all.
Stace
“What was wrong with the mother in the first place to desert her son and come here? She seperated herself from him!”
So she could feed him and send him to school.
Evelyn
“Hey she was the one who broke up the family first. She could always go with him along with her anchor children.”
Hey yeah that’s the perfect answer to her dilemma.
Strip the two American children of their RIGHT to live in their own country.
OR
Abandon the two American citizen children so your tax dollars can pay their way.
Texan123
This mom left her son in Mexico. How did she get a work visa if she came illegally? You can not apply for a work visa from inside the US, smells fishy to me.
If the judge had said the boy can stay, millions of Mexican children would attempt to cross a dangerous border for a chance to stay.
This was a good decision. The mom left the child there, so there is someone there to care for him. Probably many other family members still in Mexico. Don’t blame America for sending the boy back where his own mother left him. If she is concerned for his safety, she would go with him.
Evelyn-get a life
Frank
The anti’s did not jam the phone lines with lies. They were just calling our congressmen and telling them to vote no on CIR. Our congressmen already know the truth about illegal immigration. They don’t need anti’s to give them the details over the phone.
ALIPAC, over 9,000 strong. Other anti’s, millions strong.
Where did any anti-illegal EVER say that people in other countries shouldn’t be able to enjoy freedom, justice, and equality in their OWN country!! ON THE CONTRARY we are saying that THEIR OWN COUNTRIES are where they should be marching in the streets and demanding their “rights!” It is only because THEIR OWN COUNTRIES are so corrupt and inept that they cannot provide for themselves THERE!
One in here is PROJECTING there own bias and racism onto others, their own hatred for their country which they feel is inherently racist and injust due to it’s Capitalistic system and creating it where it does not exist! Nobody feels that only Americans are entitled to live in dignity, freedom, and prosperity. We just differ that they do not have a right to crash into our sovereign nation illegally to live that life. They have EVERY RIGHT to live it in their own sovereign nations. Nobody ever said otherwise! Nice try, though.
It is oh-so-much easier to deflect all blame from the ones responsible in THOSE governments and shove the blame and responsibility onto U.S. citizens. Just like kids who want to blame their parents or teachers for their own failure in school. I mean, if you accept the blame, then that means you actually have to modify YOUR OWN behavior. And who wants to do that when they can merely point the finger at an outside scapegoat, right?
This is going to change. Already Mexicans who lived in the U.S. and learned our ways of doing things are returning back to their homelands and bringing their new-found knowledge with them.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/06/22/0622mexmigrants.html
Stacy, first of all, nobody in Mexico is expiring in the streets from starvation! Mexico is not Calcutta or a famine-strifed African country! So, let’s just stop that nonsense propaganda RIGHT NOW. They are poor, as many in the U.S. were poor during the depression; they are NOT starving. They all have schools in their own countries also.
Central Americans are in worse shape; however, whatever happened to the concept of personal responsibility!?? If your economic situation is in such dire straits that you can barely afford to feed yourself, you do not go on to have children, especially not a large amount of children!
These people can twist and turn anyway they want to, and they will not convince me that it is the responsibility of every American man, woman, and child to take in every person in the world who claims that they need to come here! It isn’t in OUR best interests.
Challis
Texican123:
you CAN apply for a work visa once you are already in the US. (I know this from experience.) The article never said that the mother came in illegally.
And she didn’t leave him in Mexico, she left him in their native country, El Salvador. Many Latinos in the US are Mexican, but not all Latinos are Mexican.
Frank, there certianly are ‘people expiring in the streets from starvation in Mexico’, just as there are starving children in the US.
Evelyn
ROTFLMAO!!!HA! HA! HA! Tescan1530 Read Read the article again and again and again. Then after you get it right, take your foot out of your mouth, and get back to me.
Frank
Challis, do you have a link to a credible article that Mexican children or adults for that matter are expiring in the streets from hunger in Mexico?
Challis
No, I do not have the link for a credible article on hunger in Mexico, I think that you can google it just as well as I could.
What I do know is from my experience of living in Mexico; saving my soda cans for the mother who came by with a stroller everyday, digging thru the trash for aluminium cans to trade in so that she could feed her family.
Seeing the wonderful workers at Cheddraui (Mexico’s Wal-Mart, if you will) passing out food to everyone after Hurricane Wilma. The English-speaking beggar in the town square who can’t find work (this is more recent, the economy stinks everywhere, I guess).
My point was not to prove that there are literally people dying in the streets of hunger, but that hunger among the poor is everywhere, Mexico, US, China, etc. And statements like yours that I took to mean that you believe that there is NOT hunger in Mexico are way off the mark. Mexico IS a third-world country, with many rural areas that the very poor live in where they are not getting any governmental assistance, and are certianly malnourished and under-fed.
