The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington (ACLU-WA), announced that they have reached a preliminary settlement agreement with the federal government in a landmark class action lawsuit challenging delays in the granting of citizenship. In granting class certification, Federal District Court Judge Pechman, rejected the government's arguments asserting that the inability to vote does not prevent individuals from fully participating in our democracy: "This suggestion that Plaintiffs should be resigned to participate vicariously in civic society is shocking, offensive, and wrong. It echoes the sentiments of those who challenged woman's suffrage, suggesting that women should be content to participate in the political process vicariously through their husbands' votes." Such strong language, “shocking, offensive and wrong,” in rejecting the government argument is unusual for a Federal District Court Judge and indicates how far out-of-bounds the Department of Justice and the Bush Administration have gone in defending their immigration policies.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Just How Arbitrary Is Immigration? Scientist to be deported for imperfect profile photos.
Just how arbitrary and inflexible is U.S. Immigration? So arbitrary that they are about to deport a scientist with a top security clearance who has been working to make us safe from bio-terrorism because of bureaucratic snafus that would rival Joseph Heller (Catch 22). Katarzyna Dziewanowska is a Polish born scientist recruited to the University of Idaho in 1994 and has been involved in studying methods of fighting biological agents, such as the plague, that could be used in germ warfare. Her travails began in 2003 when she applied for Permanent Residency. She submitted her application and an application for a work permit.
While immigration officials considered her application, she was required to apply annually for temporary work permits called employment authorization documents.
In the fall of 2004 her application for a permit was rejected because she had submitted a profile photo rather than a face-forward one as required under new rules. She sent a face-forward photo, but that was rejected because officials said it included glare on one lens of her glasses.
In a letter in September 2004, immigration officials wrote, "There is no appeal to this decision."
By then, her previous work permit had expired.
Dziewanowska said the university's human rights office told her she could keep working during a 240-day grace period, a claim The Spokesman-Review found was supported by Cherasia and e-mail records.
During that period Dziewanowska worked on finding ways to protect against humans from bioterrorist attacks with the plague, but the university's advice that she could keep working turned out to be incorrect.
Immigrations officials then told her that, because she had worked illegally for eight months without a work permit, her application for permanent residency was being rejected.
In April 2005 the university told her to stop working.
Dr. Sziewanowska is now set to be deported, as is her son. She had just recently purchased a home and now will lose both her job and her home. Immigration insists that there is no room for good faith mistakes. If U.S. immigration can ensnare a scientist, well-versed in the English language, in this bureaucratic Catch 22, imagine how the system handles the cases of immigrant laborers.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
U.S. Hospitals Dump Disabled Immigrants
Just when you think things could not get more f*cked up for undocumented immigrants in this country comes a story in The New York Times about hospitals "privately repatriating" disabled immigrants desperate for medical and rehabilitative help. The Sunday August 3, 2008 issue of The New York Times is carrying a story entitled "Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals," by reporter Deborah Sontag. The story relates the heart-wrenching ordeal of being an undocumented immigrant with disabling injuries. Here are some excerpts:
High in the hills of Guatemala, shut inside the one-room house where he spends day and night on a twin bed beneath a seriously outdated calendar, Luis Alberto Jiménez has no idea of the legal battle that swirls around him in the lowlands of Florida.
Shooing away flies and beaming at the tiny, toothless elderly mother who is his sole caregiver, Mr. Jiménez, a knit cap pulled tightly on his head, remains cheerily oblivious that he has come to represent the collision of two deeply flawed American systems, immigration and health care.
Eight years ago, Mr. Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million.
What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later be declared invalid, Martin Memorial leased an air ambulance for $30,000 and “forcibly returned him to his home country,” as one hospital administrator described it.
Since being hoisted in his wheelchair up a steep slope to his remote home, Mr. Jiménez, who sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, has received no medical care or medication — just Alka-Seltzer and prayer, his 72-year-old mother said. Over the last year, his condition has deteriorated with routine violent seizures, each characterized by a fall, protracted convulsions, a loud gurgling, the vomiting of blood and, finally, a collapse into unconsciousness.
“Every time, he loses a little more of himself,” his mother, Petrona Gervacio Gaspar, said in Kanjobal, the Indian dialect that she speaks with an otherworldly squeak.
American immigration authorities play no role in these private repatriations, carried out by ambulance, air ambulance and commercial plane. Most hospitals say that they do not conduct cross-border transfers until patients are medically stable and that they arrange to deliver them into a physician’s care in their homeland. But the hospitals are operating in a void, without governmental assistance or oversight, leaving ample room for legal and ethical transgressions on both sides of the border.
Indeed, some advocates for immigrants see these repatriations as a kind of international patient dumping, with ambulances taking patients in the wrong direction, away from first-world hospitals to less-adequate care, if any.
“Repatriation is pretty much a death sentence in some of these cases,” said Dr. Steven Larson, an expert on migrant health and an emergency room physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “I’ve seen patients bundled onto the plane and out of the country, and once that person is out of sight, he’s out of mind.”
I wish I could cast a stone here, but the fact is that our medical system is so inadequate that it barely serves the needs of its own, never mind the poor immigrant unlucky enough to suffer a griveous injury in this country. Some things just boggle the mind.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Jason Riley, African-American Conservative Writes Pro-Immigrant Book
Politics makes strange bedfellows, a cliche perhaps, but it certainly fits in the case of Jason Riley’s latest book "Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders" (Gotham), which makes the case for an expansive immigration policy. Jason Riley is a conservative African-American and a member of the very conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board. Pro-immigrant views are not exactly the stuff we have come to associate with the right-wing but Riley’s book is a breath of fresh air nonetheless. Here is an excerpt from the May 15, 2008 Op-Ed piece that Riley penned for the Wall Street Journal, which gives a peek into his book.
The public, we were told, was fed up with illegal immigrants, especially those coming from Latin America. These foreign nationals were stealing jobs, depressing wages, filling our jails and prisons, refusing to learn English, and not assimilating like past immigrant groups. The conventional wisdom was that any presidential candidate who stood a chance of being elected would have to take a hard-line stance on illegal aliens.
Yet somehow the issue seems to have faded, if not disappeared entirely. The presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, isn't a fire-breathing "seal the border" restrictionist. Rather, he's the candidate most closely associated with a comprehensive immigration reform proposal that would have given most undocumented immigrants a shot at becoming legal residents if they met certain requirements. As for the Democrats, when's the last time you saw the term "illegal immigrant" appear in a story about Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama?
