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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

"Illegal Immigration?"

Although I was already a supporter of less porous borders and greater enforcement of immigration laws, the logic of the following argument struck me enough to warrant posting it here. Obviously, as a longtime student and scholar of history, anthropology and archaeology, I am well aware of the "who got here first" argument, and naturally I find the patent genocide of "Indians" in America to be horrific. But the point could be argued endlessly along those lines: Are we sure the "Indians" were in America first? What about Kennewick man and other apparently very ancient non-Indian remains found in American soil? This displacement has happened the world over for many thousands of years. The Greeks, for example, have long occupied land that did not originally belong to them - does that mean that we can all go and illegally occupy Greece? Cool! I love Greece! No, we obviously cannot do that, unless we want to run afoul of the Greek legal system. Heck, weren't the Neanderthals in Europe first? I'm sure there are still some around - let's give it back to them!

So, is it only a question of how long people have occupied the land? As I say, this leads to an endless debate. We need to discuss this issue in context. If someone occupied your house before you, does that mean others still have the right to move in on you in the manner described below? The fact is that we have laws that allow for legal immigration. This is a very important issue, as the cost of illegal occupation in this country is staggering. Billions of dollars are siphoned out of our economy each year to be sent "back home," while billions more are spent on medical, welfare and schooling for illegal occupants. If you feel the same way, I encourage you to take action, such as passing these thoughts along to your political representatives.
Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of "illegal immigration." This is an oxymoron. I hope none of you use it!

Certain people are angry that the U.S. might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely. Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.

Let's say I break into your house. Let's say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave. But I say, "I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors; I've done all the things you don't like to do. I'm hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house)."

According to the protesters, not only must you let me stay, you must add me to your family’s insurance plan and provide other benefits to me and to my family (my husband will do your yard work because he is also hard-working and honest, except for that "breaking in" part).

If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my right to be there.

It is only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I’m just trying to better myself. I'm hard-working and honest…um, except for…well, you know.

And what a deal it is for me!! I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of selfishness, prejudice and being "anti-housebreaker."

18 comments:

Mike Ballard said...

My position is that if you want to stop illegal immigration, you have to go to the root of the problem. In this case, it is employment, work. And the culprits? The employers. The employing class loves the current set up. They don't want it changed. They like all the negative effects of illegal immigration as well as the positives, namely being able to pay low wages to a section of the working class to scared to organize to improve their working conditions.

As it is, the employing class must fill out I9s to hire someone. I9s id requirements are easy to fake and so there is a vast underground of document makers making a killing in this field from needy, poorly paid workers' wages.

How to fix that problem?

Make it requirement that all workers have to prove their ability to work in the USA by providing either a passport (this must be done now with I9s and people who do not claim to be citizens) a Green Card or a U.S. passport. These docs are not suseptible to forgery.

Penalty: any employer who fails to check these certified docs will spend a minimum of five years in a federal pen.

This won't be done because so many employers now have an interest in maintaining the system, essenctially as it is-with maybe more border patrols and higher fences to scale or dig under.

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm shocked. I've had total respect for your work and personal knowledge for 6 yrs.+. The "immigration" post really seems to me not well thought out. Here's why: first, displacements happened, but have most involved slaughter of millions within 100 yrs? Even if others occupied N. America, were they exterminated by the "Indians"? Not much evidence for that. Next, you say we need to discuss in context. What about decades of US-supported fascists ruling not just Mexico, but most of Central and South Amer., plundering resources, leaving generations of impoverished? This is the real context. Then there's the corporatocracy's love for slave/cheap labor and total disinterest in human culture/welfare. And the "billions" spent on "welfare", "schools", etc. is bat-squeeze. Like, compared to WHAT?? My school-teacher-friends are more concerned with massive Repub. budget "cuts", endless waste on war, etc. which result in 40-kid classes. Are you listening to the anti-brown-people ranters ranting about "diseased" mexicans, "losing our culture", criminal/terrorist foreigners, "official language...? The nazis spouted the same lines, remember? This country has reached the u-trap in the toilet, and only the "floaters" in charge are happy with the status quo. There wouln't BE an "illegal" problem if there was a shred of sanity and owning of responsibility for the corrupt past that brought us here. That's just my take on it, but then I've been "homeless" in amerika for 40 years.

Acharya S said...