Evelyn
United Nations
Economic & Social Council
7. The health and nutrition sectors, like education, have been affected by the policy of reducing the welfare budget. In Mexico, the budget for social programmes, including education and health, was reduced by 29,777 million pesos (US$ 2,977 million) in June 1998. There are important regional disparities in terms of access to medical services. In Chiapas, 80 per cent of the population (over 3 million people) lack access to social services, and of these 450,000 do not have regular access to health services. This situation is reflected in the fact that during 1998, in Chiapas alone, 2,027 cases of malaria were reported. Health problems are compounded by malnutrition. As UNICEF has recognized, Mexico does not have a welldefined strategy to address the problem of malnutrition. In this country 350 people die of starvation each day, the majority of whom are children under five. According to UNICEF, of the 2 million children who are born each year in Mexico, 158,000 die, and 40,000 of these deaths are related to malnutrition.
http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/f4077ced3161fc9cc1256b72004ab341?Opendocument
Texan123
OK, so I said Mexico instead of El Salvador. They are all they same and they all come for the same selfish reasons– to take all they can get.
The United States is a compassionate and generous nation. Latin Americans have taken advantage of this fact and use their children endlessly to justify lawless behavior.
American citizenship can not be bought by paying a fine or demanded by a group of lawless bullies. If the millions of illegal immigrants are given legal status, it will further erode the rule of law.
I would like to see a protest where thousands of American citizens cross over to Mexico with signs demanding legal status and the right to vote.
Would the Mexicans be generous and compassionate?
Evelyn
Tescan2794
“OK, so I said Mexico instead of El Salvador. They are all they same and they all come for the same selfish reasons– to take all they can get.”
Whopper! Whopper! Big Fat Lie! Here Educate yourself.
“Because in the last 15 years, Mexico’s longstanding system of sustaining its huge population of poor citizens (including small self-sufficient farms, jobs in state-owned industries and subsidies for such essentials as tortillas) has been scuttled at the insistence of U.S. banks, corporations, government officials and “free market” ideologues. In the name of “modernizing” the Mexican economy, such giants as Citigroup, Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and GE -in cahoots with the plutocrats and oligarchs of Mexico -have laid waste to that country’s grass-roots economy, destroying the already-meager livelihoods of millions.
The 1994 imposition of NAFTA was particularly devastating. Just as Bill Clinton and the corporate elites did here, Mexico’s ruling elites touted NAFTA as a magic elixir that would generate growth, create jobs, raise wages and eliminate the surge of Mexican migrants into the United States. They were horribly wrong:
Economic growth in Mexico has been anemic since ’94, and the benefits of any growth have gone overwhelmingly to the wealthiest families.
Since NAFTA, Mexico has created less than a third of the millions of decent jobs it needs.
Average factory wages in Mexico have dropped by more than 5 percent under NAFTA.
Unemployment has jumped, and unskilled workers are paid only $5 a day.
U.S. agribusiness corporations have more than doubled their shipment of subsidized crops into Mexico, busting the price that indigenous farmers got for their production and displacing some 2 million peasant farmers from their land.
Huge agribusiness operations, many owned by U.S. investors, now control Mexican agricultural production and pay farmworkers under $2 an hour.
Since NAFTA passed, there has been a flood of business bankruptcies and takeovers in Mexico as predatory U.S. chains have moved in. U.S.
corporations now control 40 percent of the country’s formal jobs, with Wal-Mart reigning as the No. 1 employer.
Nineteen million more Mexicans live in poverty today than when NAFTA was passed.”
And then he goes on to make the point that I think is the way to really talk about immigration. This should be the elevator talking points.
“But even if there were no illegal workers in our country–none–the fragility would remain, for poor Mexican laborers are not the ones who:
Downsized and offshored our middle-class jobs.
Perverted our bankruptcy laws to let corporations abrogate their union contracts.
Stopped enforcement of America’s wage and hour laws.
Perverted the National Labor Relations Board into an anti-worker tool for corporations.
Illegally reclassified millions of employees as “independent contractors,”
leaving them with no benefits or labor rights.
Subverted the right of workers to organize.
Turned a blind eye to the re-emergence in America of sweatshops and child labor in everything from the clothing industry to Wal-Mart.
Made good healthcare a luxury item.
Let rich campaign donors take over both political parties.
Passed by hook and crook a continuing series of global-trade scams to enrich the few and knock down the many.
Powerless immigrants didn’t do these things to us. The richest, most-powerful, best-connected corporate interests did them.”