So what happened?
Well, I have a theory, and it is that Americans are basically pro-immigrant but ambivalent about it. This ambivalence is reflected in polls, which of course provide different results based on how questions are asked. For example, last year a CBS News poll asked, "Should illegal immigrants be prosecuted and deported or shouldn't they?" And 69% of respondents favored deportation. When the same interviewers asked the same respondents what should happen to illegal immigrants who have lived and worked in the U.S. for at least two years, and then offered a specific alternative to deportation, only 33% favored deportation; 62% said they should be given a chance to keep their jobs and eventually apply for legal status.
When a separate Gallup poll asked a similar question but offered four alternatives, just 13% favored deportation, and 78% said illegal immigrants should be allowed to keep their jobs and apply for citizenship.
In other words, for all the loud talk we've heard in recent months, via cable news, talk radio and the blogosphere, the American public seems not to have lost confidence in the melting pot. And rightly so, because there's plenty of evidence that assimilation is proceeding apace. True, it doesn't always seem that way, but we all know that perceptions can sometimes be illusions.
The media offers up a steady diet of data about current immigration from Mexico, and much of it consists of "averages" regarding English-language skills, income, home-ownership rates, education and so forth. But while digesting these figures, it's important to keep in mind that Latino immigration is ongoing. These averages are snapshots of a moving stream and therefore of little use in measuring assimilation. To properly gauge assimilation, we need to find out how immigrants in the U.S. are faring over time. Only longitudinal studies that track individuals can provide that information.
Just looking at averages can give you a very distorted view of who's learning English or dropping out of school or climbing out of poverty. How so? Because overall statistics that average in large numbers of newcomers can obscure the progress made by pre-existing immigrants.
Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California, calls it the "Peter Pan Fallacy." "Many of us assume, unwittingly, that immigrants are like Peter Pan," says Mr. Myers, "forever frozen in their status as newcomers, never aging, never advancing economically, and never assimilating." In this naïve view, he says, "the mounting numbers of foreign-born residents imply that our nation is becoming dominated by growing numbers of people who perpetually resemble newcomers."
The reality, however, is that the longitudinal studies show real socio-economic progress by Latinos. Progress is slower in some areas, such as the education level of adult immigrants, and faster in others, such as income and homeownership rates. But there is no doubt that both assimilation and upward mobility are occurring over time.
With respect to linguistic assimilation, which is one of the more important measures because it amounts to a job skill that can increase earnings, the historical pattern is as follows: The first generation learns enough English to get by but prefers the mother tongue. The children of immigrants born here grow up in homes where they understand the mother tongue to some extent and may speak it, but they prefer English. When those children become adults, they establish homes where English is the dominant language.
There's every indication that Latinos are following this pattern. According to 2005 Census data, just one-third of Latino immigrants in the country for less than a decade speak English well. But that proportion climbs to 75% for those here 30 years or more. There may be more bilingualism today among their children, but there's no evidence that Spanish is the dominant language in the second generation. The 2000 Census found that 91% of the children of immigrants, and 97% of the grandchildren, spoke English well.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Like Marshmallow for Chocolate: My conversation with Peter Brimelow with a Response by Peter Brimelow
Ragemail Responds
What I find most incredible and disturbing about the responses from Peter Brimelow’s groupies is the utter lack of shock at the extreme nature of the statements that come out of Brimelow’s mouth. I say, “come out of Brimelow’s mouth,” since every single element of my parody is taken from actual statements made by Brimelow, right down to his statement about defending the white race and “get used to it.” Make no bones about it, Peter Brimelow is a dyed in the wool racist, xenophobe and all-around fascist. I could throw in a few more “isms” but the catch-all “fascist” (despite its loss in currency through over-use) most accurately defines Brimelow’s ideology better than any other number of categories of hate.
This Brimelow guy means to undermine our republic. For someone who rails on about aliens who fail to assimilate, I am profoundly disturbed that this British wanker apparently snookered INS into letting him pass his citizenship test despite his avowed fascist tendencies.
Brimelow has no respect for American Democracy. He needs to be deported! Accordingly, I am henceforth starting the “Deport Peter Brimelow Society” with the aim of stripping this fascist of his naturalized citizenship and sending his limey ass back across the Atlantic where he can bugger his fascist buddies at the British National Party.
(For your information, Brimelow, my people were here before the American Civil War was fought. In fact, on my mother’s side they were in the Western territories before the Revolution against King George. So kiss my ass, you slimy racist.)
So I was getting really ticked off at all the nativist crap published on the VDare website when I decided to take matters into my own hands. I reached for the phone. The site’s editor is Peter Brimelow, a British expat who is obsessed with Hispanic immigrants and the threat they pose to his son, Alexander and his daughter, Sue. I decided to have it out with Brimelow, once and for all, man to man --- mano a mano. I dialed up his number and the bloke picked up.
“Brimelow?” I said. “Peter Brimelow? Is that you?”
“The very same. ‘Ow can I ‘elp yer, mate?” he replied, in a distinct British accent.
“Peter, I have to tell you, as a Latino, I’m getting really pissed off at all of the anti-Latino hate speech you’ve been spewing out onto the Web. I mean, what gives with you, man? You didn’t even grow up in this country, much less in L.A. or El Paso, so you can’t be carrying a grudge ‘cause some of my peeps kicked your ass or something. So what is it with you?”
“And ‘oo mightchoo be then, mate?”
“Razzo, Razzo Castro. And don’t call me ‘mate’, all right? I have a blog called Eristic Ragemail. It’s all about elite racist peckerwoods such as yourself, who disseminate bogus statistics on immigration.”
“Right! Ragemail, eh? Can’t say I’ve ‘ad the pleasure of reading it, Razzo. An’ what’s that you said about ‘peckerwoods’? Was that meant to be derogat’ry?”
“You should check the Ragemail site out sometime, Brimelow. After all, you’re featured prominently on the site, right next to the section on Hitler.”
“Whazzat? Bloody ‘itler, eh? Where you get off wif dat, exackly? I only lays out the facts. What people does wiv ‘em is their own business. Follow me?”