Thanks for following my work, but I don't know why you would be shocked - you're shocked that I would call for people to behave in a lawful manner? I do not believe in illegally entering a country and would not do so anywhere in the world - unless it was some situation such as "Not Without My Daughter" or "The Handmaid's Tale." But that's hardly what we're talking about here. We're talking about a flood of people - a significant percentage of them hardened and violent criminals - who are not escaping totalitarian regimes by crossing the border. But even if they were, we have laws for refugees as well. They may not always work well or be upheld properly, but they are there for a reason.

The house analogy is apt, regardless of other remarks that I would consider strawmen. I don't open up my house to people who are breaking and entering - do you? I am not a total bleeding heart liberal - did you suppose that I was?

It seems the height of naivete to suggest that we should allow everyone and anyone to run ripshod over us. And the disrespect for American law does not stop with "simply" illegally crossing the border.

Again, I will emphasize that we have a basis for legal immigration. I think I made it perfectly clear that I do not concur with breaking the immigration laws in other countries - do you? While it may be true that cetain U.S. policies have been exploitative, it is also true that the American people have given out billions of dollars in aid around the world for many years. If it's a question of wealth, the Vatican is one of the wealthiest cities in the world - shall we illegally move there, essentially as squatters? After all, the Catholic Church is responsible for more deaths than any other single institution, and much of its wealth is the booty from theft. I'm sure that like millions of others my family could have a claim on it.

Perhaps you missed my remarks about ancient Greece - have you heard of the Dorian invasion? Well, the Greeks displaced the Pelasgians, often in a violent manner. Again I ask, does that mean that the Greeks should throw open their borders and allow anyone into the country - at this point illegally, unless they change their laws? I actually am concerned with the preservation of culture in many parts of the world and do not believe that they should have been so liberal in the past few decades in allowing certain groups to overrun their countries and destroy their culture. I think it is a pity that certain somewhat enlightened cultures are now going the way of the dodo.

Again, I don't see why you would be shocked - perhaps you missed my blog entry on how I hold the U.S. Constitution to be more sacred than the Bible. I do not know enough about Constitutional law, but I would wager that the framers of the Constitution did not have in mind a stream of people illegally occupying the U.S.

Anonymous said...

Hell yes, the Constitution is more sacred than the Bible. It's been a hope for 230 years that it would be followed in spirit and letter one day. But we've all become used to no justice, just-us, and PTB who consider it a "damn piece of paper". I just don't believe a "significant percentage of hardened criminals" is walking across the New Mexico border. Mafias of every stripe have been legally immigrating here forever. It sounds like fear-mongering when I hear similar pronouncements from politicians.
People aren't gonna get refugee status if Nafta/Monsanto/whatever has destroyed their livelihoods. I respect rule of law, but I was a draft resistor who technically (may have) broken Canadian immigration law. FBI thought jail or killing-fields was the options for my kind. Lots of reasons folks feel forced to take drastic action to survive.
My life work for 35 years is around preservation of traditional culture. I don't think its "liberal" to "allow" anyone to overrun and destroy cultures with McCulture or Xtianity, etc, just stupid. Nobody really allows it, anyway. It happens by unstoppable economic force and ignorance and greed, it seems.
I don't know details about the Dorians, but they didn't have gatling-guns and smallpox-blankets. Anyway, a line was drawn in the desert maybe 150 years ago along the Rio Grande, etc. The world is messed up from so many arbitrary pencil lines cynically drawn by imperial criminals.
I just think that humans are capable of finding solutions without demonization of large groups, having a long-term view, apply laws equally, and consider the historical contexts. Is that naive, or the sentiments of a bleeding-heart? And "American foreign aid" - please! Do you know where we stand on the per-capita list in the world?
The immigration issue just looks like a real big distraction in my view. Unions, anyone? A living wage? (Dissolve the Vatican?)
Much respect. Just concerned where we're headed.

Acharya S said...

You make good points that must be factored into any discussion and solution of this problem. But, as have many including you no doubt, I have seen firsthand the ravaging effects of this open-door policy. It's destroying the best aspects of cultures and creating an amazing amount of grief. It isn't that I believe the hardened criminals are exclusively "south of the border," but wherever they are coming from, they are frequently using that border. Criminals are coming from a wide variety of places worldwide - how are they getting in? There's this huge wave in ID theft that is associate in Houston, for example, with one particular African country, Nigeria. These crooks are caught and deported but they return - how are they getting in?

This is a major part of the "illegal immigration" problem. Porous borders and loose enforcement of laws allow criminals from all parts of the world to flock here, shear the sheep and return again and again to do the same.