Evelyn
“I would like to see a protest where thousands of American citizens cross over to Mexico with signs demanding legal status and the right to vote.
Would the Mexicans be generous and compassionate?”
If you knew anything about history you would know this has already be done, Yes hordes of white people crossed into Mexico and started an unjust and illegal war. Then they paid a Spaniard hiding in Cuba for Mexican land to justify their illegal act of stealing. They claimed they were entitled to this land because they were the chosen people, they were entitled. Manifest Destiny is what they called it. I guess they thought people in the future would get dumber. Maybe they were right, because some white people still believe only they are entitled LOL!
They also signed a treaty with Mexico which was violated soon after. That is why Mexicans explain they didnt cross the border, the border crossed them. Here is the scoop, Educate Yourself!
May 13, 2008
‘Wicked’ American Decisions.
On this day 162 years ago the United States officially declared war on Mexico. After Texas had won independence from Mexico roughly 10 year earlier, and then obtained admission to the Union, a border dispute between Mexico and the United States broke out.
Mexico had never quite accepted an independent Republic of Texas, so its annexation with the U.S. didn’t sit well with our neighbors to the south. When the U.S. then sought to buy more land from Mexico for greater access to the Pacific Ocean, Mexican nationalists began to get quite annoyed. The hostilities boiled over until the U.S. officially declared, and would eventually win, a war with Mexico.
One aspect of this oft-forgotten war is that it was quite divisive in its day. Whigs, particularly those in the north, opposed the war. Yet southern Democrats, smitten with the notion of Manifest Destiny and our perceived God given right to own “sea to shining sea,” enthusiastically supported it. Such disagreements should not be glossed over. Abraham Lincoln, then a Congressman, remained forcefully skeptical about Mexico’s alleged instigation of armed hostilities. Others, such as former President John Quincy Adams, felt the whole affair was simply an effort to expand slavery. Of the many opponents it was perhaps President Ulysses S. Grant, a young army officer in the Mexican-American War, who summed up the misgivings best in his Memoirs in 1885:
“For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the [annexation of Texas], and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.”
Grant didn’t stop there, and it is for this poignant honesty that people often regard Grant’s memoirs as the best ever written by a former president. He went on to suggest that God punished the U.S. for its war against Mexico in the form of the American Civil War:
“The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.”
In 1879, after he had served as President, Grant put his feelings in no uncertain terms:
“I had very strong opinions on the subject. I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I had a horror of the Mexican War, and I have always believed that it was on our part most unjust. The wickedness was not in the way our soldiers conducted it, but in the conduct of our government in declaring was. We had no claim on Mexico. Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed it. I am always ashamed of my country when I think of that invasion.”
In 1880, over 30 years after the war had ended, Republicans were still angered by it all and, in its “Republican Campaign Textbook,” described the war as “Feculent, reeking Corruption” and “one of the darkest scenes in our history – a war forced upon our and the Mexican people by the high-handed usurpations of Pres’t Polk in pursuit of territorial aggrandizement of the slave oligarchy.”
Listen to today’s political pundits for very long and you might start to think such denouncements of the U.S. – by a former President no less! – are modern inventions. Yet here we see some of the country’s most esteemed leaders and statesmen expressing outright shame over its decision to wage an unjust war. Patriotic men who would, and did, give their life for the country could nonetheless oppose “wicked” government decisions like engaging in an unjust war.
This shouldn’t surprise us really, but I think it’d be news to most Americans. I suppose Truman said it best when he said, “The only thing new in this world is the history that you don’t know.”
Posted by Joshua Claybourn at May 13, 2008 12:22 AM
Texan123
I was previewing my post when it disappeared. I apologise if it gets posted twice.
OK Evelyn, how about a “truce”. I agree that NAFTA was bad. I agree tha our government is more concerned with corporate profits than America’s poor. I won’t debate the history you quote, endlessly. Although I was taught that Stephen F. Austin had Mexico’s permission to settle in Texas.
Please, lets get away from the failures of the past. History is full of injustice, meanspiritedness, and downright wrongdoing.
We need solutions to today’s problems. America can not take in all the world’s poor. We can not educate, provide jobs, and healthcare to every poor soul on the earth. That is the reason we have immigration laws.
The Amnesty Act of 1986 promised Americans increased border security and workplace enforcement. We were promised this was a “one time amnesty” that would STOP illegal immigration. Americans never received the enforcement we were promised. That is why we now have 20 million illegal immigrants, of all nationalities, mostly crossing the Mexican border.