“Facts!? You call the garbage you spew out, ‘facts?’ Man, you are deluded. Seriously. I mean come on Pete – I can call you Pete, can’t I? – you know damn well that, immigrants don’t make up 25% of the US federal prison population. As for public assistance, immigrants aren’t even eligible for that –not that anybody is any more. And do you seriously believe your claim that aliens are responsible for suburban sprawl? Last time I was in the suburbs I didn’t see too many low riders out there, joo-know-whad-I-meeng?
And what’s with the racist crap about immigrants bringing in leprosy. Come on man, you are a smart guy, why do you put out such… horseshit?”
“Look, Razzo. (Say, what kind of name is that anyway: ‘Razzo.’) I appreciate you takin’ the time to call me, but I’m not goin’ a sit ‘ere and debate wif you if you’s goin’ a be ‘ostile.”
“Ok. But, just so you know, all this stuff is really meant to scare white people . . . I mean, seriously . . . Leprosy? That’s so yesterday. Why not something with a little more traction, like Ebola or Marburg? I mean, if you’re going to invent exotic diseases carried by aliens why don’t you at least pick something a little trendier; something that wasn’t originally brought here by the slaves dragooned by your illustrious forefathers?”
“Ok, ok. Maybe the leprosy fing was a stretch, but it spun so well for my man, Lou Dobbs, I figured hell, why not just keep it spinnin’, like. Why go to the trouble of reinventin’ the wheel, so to speak? Ha ha ha. I do like the Ebola/Marburg angle, though. ‘ow you spell that: Marburg? Never mind; I’ll Google it. I needs some material fer me nex’ column.”
“See, there you go again, making stuff up to tarnish Latinos. You really have to take a hard look in the mirror, my man. And I don’t mean so you can coif that impeccable white mane of yours. I mean you need to look in the mirror so you can really see yourself for what you are and say: Is this really the legacy I want to leave? A legacy of hatred?”
“Razzo, I ain’t either fomentin’ ‘atred. In fact, I resents the implication, as it were.”
“Bullshit, Pete! You most certainly are fomenting hatred. I mean when your pal, Steve Sailer, writes that Black women and Asian men are doomed to evolutionary extinction because they are too ugly… what the hell do you call that?”
“Yeah, Steve did kind of go a little bit overboard wiv dat one. ‘e should’ve cited ‘is sources, ‘e should.”
“Or when you endorsed the Minutemen vigilantes? Didn’t you know the Minutemen are like Ku Klux Klan?
Like? Hell, they are the KKK!”
“On the other ‘and, you ‘as to admit that they do enjoy a certain amount of – ‘ow you call it? – popular support. An’ you ‘as to pick your dogs wherever you finds ‘em.”
“But . . . why do you have to lie so much? I mean you just constantly make stuff up, like saying that whites are at zero population growth and that US population is going to double due to ‘dark immigrants.’ Where do you get that shit?”
“Look, you misunderstood what I said, mate. What I meant to say was that when you considers the whatsit? . . . um . . . the net aggregate . . . yeah . . . that’s it: the net aggregate . . . – which is not just the new immigrants, but all the immigrants what’s come in since 1970 – yeah, when you considers the net aggregate, then my statement is in fact, accurate, as it were.”
“So you mean, like me and my kids and their kids’ kids?”
“Exactly!”
“Well, by that standard ALL population growth is going to come from people born after 1970, no matter their race or ethnicity. After all, the child-bearing years belong to the young . . .like your child bride.”
“’Ey now! No need to get personal! What you got against child brides, any’ow?”
“Hey, I’m not faulting you for marrying someone half your age. I mean if you really are concerned about the decline of the Aryan race, you need to keep breeding, even if you have to keep on doing it into your senescence. In fact, according to your logic you, as scion of the noble white race, should acquire several child brides. In fact, I know just the group for you . . .”
“My wife ‘as got nuffin’ to do wiv dis. Besides, I already ‘as kids by me first wife.”
“We all know that you have kids, Pete. How could we not? You bring up your little girl Sue and your ‘blonde, blue-eyed’ boy, Alexander James Frank Brimelow, at every speaking opportunity. Hell, we even know their birthdates, since you relate these dates to the ‘brown apocalypse’ that your children will supposedly experience in their lifetimes.”
“Well, I do fink that if we continues to favor the darker races with quotas and affirmative action, poor little Alexander James will one day be punished just for being white. ‘E’ll be a victim of reverse racism, in fact. You can’t deny that.”
“Jesssuuuuuuuuuuuus, I just had an epiphany! That’s really what’s bugging you, isn’t it? You left the comfort of Jolly Old England, Jolly White Old England, hoping to find more of your own kind in the land across the sea. But instead, to your horror and dismay, what you found was a country practically overrunning with darkies. And now you’re afraid that one of your kids might even marry one of them? Is that it? Oh the horror! The horror! Pete, you must wake up drenched in sweat at the nightmare of being forced to one day dandle some chocolate-brown grandchild on your knee, in your own home. Oh my god; think of it! Your own grandchild!”
“Stop it! Stop it Razzo, you wanker. Clearly you are part of the problem, you mudwave surfer. Fuckin’ piece of third world trash!”
“Whoa, Peter! Get a grip on yourself, man. It’s just a fact that you’ll have to accept: the possibility that your own personal DNA might one day become contaminated with alien stock. How does Sue Madison Sanchez sound? Has a nice muddy-brown ring to it, doesn’t it? Think of it: Your little snow-white Suzie married to a swarthy Mexican cholo. It just wigs you out, doesn’t it?”
“Look Razzo, if that is your name . . . I admits that I doesn’t much like the thought of my daughter marrying an illegal anything. But my concerns is purely for the integrity of our great white ‘ardworkin’ Protestant culture is all. That is what is at issue ‘ere, and that is what is threatened by illegal immigration.”
“You mean, the purity of the white race, right?”
“Razzo, I fink this conversation ‘as gone far enough. Goodbye.” [CLICK]
“But Pete! Wait! I wanted you to explain why immigrants are to blame for the Northern Virginia suburbs.”
[Dialtone]
After this was posted Cronulla posted a defense of Peter Brimelow. Mr. Brimelow subsequently felt the need to clear the record. Herein his response.