What's the solution? mike b) provides some insights as to the problem with illegal immigration of workers. Simply flinging open the doors is not going to work either, at least not in the short term, and before any progress may be seen by such an act, the entire infrastructure could in fact be destroyed. It's already a huge mess. I say close the borders as best as is possible and work from there. One of the ways to stop this erosion of infrastructure would be to help improve life in all these other countries, so people wouldn't be flocking here!

Anonymous said...

Acharya S said:
" I say close the borders as best as is possible and work from there."
I think you're absolutely right, especially in the short term.
I heard two relevent stories on radio today:
1) BushCo is pressuring V. Fox to privatize Pemex (national oil co.) in exchange for "taking Mexico's poor" (=porous borders). Google: _Pemex_privatization_Bush
2) School teacher saying direct correlation btw. FoxNews immigrant/brown-people rants and classroom race-baiting (likewise w/FN gay-marriage rants, raising classroom gay-bashing).

I too am a great fan, absent for couple years, but was active on Superconsciousness for 2 yrs. as "Mridang108". Glad you're blogging!

Anonymous said...

Hey -- thanks for all the new blog entries! Yeah my brother-in-law escaped El Salvador while he was in the U.S. funded army down there that slaughtered some 50,000 people in the 1980s. He joined the army at age 14 and was forced into sex by his "colleagues."

NAFTA has dumped corn on Mexico causing the farmers to not be able to compete. I live in Minnesota and Cargill is behind this. Cargill is the largest private business in the world, did $70 billion in revenue last year, and receives the largest amount of public subsidies!!

Cargill destroyed Somalia by dumping grain at 1/9th the local price. Cargill dominates the food supply in 100 countries and they were set up by a democrat, an idol in Minnesota -- Hubert H. Humphrey -- for a "Food for Peace" cold war tool. In fact often subsidized food dumping to warlords abroad is tied to their buying of U.S. weapons.

Noam Chomsky is the best on how U.S. foreign policy is genocidal and necessary to maintain our lifestyle.

For example chocolate is distributed by Cargill -- after tens of thousands of kids have been enslaved in the Ivory Coast to harvest the cacao beans.

Professor Marshall Sahlins, author of the infamous "Stone Age Economics," and at the infamous U of Chicago, published an academic essay recently on how the Greek democracy depended on an imperial city-state agenda promoted by a cosmologist!

I can't remember the dude's name (think staid Greek philosopher) but he cranked out some really influential astrotheology piece that gave the expanding Athenian City-state Empire that gloss of self-righteous astral power.

So this stuff goes way back. I recommend professor David F. Noble's awesome expose "The Religion of Technology" (1996) on how Freemasons created modern science and its apocalytpic agenda. His other books are amazing as well -- he was fired from both the Smithsonian and M.I.T. for political reasons and he now teaches at York in Canada where he organized a professors' strike!!

Thanks again for the Sun Gods -- amazing research.

What's your critique of John Dominic Crossan?

Acharya S said...

Thanks for examples of industrial exploitation. If "we the people" didn't provide the international industrialists with a market, there wouldn't be so much of this horrible stuff going, such as the Ivory Coast chocolate slave trade. Think about that every time you want a cheapo chocolate bar! I tend to buy organic, responsibly grown and harvested chocolate when I indulge. And so on, except that it is extremely difficult to make conscious choices all the time - and sometimes quite costly. For instance, I would love to be driving a hybrid car, although I'm sure that environmental purists would have a problem even with that. Unfortunately, I am not yet in a position to be making such expenditures.

I appreciate the remarks about my blog and book! If you have not done so already, please consider writing a nice review of SoG for Amazon - I'm sure others would appreciate it.

In the meantime, I have a somewhat different take on "Noamsky," as I like to call him. I thought he was a "good guy," but Dr. James DeMeo's got me seeing otherwise.

Acharya S said...

Oh, as concerns Crossan, I'm afraid I haven't read any of his books, so I can't really comment other than saying that from what I can tell he engages in the well-known phenomenon of making Jesus "all things to all people." In other words, the "real Jesus" that Crossan has found appears to be suspiciously like Crossan himself.

Finding a "real Jesus," of course, is contrary to my thesis, unless it's a "real, mythical Jesus."

Anonymous said...

Wow -- thanks for the ups on James DeMeo's "missive" against Chomsky. This is really sad. I spent several years carefully reading Chomsky's books and the man is probably the most maligned scholar in the U.S. -- with good reason since he is so radical.

I much prefer professor Chris Knight's critique of Chomsky. Knight is a radical anthropologist whose tome "Blood Relations" takes DeMeo (and Reich's) thesis all the way back to 50,000 B.C.E.! Knight's forthcoming book is "the Human Conspiracy" -- how Darwinian deception was crucial in the creation of language, through a sex-strike! It's wild stuff but Knight is also taken seriously as a linguistics analyst and gets published regularly in brain research journals. You can google him and ignore the other "conspiracist" Chris Knight -- shoot for U of London anthropology dept.