I am against Amnesty, because the enforcement promises are ignored. Employers knowingly hire illegal workers over legal ones. Do you think it is right for a legal immigrant to compete for the same job as an illegal?
Our own government encourages continued illegal immigration by promising immigration reform. If we don’t stop illegal immigration now, we will have 40 million more in 10 years, coming in hope of yet another Amnesty. Americans can not continue to educate, employ, and provide healthcare for all the poor souls in the world who want to come here.
Have you had your ID stolen? Do you support e-verify to check social security numbers of legal workers? Do you believe the US should limit the number of immigrants coming to our country? What are your solutions to todays problems?
Evelyn
Texan123
I support C. Immigration Reform.
It is million times better then the de-facto amnesty in place now.
We cannot go on with the lawlessness used by gov, officials and unauthorized immigrants alike.
Our lawmakers are letting “Ignorance Breeds Racism” crowd dictate how our country should be run.
That is what Germany did.
Both sides of this issue must compromise.
It cannot be wide open borders.
It cannot be starve all immigrants out even if they have American citizen spouses or children.
It must be somewhere in between.
I do not support the E-verify basic pilot program.
First it cannot detect someone using some one else’s identity.
Second It is run by bureaucrats and is flawed. My daughter applied for a summer job and her SS card came back ineligible. By the time we fixed it, the job was no longer available. 17 students out of her class of 54 that will graduate from high school next year had the same problem.
Real Id being swiped with the person putting his thumbprint in some kind of contraption or a retina identifier is more accurate. To keep costs low the prospective employee could go to a place that could verify if he is eligible for employment with the card he is carrying. This info. could then be passed on to the employer via Internet.
Fining the profits out of unscrupulous employers and jail time for first offenders would keep these people in check.
If a person from Mexico is not given a job, because he doesent have real Id he wont come.
If the employers who hire them are in jail they have no job.
We are throwing money at a wall that they can go around.
We are throwing money away having Ice Raids and border patrol chase them all over creation.
We are throwing money away incarcerating them.
These are not solutions and they are costing us billions. We have the “Ignorance Breeds Racism” crowd to thank for that.
First we need to expose the ignoramuses spreading all the lies.
Frank
I am all for a national I.D. card that undeniably proves who you are by using retina scans, etc. and mandating that employers use this card to identify who they are employing. This will of course stop illegal entry into our country immensely for those who are just looking for work. We still need to beef up the security of our borders, ports and airports to make sure that terrorists don’t enter either.
But just as we need prisons and jails for American citizens who break our laws, we still need some detention centers for those who still make it into our country without papers. We can’t get around that. It is just a necessary evil we have to pay for. We have to incarcerate all of the above or there would be nothing but chaos and lawlessness in this country. If there is no punishement for breaking our laws, then more laws will be broken.
As far as any racism or so-called lies in regard to the illegal immigration issue, so what? These people are among the mininority in this country. They have no power, so why worry about them? Most American’s views on illegal immigration are based on the rule of law in this country.
I agree with you Texan, we cannot trust our government to do the right thing. They broke their promise to us with the 1986 amnesty. The only way I would be inclined to trust them again is if they secured our borders first but they and the pro-illegals are bucking that, so right there it tells me that this is all smoke and mirrors again.
You are correct also that we cannot take in the world’s poor and destitute. We must continue to only accept legal immigrants based on our needs and in quotas from different ethnic groups to be fair and to be able to assimilate them. Those that we cannot take in must demand change in their own countries.
Evelyn
Frank :
I am all for a national I.D. card that undeniably proves who you are by using retina scans, etc. and mandating that employers use this card to identify who they are employing. This will of course stop illegal entry into our country immensely for those who are just looking for work. We still need to beef up the security of our borders, ports and airports to make sure that terrorists don’t enter either.
But just as we need prisons and jails for American citizens who break our laws, we still need some detention centers for those who still make it into our country without papers. We can’t get around that. It is just a necessary evil we have to pay for. We have to incarcerate all of the above or there would be nothing but chaos and lawlessness in this country. If there is no punishement for breaking our laws, then more laws will be broken.
!!!!!!!!!!!
[“As far as any racism or so-called lies in regard to the illegal immigration issue, so what? These people are among the mininority in this country. They have no power, so why worry about them?”]
!!!!!!!!!!!
You always said you weren’t a liar. You always said I was the one who lied.
I thought you said you weren’t a racist. You always said I was the racist.
In one sentence you admit lying about them doesent matter because they are a minority.
So now who is a racist and a liar?