Peter Brimelow responds:
Cronulla, you old plonker, thanks for writing in on my behalf mate. I really think you laid to rest the load of clobbers peddled by that third-world wanker Razzo. The only racist, in my conversation with Razzo, was the duffer on the other end of the phone. You can’t know how cheesed off I got when I saw that third world toff transcribed our phone conversation. Hell, I was honking gallons into the loo after reading his insults. So, I’ll finish correcting the record that you so ably started. Thanks again mate.It is a fact that America is getting darker and we need to act to stop that. As you know the opening to the Constitution, the preamble, actually says the purpose of the constitution is to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, not posterity in general, our posterity. The posterity of the people who were living in the U.S. at the time. And that was a nation which was entirely white and it was also very heavily, overwhelmingly Protestant: 98 percent Protestant. So our founders envisioned an entirely white nation that was close to 100% Protestant. I don’t know why people get all scatty when I state this. This is a fact. The constitution did not envision securing the blessings of liberty to Blacks, Catholics or Hispanics, let alone immigrants.
Razzo wants to tarnish VDare because we publish white nationalists like Steve Sailer and Pat Buchanan. We publish on VDARE.com a few writers, for example Jared Taylor, whom I would regard as “white nationalist,” in the sense that they aim to defend the interests of American whites. They are not white supremacists as the PC police would have you believe. But they unashamedly work for their people…Get used to it! As immigration policy drives whites into a minority, this type of interest-group "white nationalism" will inexorably increase, and we will be there defending our people. So get used to it! We of the white race, will not go down without a fight.
Steve Sailer, another white nationalist, is also one of our contributors, and as you, Cronilla say, his comments on Asian men and Black women losing out in the evolutionary race, have been misinterpreted by the same duffers who accuse us of being white supremacists. What Steve actually wrote in his essay, "Is Love Colorblind," was as follows:
The general pattern to be explained is: blacks are more in demand as husbands than as wives, and vice-versa for Asians. The question is, what accounts for it?
The force driving these skewed husband - wife proportions appears to be differences in perceived sexual attractiveness. On average, black men tend to appear slightly more and Asian men slightly less masculine than white men, while Asian women are typically seen as slightly more and black women as slightly less feminine than white women.
So, what makes blacks more masculine-seeming and Asians more feminine-seeming? 1) Asian men tend to be shorter than white and black men. Does this matter in the mating game? One of America's leading hands-on researchers into this question, 7'1", 280-pound basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain, reports that in his ample experience being tall and strong never hurt. Biological anthropologists confirm this, finding that taller tends to be better in the eyes of most women in just about all cultures. Furthermore, it can be rather cold comfort to a 5'7" Asian who is competing for dates with white and black guys averaging 5'11" to hear, ``Your sons will grow up on average a couple of inches taller than you, assuming, of course, that you ever meet a girl and have any kids.'' In contrast, consider a 5'1" Asian coed. Although she'd be happy with a 5'7" boyfriend if she were in an all-Asian school, at UCLA she finds lots of boys temptingly much taller than that, but few are Asian.
2) Since women do not go bald and can generally grow longer hair than men, most cultures associate longer hair with femininity. Although blacks' hair doesn't grow as long as whites' or Asians' hair, that's not a problem for black women in all-black societies. After integration, though, hair often becomes an intense concern for black women competing with longer-haired women of other races.
3) Muscularity may most sharply differentiate the races in terms of sexual attractiveness. Women like men who are stronger than they; men like women who are rounder and softer. The frustrations of Asian men are a warning sign. When, in the names of freedom and feminism, young women listen less to the hard-earned wisdom of older women about how to pick Mr. Right, they listen even more to their hormones. This allows cruder measures of a man's worth -- like the size of his muscles -- to return to prominence.
As you can see, Steve was just pointing out the scientific basis for the sexual preference that discriminates against black women and Asian men. It’s a fact that women like their men big and men like their women soft. I don’t know why that Razzo wanker has to twist this into some kind of racist argument. It’s the same way that the PC police twisted my arguments in the essay “America’s Immigration Policy—Hitler’s Revenge?”
And as you, Cronulla, rightly point out, who is the racist when it comes to my children. As some of you who have read my book, Alien Nation, will remember, the most denounced passage was my reference to my little boy, Alexander, who had then just been born. There is reference in this book to his blue eyes and blond hair. Alexander James Frank Brimelow is an American, although I was still a British subject and his mother a Canadian when he shot into the New York delivery room, yelling indignantly, one summer dawn in 1991. I was merely pointing out the unintended consequences of the 14th Amendment. This is because of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, states in part:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
We need to repeal the 14th Amendment which was passed after the Civil War in an attempt to stop Southern states denying their newly freed slaves the full rights of citizens. What with all these illegals having anchor babies, it’s just literally changing the colour of our nation. And just because I mentioned that my son is blond and blue-eyed, all these people accuse me of racism. They want to see racism, go talk to the multi-culturalists.
The drive toward multiculturalism now exists in every English-speaking country. It exists because there are people who don’t like the majority white culture in these countries and want to undermine it. And in the U.S. it particularly exists because of the African-American population which, in many ways, is almost like a fetal nation. I mean blacks are developing in quite different ways culturally to the rest of the population and it’s a very deep-seated problem for the Americans. There is a sense in which current immigration policy is Adolf Hitler’s posthumous revenge on America. You see, African-Americans are the model for the Hispanics that are invading our country and fomenting multi-culturalism. We need to control the development of the African-American population just as we need to exclude the Hispanic growth.
Finally, that wanker Razzo brings up the whole Leprosy thing. I mean, yeah you had Brits bringing Africans over in conditions that bred disease. But of more immediate significance to readers is who was blamed for the spread of leprosy in the news reports.
National Geographic News: Leprosy Was Spread by Colonialism, Slave Trade [May 12 2005]
BBC News: Slave trade key to leprosy spread [May 13 2005]
(“European colonialism and the slave trade probably played a key role in the spread of leprosy, research suggests.”)
“…the disease may have begun in East Africa…then spread to the other continents in part through European colonialism and later the slave trade.”
In other words, although this ancient disease was rampant throughout Europe and Asia by early medieval times, the study is being used as another occasion to denigrate the whites of Western Europe, solidly fixed in the media mind as the only practitioners of colonialism and slave trading. The source of this ahistorical slander, sadly, is the press release put out by head of the Pasteur Institute unit responsible for the study, Dr Stewart Cole:
“Europeans and North Africans then spread leprosy to West Africa… Europeans also introduced leprosy to North America.
“‘Colonialism was extremely bad for parts of the world in terms of human health,’ said Cole.”