Anyway I appreciate James DeMeo's work but unfortunately his is just repeating superficial attacks against Chomsky by the ex-Left, neocons -- David Horowitz, etc. Peter Moore, the ex-Greenpeace activist who sold out to the oil industry is another great example. There's a lot of money to make by cashing in the cultural capital of the Left.

There was a documentary made about Chomsky about 15 years ago and was quite popular in the "counter-culture" scene. The name slips me but anyway that's an easily digested dismissal of the whole French fascist holocaust denial introduction trumped by DeMeo. Chomsky simply wrote a letter defending this man's ability to publish his views, as per libertarian rights against censorship. Chomsky was very explicit that he did not support the person's views -- that's not the point. The point is to allow a free association of ideas so that truth can be deduced.

Of course this fringe wacko jumped on Chomsky's good intentions, published Chomsky's letter without Chomsky's permission and the "establishment" ran with it.

Fringe wacko is always a relative term.

There's some seriously deep psychological dynamics that Naomi Klein does a good job addressing: Basically, as per Reich, Israel-U.S. "freedom" is an expression of severe negative transference. Until the Jews can psychologically transform the oppression and genocide they experienced under Nazism -- and this would entail confronting the fact that the U.S. CIA was created out of the Nazis and the U.S. high-tech industry incorporated hundreds of Nazi war criminal "scientists" -- then the projection of the denial of the oppression the Jews experienced will continue. There's a good letter in the latest People's World Weekly by a Jewish scholar with the same message -- one that get's Chomsky called a self-hating Jew, etc.

In fact this negative transference issue goes to the heart of "I-language" which is the basis for Chomsky's linguistics revolution. Chomsky, and this is my critique of him, about which I have corresponded with him, relies on deterministic equations to translate syntax into mathematics for cognitive mind control.

As Slavoz Zizek points out anti-semitism is based on the logical paradox of Jews are evil because of their "Jewish" qualities -- a bad tautology that spreads to all forms of xenophobia. I recently heard it expressed about the Chinese.

Actually as Zizek points out Moses received the Law but for the Jews it was heard as "the shofar" -- the noise produced by the golden ratio ram's horn.

The golden ratio is the ever expanding One as the I-thought since God is formally defined as "I Am that I am." There are some really deep paradoxes in science stemming around the golden ratio and historically empires spread as per the golden ratio because it's the slowest converging nonlinear dynamic in mathematics.

The golden ratio governs black holes.

This is not too esoteric for your research but certainly it is for 99% of U.S. citizens. Chomsky was inspired by the geomatria of Martin Buber, as well as the Vedic foundation of libertarian Wilhelm von Humboldt who greatly inspired Hegel in his creation of leftist dialectics.

The whole middle east crisis is more about water than oil. Yemen, for example, will be totally out of water in about 15 years.

Water is the cosmic mother reflecting on Earth -- 97% of the Earth's biological habitat is the ocean.

Chomsky has recently admitted that science may not be any more than a study of the cycling of the elements. And so it is that left-brain logic creates a right-hand asymmetry of right-directed metal and fire thereby destroyed left-hand directed carbon-based ecology.

Water is the pivot point and the cycling of the elements is modeled by the golden ratio Pentagon of Babylon.

http://drewhempel.gnn.tv for more details.

And on a more personal note when I first listened to your online radio interview and read your expose on R.M. Price's "malicious gossip" against you I then went to my local communist bookstore only to find that said gossiper was to be interviewed on our local community Pacifica radio station affiliate: http://kfai.org. It's been delayed and maybe the host, Don Olson of Northen Sun News, is taking into account the information I passed on.

I submit that the supposed "free thinkers" of Prometheus books are actually in submission to Marxist ideology, as per their "humanist" books and the assurance by Don Olson that such was the case.

The real free thinkers are the wacko fringe.

Anonymous said...

I will not vote for any politician who is not tuff on both BORDER SECURITY & ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. We are under invasion by around 3 million on the southern border per year!!! We desparately need to enforce the laws already in the books. Amnesty has already failed us, which is why we're in this situation now. Thank Reagan & his '86' Amnesty program for that one. I mostly blame the businesses & gov't that hire illegals - they are the FELONS. If the Democrats don't get tuff on these issues, along with S.S.#/I.D. theft patrol, outsourcing/exporting America patrol, port security etc, they may loose in both 06 & 08.