Alex
The problem with the 1986 amnesty is that it lost its teeth very soon. After a short while, we did not mind people, we knew were working ilegally, doing the nasty jobs we did not like. It was cheap and conveneint for us. It was not just the government that looked the other way, we did not mind because of the relative prosperity and plenty of jobs availability back then. Many of these undocumented workers have been here for all these years, formed families, built their homes, their children know the U.S. as their home and long to make it better through their education and future work. They should not be punished for trying to feed their families. The right and christian way to act, would be to give them the chance to stay here, without the fear of being persecuted and humillated like in old Nazi Germany.
Frank
I haven’t a clue what lies you are accusing me of. I said that with the majority of Americans who oppose illegal immigration, racism doesn’t play a role in it. I have always said that. What the hell are you talking about?
Frank
Oh, stop the bleeding heart whining! They aren’t being punished for feeding their families, they are being punished for breaking our immigration laws.
Persecuted? Get real with you? Our country enforcing our immigration laws doesn’t even remotely resemble Nazi Germany. You pro-illegals will try every trick in the book including demonizing your own country and your own fellow American citizens to get your way, wont’ you?
Again who is this “we” you speak of that didn’t mind illegals being in this country? It sure wasn’t your average Joe. Most of us weren’t aware how much it had reached critical mass until the pass 5 years or so and we have been fighting it ever since. Take your sob stories elsewhere!
Horace
“The right and christian way to act, would be to
give them the chance to stay here, without the fear of being persecuted and humillated like in old Nazi Germany.”
People like yourself are prone to making false analogies. Only those with self interest and a poor understanding of the history of Nazi Germany would consider making such a stupid comparison. The Germans didn’t deport for the purpose of sending people home, they deported for the purpose of working people to death and executing them. People like you take the one thing in common with that, deportation, and spin it into a monstrosity. We are merely returning foreign nationals to their homelands, just as their governments would do to our citizens if the situation were reversed. Would you compare Mexico, El Salvador or Guatemala to Nazi Germany, because they also arrest and deport their illegal immigrants. I thought so, you reserve such comparisons for your countrymen who you feel less loyalty to than foreigners. And leave religion out of this, as not all Americans are Christians, and they might resent your criticisms.
Your view is not held by most Americans nor with Europeans who are in the process of deporting their own problems. Only weak kneed pathetic illegal aliens supporters who have no loyalty to this country can’t see the danger of rewarding bad behavior. Your’s is an invitation to more illegal immigration, as others come with the thought of receiving another amnesty, an another, and another, as the poor of Central and South America see our lack of will in enforcing our immigration laws. Remember, there are millions of new poor and illiterate being generated in Mexico and the rest of Latin America every year. They’re not going to pay attention to any declaration that our guest worker program is completely full. You have no solutions, Alex, just appeasement to Hispanic ethnocentrics, and to the welfare of people who had no right to expect amnesty. I look towards the decades ahead, while you can’t see beyond the end of your nose.
challis
I think that creating and ID system would be a great start.
The undocumented need to become documented so that we know who is in our country and why.
Do you have a criminal reacod? GREAT, go back where you came from.
Is your record clean? cool, let’s get you registered and go from there. pay a fine, I don’t know, but we’ve got to start somewhere.
Frank
We can start by making the e-verify system mandatory in the workplace. The Save Act would force employers to complete a check on their current employees and any future hires. If they can’t work, the illegals will go home and hopefully they will have the courage to make the necessary changes in their own homelands.
challis
E-verify needs to work out it’s kinks, though.
i’ve heard of quite a few miss-identified people. And, unfortunately it’s an ‘act now ask questions later’ situation that is causing missed opportunities for people who are not only legally here, but (in one case that I know of personally) people who were born here!
Horace
“The undocumented need to become documented so that we know who is in our country and why.”
Challis, do you really see illegal aliens with a criminal record coming forward to subject themselves to a background check. I don’t. I have to laugh when I hear advocates and politicians say that we’ll rid ourselves of the criminal element in that manner.
Frank
Challis, from what I have read the e-verify system is quite accurate. Yes, there are some flaws but an employee will have 60-90 days to clear up any inaccuracies. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here. Nothing is foolproof but employers must be held accountable for who are on their payrolls and this is the only way it will happen.
Alex
Why leave religion out of this shameful problem, that is racism and xenophobia that antagonizes a whole community who just want to be given a chance to feed their families. ultimately religion, or how you practice it will determine if you will be accepted in heaven or be thrown to hell to be holding hands with Nero, Hitler, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and their likes. I do not remember the Xenophobes like Horace, Frank, Liquidmicro, Texan, Grandma, etc. demanding the “rule of law” during the 80’s and 90’s when the vast majority of families came here to work without papers. It is now, when the Republiklans, who have messed up our country so badly, are trying to scapegoat their failures with this people, and also trying to energize their base, mostly comprised of xenophobes, racists and members of KKK, Minutemen, FAIR, and their similars.