In other words, the brief period of European rule in the Third World, which triggered a population explosion there because of the introduction of public health disciplines, law, order, technology and capital, creating an improving living standard the post- colonial regimes have been pitifully unable to maintain, was “extremely bad.” However leprosy spread in the past, the answer to stopping extension in the future is obvious: curtail 3rd World immigration. The brutal truth is that immigrants bring disease..
The problem really boils down to letting these brown hordes have a voice in our democracy. Well that's really the problem and also we didn't have the institutionalization of of factionalization, in the sense of voting right acts and voting rights which is moving towards a proportional representation system where everybody gets everybody gets represented. That is a big part of the problem: too much democracy. I say deport them all!! And toss out their kids, who were born in this country, with them. I hope this clears out any confusion.
Your truly,
Peter Brimelow, V.B.A.*
(V.B.A. – Very Big A*shole)
Criminal Proceedings in Agriprocessors Raid in Postville, Iowa
On May 12th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided the Kosher meat-packing plant in Postville Iowa, detaining approximately 400 undocumented immigrants. Since then controversy has swirled around the raid and its aftermath. New America Media is reporting that “[n]o fewer than seven federal and state agencies are coordinating on investigations of Agriprocessors.”
According to lawyers in the case and agency representatives, there are likely to be civil charges related to immigration, wage enforcement, safety and other labor issues which usually result in fines, however, criminal charges related to immigration, child labor and sexual harassment and assault are far more serious and potentially wide reaching. Anyone with “knowledge or intent” of child laborers for instance is subject to criminal prosecution — in theory this could include management, human resources representatives and owners alike.
“ICE knows this case is huge,” said Sonia Parras Konrad, an attorney representing many of the women and children detained in the raids. “This is not about a few undocumented jumping the fence, this is about the ongoing crimes and abuses that these people endured. This will be a real showcase of what can go wrong without a real comprehensive solution to immigration.”
In contrast, The New York Times is reporting that a translator used during the raids has become a whistleblower in what appear to be railroading of immigrants who have been forced to plead guilty to criminal charges. Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, and an interpreter for the Federal Courts, has taken the unusual step of breaking the code of confidentiality among legal interpreters.
In a 14-page essay he circulated among two dozen other interpreters who worked here, Professor Camayd-Freixas wrote that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived.
In the essay and an interview, Professor Camayd-Freixas said he was taken aback by the rapid pace of the proceedings and the pressure prosecutors brought to bear on the defendants and their lawyers by pressing criminal charges instead of deporting the workers immediately for immigration violations.
He said defense lawyers had little time or privacy to meet with their court-assigned clients in the first hectic days after the raid. Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.
“The questions they asked showed they did not understand what was going on,” Professor Camayd-Freixas said in the interview. “The great majority were under the impression they were there because of being illegal in the country, not because of Social Security fraud.”
So it appears that for the immigrants caught up in the raid it is a lose-lose proposition. ICE could easily deport the workers, who are unlikely to make a return, given the hardships involved in emigrating from Central America. Instead, ICE wants to score a PR coup by convicting as many workers as possible of crimes such as Social Security fraud (albeit who this harms is questionable given that they are contributing money to the Social Security fund that they will never see). Nothing like shooting fish in a barrel.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
On the use of the term “illegal alien”
Ever since George Orwell pointed out the pernicious nature of words being used as code, we have recognized that in political debate words are often freighted with much that is concealed. In the current climate, nativists insist, actually demand, that undocumented immigrants be referred to as “illegal aliens.” If you can classify a whole group of people with a pejorative –alien --and then group them as “illegal,” you have carried out a neat trick: you have stripped a whole group of people of their humanity. Once dehumanized, any ill-treatment is judged by lesser standards, perhaps less moral than ones we apply to animals. I found the following essay, a non-political posting from the Mother Tounge Annoyances blog, quite instructive on this point.
On the "Illegal Alien"
How are you doing? Today I’d like to examine the term “illegal alien” and why its use bothers me so darned much.
Let’s be vulnerable and deeply honest with each other, okay? How often do you hear Americans use the term illegal alien with some discernable trace of prejudice and/or racism? Can you detect any shades of hypernationalism and/or ethnocentrism in this usage?
Speaking for myself, I am disappointed whenever I listen to news commentary or participate in a personal discussion and an individual refers to undocumented immigrants as “illegals” or “illegal aliens.” I’m not saying that (a) I can ‘read’ people’s motivations without asking them directly; or (b) The majority of those who use the term “illegal alien” do so with conscious or unconscious prejudicial intent.
On the other hand, I’ve found that, more often than not, when I ask an individual directly, eyeball-to-eyeball, if their use of “illegals” or “illegal aliens” belies some sort of anti-immigrant prejudice, my rigorously honest conversational partners tend to answer in the affirmative.
It’s time to parse some words. First let’s examine the phrase illegal alien. Wikipedia has an excellent entry on illegal immigration. Following is some relevant text from that piece:
The term “illegal alien” is conferred legitimacy by its official use in federal statutes. An illegal alien is a foreign national who resides in another country unlawfully, either by entering that country at a place other than a designated port of entry or as result of the expiration of a non-immigrant visa. Alternative terms include “illegal immigrant” and the euphemisms “undocumented immigrant,” “undocumented worker,” and “paperless immigrant.”
The Wikipedia author(s) make a good point in saying that some folks argue over the adjective illegal because an immigrant who illegally crosses the U.S. borders or overstays his or her visa intentionally has, in fact, “violated our laws and customs in establishing residence in our country. He or she is therefore a criminal under applicable U.S. laws.” (Reference: Adversity.net)
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the adjective and noun alien in a couple of different ways. In definition B1a, the noun alien (used in an adjectival sense) means “a person belonging to another family, race, or nation; a stranger, a foreigner.”
Definition B1b in the OED pertains to our colloquial understanding of the term alien: “Science Fiction. An (intelligent) being from another planet, especially one far distant from the Earth; a strange (usually threatening) alien visitor.”
Hmm. For completeness, let us examine the adjective and noun illegal. The OED defines the adjectival sense of illegal in definition 1a as “Not legal or lawful; contrary to, or forbidden by, law.”
When the OED defines illegal as a noun, the entry reads starkly in definition B1: “illegal immigrant.”
Yeah yeah yeah—some folks might contend that my distaste for the phrase illegal alien boils down ultimately to a sturdy dose of semantics with a big ol’ pinch of political correctness thrown into the mix.