All of these issues are synergistically connected & are destroying America from within & can no longer be ignored. They all need to be on a priority list since these are real issues.

I have a small blog titled, 'Brief Illegal Immigrant Deportation History' going & here's some of it. Keep in mind that this is not specifically against Mexicans they just happen to be the largest part of the problem...

It turns out that the U.S. has rounded up illegal immigrant Mexicans & sent them back at least twice before, once in the 20's - 30's & again in the 1950's.

'Operation Wetback' was a 1954 project of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service to remove illegal immigrants, primarily Mexican – known by the derogatory term "wetbacks" – from the southwestern United States. Burgeoning numbers of these immigrants, discovered by the Border Patrol in the early 1950s, prompted INS Commissioner Gen. Joseph Swing to initiate the project.

'Operation Wetback' successfully deported approximately one million illegal Mexican immigrants in the space of almost a year, although its perceived heavy-handed methods raised among some people reactions of public outrage and accusations of police-state tactics, which forced the operation to end.

'Secrets of the Invasion: Why America's government invites rampant illegal immigration'- http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49992

'Senate Immigration Bill Would Allow 100 Million New Legal Immigrants over the Next Twenty Years' From the right-wing Conservatives of the Heritage Foundation - http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/wm1076.cfm

National sweep nets nearly 2,100 illegal immigrants California takes in 720 in 'Operation Return to Sender' - http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_3937506

'Evidence of work fraud untapped' -http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/14411281.htm

Lets have a look at the Mexican Constitution shall we (reference: Center for Security Policy)

1) Foreigners may not participate in political affairs in any way. (Article 33)

2) Mexicans shall have priority over foreigners for employment, and Mexicans citizenship by birth is considered indispensable for certain jobs such as airline crews, military officers, chiefs of seaports and airports. (Article 32)

3) Only Mexicans by birth or naturalization may acquire ownership of land, water or their appurtenances (Article 27)

4) Any Mexican private citizen may arrest someone committing a crime such as an alien in the country illegally and hand him or her over to authorities for prosecution (Article 16)

5) Immigrants may not become lawmakers, cabinet officers, or a Supreme Court Justice, or even a clergyman, but must be a native born Mexican. (Articles 55, 91, 95 and 130)

Getting the picture yet? America has THE softest illegal immigration enforcement on the planet. We would be better off implementing similar immigration laws to that of Mexico. Seems fair doesn't it?

Anonymous said...

What do Green Giant, Cargill, Del Monte, Chiquita, General Mills, Dole all have in common?

Their health as top corporations in the U.S. depends on the destruction of independent family farmers throughout the world -- especially in Mexico, post-NAFTA.

Starvation wages in canning factories built to serve the best land in Mexico now planted with ecologically destructive monoculture for top U.S. agribusiness is the real reason the U.S. has an "immigration" problem.

Even President Lincoln was against the stealing of land from Mexico -- which comprises about half of the U.S.

Anonymous said...

We can see that the same defamation against Professor Chomsky recently occurred in the London Guardian and had to be corrected by an outside ombudsman. Those "staid" Brit intellectuals go bonkers over the radical exposes of Chomsky.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/readerseditor/story/0,,1782133,00.html

Anonymous said...

illegal immigrants remmit billions to their countries...but they also generate billions more..they keep business going.

Anonymous said...

I was quite surprised to see this suject mentioned & discussed here. I also think like Acharya about this. Illegal immigration invasion is creating numerous problems for America. Number one point if it is done illegally numerous laws are broken & this continues forever. I am personally held responsible & accountable for our laws to abide by them & I do. There should be no amnesty for these people. They will continue to break numerous other laws because they no we don't have the will to enforce our laws. Preident Eisenhower ran Operation Wetback very efficiently. I don;t want to hear the old crap that they do the jobs Americans won't do. I am out of work & am willing to do any type of employment. I can't find anything for a long time now. Unemployment is in reality in the 20% range. Your veiws change after you become personally touched by the effects of this problem.

Skitzee2k said...

"...Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"



I would imagine the writers of your constitution would be shocked by this blog

Acharya S said...

First of all, you are quoting what is written on the Statue of Liberty, which was a present from France to the U.S. That's not in the Constitution.

I highly doubt the framers of the Constitution would be interested in open-door immigration that destroys the very fabric of the country they worked so hard to create.

Anonymous said...

“This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 to 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders henceforth. We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this.”

- 1986, Senator Ted Kennedy

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

- Theodore Roosevelt 1907