Liquidmicro
“I do not remember the Xenophobes like Horace, Frank, Liquidmicro, Texan, Grandma, etc. demanding the “rule of law” during the 80’s and 90’s when the vast majority of families came here to work without papers. It is now, when the Republicans, who have messed up our country so badly, are trying to scapegoat their failures with this people, and also trying to energize their base, mostly comprised of xenophobes, racists and members of KKK, Minutemen, FAIR, and their similars.”
Then you know nothing of the debate that has been going on since then. Look to California – Prop. 187 to be exact – 1994, or how about Plyler v. Doe in the 80’s. You know not of which you speak. Look to when Cesar Chavez was unionizing the farm workers, what was happening to “Illegal Immigrants” then? Have you ever marched with Cesar Chavez? I have in the ’70’s here in Sacramento, all thanks to my Grandparents. I am a firm believer in Unions and the American Citizens right to be not exploited by the employer. If the employer wants quality personnel they must be willing to pay for it with benefits, lure the employees with desires. Works every time, increases productivity, etc.
Until you can understand personal views, you are nothing more than the “IDIOT” spouting ‘RACIST’. Be careful your inept ignorance is now out in the open.
Frank
Alex shows herself to be a far left kook with very little objectivity. I mean, to lump a sitting president of the U.S. in with the likes of Hitler is just beyond the pale. Hey, she forgot Stalin and Pol Pot in there. Oh, she probably didn’t forget them–she just didn’t want to put any of her fellow travellers in hell, too! LOL! I guess you and I will be there too Liquid, holding hands with Hitler and Co. What a nut!
Fortunately we are a secular country and do not make our laws according to Alex’s “religion.” LOL!
Then she goes on to use that too-cute-by-half derogatory term “Republiklans.” That just shows so much maturity and credibility.
Still not satisfied, she goes on to insult those who have a different political view than she does and calls them “racists, xenophobes, KKK.” Yeah, this is someone you’d really want to take seriously! If you ask me, she is despicable for demonizing her countrymen who hold a different view on this issue than she does. How DARE she call her fellow Americans who oppose yet another amnesty all these vile names and then tell us we are going to hell! She is going to hell for turning her back on her fellow Americans who have lost their jobs due to employers hiring illegals over American citizens and legal residents! WHat about THEIR children?? What about all of the American citizens who have been victimized by those who should never have been in this country in the first place?
The problem with people like Alex is that they see only one side of the issue. They see every one of these illegals as “poor, hard-working, down trodden people who are only trying to “feed their families.” They are NOT ALL LIKE THAT! A certain percentage are criminals; many have been guilty of drunk driving and have left a path of destruction in their wake: children without parents, parents left to bury their children.
People like Alex just disgust me beyond all words with their treachery in taking the part of foreign nationals and ignoring the cries of their own countrymen all in the name of religion and compassion for them but not us. Simply disgusting.
Challis
“Challis, do you really see illegal aliens with a criminal record coming forward to subject themselves to a background check. I don’t.”
Absolutely not–I don’t see ANY undocumented workers coming forward of their own volition to be documented. There isn’t enough trust in our community and government to do so.
That is one of the things that makes this such a large issue. We’ve got to figure out a way to make it work. There is no easy solution.
Evelyn
“Be careful your inept ignorance is now out in the open.”
Glass houses Liquid!!!
Liquidmicro
No better rhetoric than that from you, Evelyn, I’m disappointed. But I also note, you have no argument either.
Horace
“Why leave religion out of this shameful problem, that is racism and xenophobia that antagonizes a whole community who just want to be given a chance to feed their families. ultimately religion, or how you practice it will determine if you will be accepted in heaven or be thrown to hell to be holding hands with Nero, Hitler, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and their likes.”
I love you too, Alex, but I see you as a Quisling or Benedict Arnold and your illegal alien friends as subversive to our nation of laws, bullying their way into citizenship, without regard to our legal system or fairness to all others who comply with our immigration laws. If your get your way, our children will be paying huge tax penalties for a burgeoning poor population, all with the support of big business who would like nothing better than to pay lower wages by displacing the citizen. Alex, I see your willful ignorance as a real danger to this nation. If what you advocate comes to pass, it will be you and your friends that will eventually be judged by history as villains.
Alex
I am glad to know that Liquid marched with Cesar Chavez, I would have if I existed back then. I was not even a project during those days. What happened to you since then, What problems messed up your mind that led you to be a xenophobe now? Bring back that old Liquidmicro for the good of all humanity!!