Linguistically and definitionally, the phrase illegal alien technically works to describe an undocumented immigrant, unauthorized migrant, or whatever euphemism you’d like to use. See Adversity.net for another set of definitions related to the terms alien, immigrant, illegal alien, and undocumented immigrant.
My purpose in this blog post is not to delve into the issue of illegal immigration in general. Heaven knows there are enough Joes and Janes rantin’ about this subject in their own personal weblogs. And good for them! Civilized discourse and freedom of expression are, to my understanding, at the heart of American democracy.
All this definitional stuff aside, however, I ask you to switch off your analytical minds for a moment and consider the following question with your hearts:
When you hear someone refer to an undocumented immigrant as an “illegal alien,” do you feel that this phrase in any, shape, or manner dehumanizes the person in question? Moreover, do you feel that the phrase may be intended to dehumanize the immigrant?
Obviously, I feel this way. And if you visit Web sites such as IllegalAliens.US, you’ll see that there exist plenty of people who disagree with me. Fine and fine.
Here is my “take” on the matter, folks: Men, women, and children who migrate from one country to another, whether they do so legally or illegally, are living, breathing, human beings who are worthy of dignity and respect.
Am I proposing that people change the way they speak or write? Not exactly. Instead, I would suggest that American citizens (a) ask themselves honestly what cultural assumptions (if any) underlie their use of “illegal alien”; and (b) consider that because this phrase is ‘loaded’ on many different levels, perhaps using a less inflammatory phrase to describe these men and women may be advisable.
What do you think? Does the phrase “illegal alien” bother you at all? Or, by contrast, do you think that any controversy regarding its use is a “tempest in a teapot”? Or…what? I look forward to learning from you. Have a wonderful day!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Tech Sector Suffering Due to Restricted Immigration
Fast Company and The New York Times are reporting that the tech sector is suffering restrictions on immigrant work visas.
In 2001, 6.5 million people were employed in the technology sector. By 2006,that number had dropped to 5.8 million. But, jobs did increase by 2.5 percent from 2005.
This New York Times article reports:
"Because the federal government does not issue a sufficient number of green cards or work visas to talented foreign students studying here, there are a “tremendous number of unfilled jobs,” said Christopher Hansen, AeA’s chief executive.
We are educating people from other countries to go back to home and expand the technology sector there, meanwhile America loses its high-tech edge.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Eugenics and Nativism: Joined at the Hip
Racism and Xenophobia
The Federation for American Immigration Reform ('”FAIR”) received a good deal of negative publicity after it was disclosed that it had received most of its start-up money from nonprofit Pioneer Fund foundation. The Pioneer Fund has a long history of promoting eugenics and giving funding to researchers who champion white supremacist causes. As well, the Pioneer Fund has provided money to a variety of anti-immigrant causes. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have both condemned FAIR and the Pioneer Fund as promoting racist hate views. Most critically for the present discussion is the role of eugenics and immigration. Eugenics is broadly defined as follows:
Eugenics: Literally, meaning normal genes, eugenics aims to improve the genetic constitution of the human species by selective breeding. The use of Albert Einstein's sperm to conceive a child (by artificial insemination) would represent an attempt at positive eugenics. The Nazis notoriously engaged in negative eugenics by genocide.
The word "eugenics" was coined by Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) to denote scientific endeavors to increase the proportion of persons with better than average genetic endowment through selective mating of marriage partners.
The practice of eugenics was first legally mandated in the United States in the state of Indiana, resulting in the forcible sterilization, incarceration, and occasionally euthanasia of the mentally or physically handicapped, the mentally ill, and ethnic minorities (particularly people of mixed racial heritage), and the adopting out of their children to non-disabled, Caucasian parents. Similar programs spread widely in the early part of the twentieth century, and still exist in some parts of the world. It is important to note that no experiment in eugenics has ever been shown to result in measurable improvements in human health. In fact, in the best known attempt at positive eugenics, the Nazi "Lebensborn" program, there was a higher-than- normal level of birth defects among the resulting offspring.
Eugenics, notorious for its association with the enactment of the Nazi Nuremberg laws, which led inevitably to the holocaust, was largely born in the United States. The Pioneer Fund played a large role in the promulgation of eugenics based laws in the United States. These laws forced the sterilization of thousands and banned interracial marriage. States (27) that had sterilization laws still on the books (though not all were still in use) in 1956 were: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah,Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin. In fact, the Nuremberg laws were largely shaped by eugenics laws and anti-miscegenation laws from the United States.
During the first decades of the century… major political figures such as Henry Cabot Lodge had unblushingly defended Anglo-Saxonism, the superiority of the “original” American stock. The eugenics movement flourished in these years. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embraced racist theories; Henry Adams, Henry James, the president of Harvard, and other cultural heavyweights did the same. Many key members of the new generation of social scientists, including E.A. Ross and John R. Commons, doubted the intellectual capacity of racial and ethnic minorities. These pioneers in sociology and economics provided additional authority to nativists’ arguments. As late as the early 1920s, when the prominent social psychologist William McDougall proposed a racist interpretation of history based on the results of intelligence tests, when Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race and Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color found a wide audience of college-trained readers for their racist theories, the “genetic case” for nativism remained a position that could be defended in rational discourse. (“The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Bovement,”David H. Bennett (Vintage Books 1988) p. 283)
Eugenicists generally hold that certain people (mostly northern-hemisphere Caucasians) are superior in a variety of qualities to other people (mostly non-Caucasians and non-Anglos such as Jews). The latter are said, by eugenicists, to be innately inferior. Eugenicists, therefore believe that the inferior members of the human species must be controlled by a variety of methods ranging from birth control to sterilization and, in extreme cases, extermination. The superior members of the species must, in turn, be encouraged to breed and must not sundry their superior genes by association with inferior members (miscegenation or race-mixing). Given that the Nazis carried these programs to their logical conclusion, the mass extermination of inferior human beings, eugenics has come to be viewed as scientifically indefensible and morally repugnant.