I do not think Ignorance is being aware of what happens around you. When you see injustice, persecution, hate, etc. As a christian and human being, you have a responsability to denounce them, wether the responsibles for those heinous acts like them or not. Hopefully, these wicked pepole will realize that their antagonism and hate is destroying them and change for good. The fact that we are in a secular country does not make God dissapear. You, Frank, think that putting our Lord aside, justifies your reprehensible behavior. You are like those sick people that do not want to go to see the doctor so they can thing that are still healthy. If nobody tells them they are sick, they have nothing to worry about. If you are so concerned about your fellow citizens loosing their jobs, and their children, why don’t you take that frustation to the real responsbles for these problems, your hero “W”. He, and this inept administration are responsble for the disastrous economy we are suffering. We are paying billions of dollars a month for an illegal war taht is making us less secure and causing our moral stand in the world inexistent. Instead of scapegoating these problems on hard working people who cannot afford to have legal papers to stay here, despite their contributions to our progress, why don’t you use your energy, or whatever might be left of it, in denouncing the bullish foreign policy of this administration and this illegal war that is costing us, not just tons of money but thousands of unnecessary human lives. We can tell that you see too much FIX NEWS, their racist agenda is obvious, they are the Republiklan propaganda oulet anyway. Not all undoccumented workers here are criminals, just a small percentage are, as in every society, but FIX NEWS identifies the individual not by name, but by his status and keeps repeating it so people would identify a whole group by the actions of an individual. They ight say the name once, and then they just repeating the status on and on rather than the name of the offender. FIX NEWS is so full of lies, they even say that The president is a good person.
Frank
LOL Alex, you haven’t a clue do you? I was opposed to the Iraq war from day one and I have no use for Bush or this administration. So much for your false assumptions about me.
Just what reprehensible behavior am I guilty of? Wanting our immigration laws enforced? Oh, the horror!
You think that anyone should be able to come to our country whether or not we have a job for them or whether or not their ethnic group has already met their fair quotas in this country? This has nothing to do with their so-called inability to afford legal papers. We set immigration policy with our own citzen’s best interests in mind, not the immigrant and rightly so!
You can take your self-rightousness and stick it. As Horace said you are nothing but an ethnocentric, racist Benedict Arnold. It is you who should fear meeting your maker one day.
Liquidmicro
“I am glad to know that Liquid marched with Cesar Chavez, I would have if I existed back then. I was not even a project during those days. What happened to you since then, What problems messed up your mind that led you to be a xenophobe now? Bring back that old Liquidmicro for the good of all humanity!!”
You espouse xenophobe to readily, especially when half of my family on my mothers side is Hispanic, so go preach your ignorance somewhere else. You also have no history of what Cesar Chavez was doing back then. He was for the American Workers Rights, not for the rights of union breakers (“Illegal Immigrants”), he vehemently opposed them. Like I said, you need to study up on your history.
Here’s a quick history lesson for you.
“Sometime in 1973, I began paying attention to newspaper articles about the continued exploitation of farm workers, and at a house meeting with the veteran peace activist Blase Bonpane, I learned more of what Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union were doing to bring some measure of economic justice for farm workers. Later, I re-connected with an old high school pal, who with his twin brother had worked as a lawyer for the UFW in the late ’60s. In spring of 1974, Peter and I went to the Coachella Valley for the kickoff of the new grape boycott. That clinched my growing committment to do what I could to promote the UFW’s cause. Peter reckoned that he might go back to work for the union. We then lost touch with each other, but, happily, were to meet again.
I began distributing materials about the grape boycott at my UCC church in Woodland Hills, California, and so as to learn more about the issue first-hand, I spent a week in August with the UFW in the southern San Joaquin Valley. There I traveled with union members to the fields where they picketed the illegal aliens who had replaced them for the harvest.”
http://www.williamgbecker.com/ufw.html
Liquidmicro
“I do not think Ignorance is being aware of what happens around you. When you see injustice, persecution, hate, etc. As a christian and human being, you have a responsability to denounce them, wether the responsibles for those heinous acts like them or not.”
You must be ignorant then, because you only see one side of what is happening around you. What of the other side, where American Citizens are losing their jobs, unable to put food on the table for their families, due to these union breakers? What of these families? You have no compassion for them? After all, they are only trying to put food on the table for their families as well. Your ignorance is only in seeing the one side. open your eyes to the whole picture. Should not then American Citizens and LPR/GC/Visa holders not come first?
Alex
You know Frank, since you like the idea of a secular country, if there is no God, you do not have to worry at all, but, if there is a God and is taking into account all your words and actions against Him, you are in big trouble buddy. You may still have time to change. We all hope you do.
Alex
As I said before, I do not mind at all my taxes going to educate and heal hardworking people who did not have the means and economic resources to come and work here with proper papers so that they can put food in their families table, rather than being used in the genocides we are commiting in illegal wars. It is immoral that thousands of people have to die for lies that only benefit oil, weapons industries. Shame on you Frank, Horace, Liquidmicro, Texan, Grandma and your racist groups for not speaking out against illegal wars based on lies that are bleeding out our economy and moral stand in the world and prefer to scapegoat the ineptitude of this administration on these people who just want a chance to better their lives and their families.
Frank
Well then I guess our whole government and the majority of Americans are going to hell then, right Alex? I will have a lot of company. I will also have the company of billions of people all over the planet who have immigration laws in their countries and wish them respected. No, you will burn in hell for turning your back on your fellow citizens for foreign invaders with no respect for our laws just because they are ethnically like yourself! I am sure God hates racism and you will burn in hell for it!
Why can’t these cowards stand up to their own governments so they can feed their families there and make better lives for their families there? What gives them the right to violate our borders because they are cowards?
No shame on you for turning your back on your own citizens and blaming our country for the what Mexico and other Latino countries should be blamed for and the people who lack the backbone to make the necessary changes in their own countries.
Shame on you for expecting Americans to commit national suicide for your ethnic kind who violate our laws because they are too lazy to fix their own countries. Why didn’t they consider how they were going to feed their kids before they had them???
And shame on you for not demonizing all those Latino countries, including Mexico for enforcing THEIR immigration laws.!
Horace
“As I said before, I do not mind at all my taxes going to educate and heal hardworking people who did not have the means and economic resources to come and work here with proper papers so that they can put food in their families table, rather than being used in the genocides we are commiting in illegal wars.”
The problem with you Alex, is that not only would you not mind your taxes going to the aforementioned people, but you also don’t mind imposing such taxes on the rest of us, and our progeny as well. If you want to be charitable, make your personal contribution to Mexico and leave the rest of this nation out of your ill considered inclinations.
Alex
This is ironic. You are so concerned that your taxes are not being used properly and are a burden to us and will be on our children while billions of yor taxes are being wasted monthly in a genocide sold to us through blatant lies by an inept and greedy administration. Why don’t you denounce and rant about it rather than scapegoating our tax contributions misuse on people who are actually providing, without retribution, towards your Social Security pension. This just shows your hypocrisy and bigotry.
Horace
“This is ironic. You are so concerned that your taxes are not being used properly and are a burden to us and will be on our children while billions of yor taxes are being wasted monthly in a genocide sold to us through blatant lies by an inept and greedy administration. Why don’t you denounce and rant about it rather than scapegoating our tax contributions misuse on people who are actually providing, without retribution, towards your Social Security pension. This just shows your hypocrisy and bigotry.”
How is it Hypocrisy or bigotry not to want to pay for another nation’s mistakes. I don’t owe Mexico anything, so why should I adopt its poor and incur the burden that they present to our welfare system? As to the rest, I won’t answer, as they are merely the introduction of irrelevencies to cloud the issue. I’ve never said that I concur with everything the Bush administration has done, but that has nothing to do with illegal immigration and its impact upon the future of this nation.
Alex
The disastrous impact of the genocide being commited by this inept administration is something you do not want to talk about but your antagonism and hate towards working families who could not afford to get legal papers to do so is. You seem so concerned about our taxes going towards these undoccumented families welfare but do not have the guts to say anything against the billions of dollars, from your taxes, being wasted killing thousands of human beings that are not making us safer at all. It seems taht you don’t realize, but we are the most hated country in the world, and most of the world consider us a danger to the planet. Not just by our bullish and bellicose behavior but because our desdain for our planet’s enviromental future. Our reputation and moral standing in the world is almost non existent. These are real problems that you should be ranting about. These are real issues that impact our economy and wellbeing. Not just for us, but for our children who are the ones who will be paying the tag for these failed policies. not the poor working families who just want to be able to better themselves and their families. And, at the same time, better our country. Your comments just expose your bigotry and hypocrisy.
Texan123
Dear Alex,
Jesus Christ himself said ” And you will be hearing of wars; see to it that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes–Matt 24:6&7.
Matt 24:12 “And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.”
As a Christian, my salvation is based on FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST, not my view of illegal immigration as a national crisis.
Wars will come and go. Eternal Salvation can not be taken or given, except by Christ ALONE.
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