"American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence of the negro..."A natural extension of the eugenicist view is that the superior members of the species should not be outnumbered by the inferior members. In order to prevent an influx of inferior members, eugenicists promote measures to prohibit or sharply curtail immigration. Such measures found voice in the restrictive and racist Immigration and Restriction Act of 1924. The Act sharply curtailed immigration by countries with undesirable members like immigrants from Latin Countries, Eastern Europe, Russia and Jews. “The [Immigration and Restriction Act of] 1924 act, following a barrage of eugenicist propaganda, reset the quotas at 2 percent of people from each nation recorded in the 1890 census (Southern and eastern Europeans arrived in relatively small numbers before then)… Cynical, but effective. “America must be kept American,” proclaimed Calvin Coolidge as he signed the bill.” ( (“The Mismeasure of Man,”Stephen Jay Gould, p. 262) As stated by one of the eugenicist social scientists who backed race and national origin restrictions on immigration:
The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence of the negro. These are the plain, if somewhat ugly, facts that our study shows. The deterioration of American intelligence is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent it. There is no reason why legal steps should not be taken which would insure a continuously upward evolution.
The steps that should be taken to preserve or increase our present intellectual capacity must of course be dictated by science and not by political expediency. Immigration should not only be restrictive but highly selective. And the revision of the immigration and naturalization laws will only afford a slight relief from our present difficulty. The really important steps are those looking toward the prevention of the continued propagation of defective strains in the present population. (Brigham 1923) (“The Mismeasure of Man,”Stephen Jay Gould, p. 260)
The Pioneer Fund, which almost exclusively funded FAIR in its early years, was instrumental in promoting eugenicist views and the enactment of eugenicist laws. Harry Hamilton Laughlin, a Pioneer Fund president, was a life-long eugenicist, who was part of the Eugenic Research Association (“ERO”), a government project that promoted eugenics laws among the states.
A preoccupation with controlling migration was just one of the habits that FAIR founder, Laughlin and his fellow immigration restrictionists shared with Adolf HitlerFrom the time he moved to New York in 1910 until his death in 1943, Laughlin committed himself to a search for patterns of bad heredity or “dysgenesis.” Even more impressive than the abundance of statistical material collected during Laughlin’s research was his success in translating the implications of eugenical theory into law. The ruling passions of his career as a eugenicist were immigration restriction, eugenic sterilization, and prohibition of interracial marriage.
Laughlin’s efforts at immigration restriction included an attempt to survey every public charitable institution or mental hospital in American. He combined those data with material on the number of foreign-born persons in jails, prisons, and reformatories to provide a basis for testimony to Congress as its appointed “Expert Eugenics Agent.” Reflecting in large part Laughlin’s testimony, Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which was consciously drawn to block the flow of Jews and Italians from 1900 to 1920.
Hitler praised the racist features of American immigration legislation in Mein Kampf even before he came to power. He condemned the automatic grant of citizenship, extended indiscriminately to “every Jewish or Polish, African or Asiatic child” born in Germany as “thoughtless” and “hare-brained.” America, “by simply excluding certain races from naturalization,” was making “slow beginnings” toward a vision Hitler could support. A preoccupation with controlling migration was just one of the habits that Laughlin and his fellow immigration restrictionists shared with Adolf Hitler. "The American Breed" (“The American Breed”: Nazi Eugenics and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund, by Paul A. Lombardo, J.D., Ph.D., Albany Law Review (2002) (emphasis added)).
Today’s nativist agenda is no different than the one that animated the nativists who helped enact the restrictive 1924 immigration act. Nor is there a difference in the latent racism inherent in such views. “Earlier generations of Americans knew that in most cases, what are now called Third World populations, by their very nature, are temperamentally different from the European Christians who settled North America, fashioned the United States, devised its system of laws, and fathered its free institutions. .. We must never, never, never shrink back in craven fear of the imbecilic words that our adversaries hurl at us -- "racist," "bigot," "fascist," and such rubbish ” Father James Thornton
Tanton had the Social Contract Press translate, publish and promote The Camp of the Saints, a starkly racist apocalyptic novelJohn Tanton, perhaps more than any other person, is the architect of the modern nativist movement. In a recent article, Tanton, who rarely grants interviews, forthrightly admitted as such:
The success of U.S. English taught Tanton a crucial lesson. If the immigration restriction movement was to succeed, it would have to be rooted in an emotional appeal to those who felt that their country, their language, their very identity was under assault. “Feelings,” Tanton says in a tone reminiscent of Spock sharing some hard-won insight on human behavior, “trump facts.
More than anyone, Tanton served as the liaison between the “mainstream” anti-immigration movement, whose arguments were still rooted in population and job concerns, and its natural allies on the far right, who saw an epic struggle to maintain America’s national and racial character. He courted mainstream conservative donors, like the Scaife family, as well as the fringe Pioneer Fund, whose current president argues that blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites. He had the Social Contract Press translate, publish and promote The Camp of the Saints, a starkly racist apocalyptic novel about a wave of Indian immigrants overrunning France. In 1996, Tanton coauthored The Immigration Invasion with Wayne Lutton, who sits on the advisory board of a publication put out by the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens. Editor of the Social Contract Press since 1998, Lutton now occupies an office just a few feet from Tanton’s.
Though he plays the victim, Tanton wants it both ways: harnessing the political power that comes from tapping into nativist grievances and building bridges with outright racists, while at the same time dismissing any of the negative consequences that might come from such partnerships. Perhaps Tanton shares the views of his allies, or perhaps he simply understands that if what people like Taylor euphemistically call “cultural” issues were taken out of the equation, there wouldn’t be the same flood of phone calls to senators. “If the 12 million illegal immigrants in this country were all good-looking, English-speaking, white people,” Taylor told me, “the opposition to illegal immigration would be considerably less.”
Aside from Tanton, the other person most identified with what is euphemistically called “white nationalism” but is in reality “white supremacy” is the British expatriate, Peter Brimelow. Brimelow penned the anti-immigrant book, Alien Nation and founded the forthrightly racist website VDare.com. Brimelow has stated that the United States is a white Protestant country and that it must keep its whie character by sharply limiting immigration of non-whites. Among the racists that Brimelow regularly features on his VDare and who also contribute to John Tanton, periodical, The Social Contract, are the following:
http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/no_excuses.htm
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/061126_iq.htm
http://library.flawlesslogic.com/levin.htm
http://library.flawlesslogic.com/juif.htm
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=741
http://www.vdare.com/macdonald/040619_1924_immigration.htm
http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/the_professor_the_antisemites_love_20080509/
Daniel Seligman and Arthur Jensen
Geoffrey Sampson "There's Nothing Wrong with Racism"
The founder, chief ideologue and long-time funder of FAIR is a racist. Key staff members have ties to white supremacist groups, some are members, and some have spoken at hate group functions. FAIR has accepted more than $1 million from a racist foundation devoted to studies of race and IQ, and to eugenicsJohn Tanton and Peter Brimelow, despite being racist extremists, are not marginal figures in American politics. Tanton’s organization, FAIR, testifies often before Congress and it is regularly quoted in the mainstream press. Brimelow has been affiliated with The National Review and was a journalist for Forbes magazine. Both Tanton and Brimelow are regulars on the talk show circuit and their cronies are regularly featured on the right-wing cable “news” shows. Each has made racist statements but it is Brimelow who pushes a far right agenda that explicitly embraces racism and anti-Semitism. These extreme views have constantly challenged organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch and the Anti-Defamation League. In a recent posting on SPLC’s website, they articulated their reasoning behind listing FAIR as a hate group.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is almost certainly the most-quoted immigration restriction organization in America. … In the past six years, FAIR officials have testified at least 30 times to Congress. Day in and day out, FAIR is taken seriously as a mainstream commentator on the immigration debate…
The founder, chief ideologue and long-time funder of FAIR is a racist. Key staff members have ties to white supremacist groups, some are members, and some have spoken at hate group functions. FAIR has accepted more than $1 million from a racist foundation devoted to studies of race and IQ, and to eugenics — the pseudo-science of breeding a better human race that was utterly discredited by the Nazi euthanasia program. It spreads racist conspiracy theories. Its political ads have caused numerous politicians, Democratic and Republican, to denounce it.
Much of this has been known for years. But last February [2007], underlining the way that FAIR does business, its leaders met with the leaders of Vlaams Belang — a hastily renamed Belgian party that under a prior appellation, Vlaams Blok, was officially banned by the Belgian Supreme Court as a racist and xenophobic group. It was, for some, a final straw — the Rubicon of hate, as it were. When FAIR officials met with Vlaams Belang leaders to seek their “advice” on immigration, we decided to take another look at FAIR. When our work was done, it was obvious that FAIR qualified as a hate group.
The identification of FAIR as a bona fide hate group is important. FAIR is the hub of the American nativist movement, the group that more than any other has contributed to the rancid turn the national immigration discussion has taken. With FAIR fanning the flames of xenophobic intolerance, hate groups, hate crimes and hate speech directed at foreigners and Latinos continue to rise in America.
It cannot be gainsaid that FAIR, NumbersUSA, VDare and the coterie of anti-immigrant organizations have an agenda which is larger than merely restricting immigration. Nativist writers such as Steve Sailer, Jared Taylor and Kevin MacDonald fervently believe that blacks are of inferior intellect, that Jews are controlling the media and that the white race should be protected from nonwhites. Their ideology is exactly the same ideology that led to the Nazi Nuremberg laws. They have used immigration as a gateway to the mainstream, witness Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity preaching their gospel of hate to millions every single night. Unless and until these modern day eugenicists are marginalized, the way David Duke and the Aryan Nation have been marginalized, these extremists will continue to influence public policy to the peril of a great many Americans.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs' Speaking Point Written in the 19th Century
Here’s an excerpt from the book titled “Un-American Immigration: It’s Present Effects and Future Perils” published in 1894. I believe you’ll notice a striking familiarity with it’s tone. Thanks to Google for scanning this book in so we can easily access it for study.
This is just a small portion of this text, as you can see.
Here’s the link on Google: Un-American Immigration: Its Present Effects and Future Perils : a Study.
(Thank you to John Lamb for this lead.)
Discrimination against other immigrants, especially Catholics was especially virulent during the Nineteenth Century. Nineteenth century Protestant American "Nativist" prejudice against Irish Catholics reached a peak in the mid-1850s with the Know Nothing Movement, which tried to oust Catholics from public office. Much of the opposition came from Irish Protestants, as in the 1831 riots in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In rural areas in the 1830s riots broke out among rival labor teams from different parts of Ireland, and between Irish and "native" American work teams competing for construction jobs.
(1854 NY Times Ad) It was common for Irish people to be discriminated against in social situations, and intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants was uncommon (and strongly discouraged by both ministers and priests). One response to this prejudice was the creation of a parochial school system, in addition to numerous colleges, that isolated about half the Irish youth from the public schools.[citation needed] After 1860 many Irish sang songs about signs reading "HELP WANTED - NO IRISH NEED APPLY"; these signs came to be known as "NINA signs." (This is sometimes written as "IRISH NEED NOT APPLY" and referred to as "INNA signs"). These songs had a deep impact on the Irish sense of discrimination.
Posters compared the Irish to Blacks, who were considered an inferior race.
(Editorial Cartoon from mid-19th Century depicting "filthy Irish")
(Mid-19th Century Cartoon equating Irish and Blacks)If you liked this post, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can
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Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The New York Times: “The Great Panic,” Excellent Editorial on the Current State of the Immigration Debate
(What follows is the New York Times editorial published on June 3, 2008.)
Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegal immigration. We don’t mean dollars, though those are being squandered by the billions. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense of who we are and what we value. It will hit us once the enforcement fever breaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize the country that did it.
A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.
An escalating campaign of raids in homes and workplaces has spread indiscriminate terror among millions of people who pose no threat. After the largest raid ever last month — at a meatpacking plant in
Immigrants in detention languish without lawyers and decent medical care even when they are mortally ill. Lawmakers are struggling to impose standards and oversight on a system deficient in both. Counties and towns with spare jail cells are lining up for federal contracts as prosecutions fill the system to bursting. Unbothered by the sight of blameless children in prison scrubs, the government plans to build up to three new family detention centers. Police all over are checking papers, empowered by politicians itching to enlist in the federal crusade.
This is not about forcing people to go home and come back the right way.
There are few national figures standing firm against restrictionism. Senator Edward Kennedy has bravely done so for four decades, but his Senate colleagues who are running for president seem by comparison to be in hiding. John McCain supported sensible reform, but whenever he mentions it, his party starts braying and he leaves the room. Hillary Rodham Clinton has lost her voice on this issue more than once. Barack Obama, gliding above the ugliness, might someday test his vision of a new politics against restrictionist hatred, but he has not yet done so. The American public’s moderation on immigration reform, confirmed in poll after poll, begs the candidates to confront the issue with courage and a plan. But they have been vague and discreet when they should be forceful and unflinching.
The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise.
Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrived immigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history. Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japanese ancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of the early 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollars and mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.
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