Let's See If I've Got This Straight on "ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION"

[Jcrowley]

"We" came here somewhere in the early 1600s. "We" found this Promised Land, rich beyond imagination with fresh water and fertile earth and abundant game and timber for the felling. And to "our" further delight, it was largely uninhabited--if "we" didn't count the Red Ones.

"We" didn't see too many of them at first; they avoided our noise and the smoke from our fires, which were always too big. But soon enough, "we" were here in such numbers that they couldn't go around us anymore.

"We" were shocked--SHOCKED, I tell ya--that there were Savages in "our" Promised Land! So "we" set about exterminating them. "We" killed them whenever "we" saw them, "we" drove them from their land and their homes, "we" slaughtered their food supply and left the buffalo bodies to rot in the sun by the hundreds of acres. "We" gave them blankets full of smallpox, murdered their children and raped their women before "we" murdered them as well. "We" rounded them up into concentration camps and ate their food while they starved. "We" made them cut their hair, wear britches and beat them to death if they wouldn't speak "our" language.

"We" stole a whole continent from them and paid them in Genocide.

And now "we're" worried about Illegal Immigration?

"We" stole half of Mexico by armed force -- the nice parts with rich deposits of gold and silver (and, as it turned out, oil -- though "we" didn't actually recognize that at the time.)

"We" made sure that "our" influence over Latin America was such that wealth would be steadily transferred from their countries to ours. "We" sent the Marines to Nicaragua, Haiti, & Guatemala often enough to insure that life in those countries would be a permanent living hell for most of the inhabitants. "We" imposed military dictatorships in almost every Central & South American country, stunting the aspirations of their people, & imposing conditions from which some of those countries will never recover. (So if some of the people want to escape from the living conditions in those countries, "we" had very much to do with creating those conditions.)

Interestingly, "we" started doing all this at the same time that "we" were exterminating the indigenous people here, AND using black slaves from Africa. What a loveable, righteous people "we" are, here in the "Land of the Free"

[immerlinks]

1. I must admit that "we" really bothers me

I don't disagree with you using it. I know everything you said was correct. I'm just not sure how we can make up for it.

It ranks right up there with Bush, we didn't make him the world's burden but "we" allowed it to happen by not realizing what conniving sociopaths we were up against. So in a sense, "we" are partially responsible as well.

[Jcrowley]

2. That "we"

gets put into our mouths, hence the quotations.

There are always degrees. But there are never illegal human beings.

[4morewars]

3. "We" suck. n/t

[upi402]

4. I'm thinking we better deal with how the world works today

everything was different in history.
this is a new paradigm, like the industrial revolution.
But with global economic interdependence.

[Jcrowley]

8. In the real world

You are an employer. Officials are advocating "heavy fines and jail time" for you if you make a mistake, so answer carefully.

When people apply for work, do you tell them "no I am sorry, you are brown and might be illegal, so I will not hire you?" Be careful, because you could be fined for discrimination in hiring by the feds.

What if the only people who apply for the job are of the suspect ethnic category, that being anyone who is not white? Do you close your business?

If you should decide to hire someone is the suspect ethnic category, do you demand documentation? Do you accept their documentation? Which people do you demand documentation from? Everyone? How do you know if the documentation is legitimate?

Once having hired a person, how can you tell what their status is as it evolves over the months and as the months stretch into years and they keep getting the run around from the INS? Should you interrogate then weekly? Daily? Hourly? An expired permit or missed deadline or even one of the frequent paperwork errors at the INS offices could land you in jail.

What if your employee's spouse or parent has some paperwork problem? What impact might that have on your business?

It would be blatant discrimination to single out non-whites for this sort of scrutiny and treatment. Should all employers be a policing agent for the government at all times with all employees? If the relatively minor crime by an employee of not having one's paperwork up to date is sufficient to land an employer in jail, what other sorts of crimes committed by employees might an employer be held liable for?

[mondo joe]

9. Nonsense. Just get documentation from every employee.

My employer does it.

[Jcrowley]

10. To read between the lines

of today's American media treatment of the issue, the real "controversy" today is not between decent humane treatment for immigrants; and harassment by racists, vigilantes, and police. It's between two factions of rightwing opinion: should immigrants be exploited for their cheap labor (and their delightful inability to defend themselves), or should racism and xenophobia be pandered to, by encouraging nutcases like the Minutemen, and other "red blooded Amurrikans" who think it's exciting to organize mobs to defend white supremacy? This is a serious "issue" for people like Bush, who is doubtless torn, & genuinely sympathetic to both sides.

[Scout]

57. me too

I had to produce a Social Security card, not just put my number on the form. Also a driver's license. This was for temping jobs as well as permanent. I've also had to submit to credit and or background checks, depending on the job.

[upi402]

13. The mass violators are well known, grace for the first few violations

Are you thinking penalties for false documents? I guess that happens all over the world. People get fined, go to jail, deported. Not a free ride.

Also, you're already required to get documentation. I can tell you that I KNOW THEY KNOW who is illegal. They knowingly hire illegals with impunity. That's the real world I've witnessed many times.

[Jcrowley]

17. I'm thinking

of someone I met the other day. Someone suffering. Someone pushed off their land by those who label them "illegal." A very costly ride to be sure. Penalized coming and going.

No papers. No documents. A human being.

[upi402]

21. I know some who lost his job and was homeless, he had "papers"

Just no job anymore.

My point is, the world is filled with poor people. Would you volunteer to live in poverty to make a corporation even more profit?

It's coming your way, nobody is immune anymore. It's the new paradigm and we lose. Corporations win. We gotta stop being doe-eyed suckers.

[treestar]

61. Which has a lot to do with why employers should not have to enforc

enforce the laws. Now they want to spread that concept to landlords.

Employers doing tax withholding is as far as it should go. Other than that, let the government enforce the laws, it's their job.

Immigration controls are meant to benefit capital at the expense of labor. If capital can cross borders at will, so should labor be able to.

"Outsourcing" wouldn't happen if employers could hire who they wanted to. If we're going to have capitalism, then let the market decide what work is needed where. Immigration controls may well be stopping new jobs from being created. It's a possibility. People too often have this absurd idea that if there is x number of Americans, there ought to be x number of jobs in America, never less, never more.

[noamnety]

5. Sure sounds like you've got it straight

But I'm sure someone will come along soon enough to point out that although we committed genocide and stole their land and kidnapped and enslaved people, there is always that risk that one of the immigrants will ruin "our" country by speaking a different language at a supermarket or peeing outside or something. :
)

[Alexander]

6. Speak for yourself with the "we", I'm a mutt.

I have one grandmother descended, I think, from the first American settlers. That's about as far as my inclusion in this "we" goes.

Illegal immigration also begs the question, what do we do with the millions of people trying (and failing) to immigrate legally? What of the ships of Jews fleeing Europe during World War II that were turned away because "the quota is met", only to return to instant death?

I think the solution is multi-pronged, with about 10 things that need to be done. Amnesty isn't one of them, but making it easier to legally emigrate to the US certainly is.

[The Straight Story]

7. The indians needed a better immigration policy

So yeah, 'we' are worried the same thing that happened to them (by people a few hundred years ago I never met) is going to happen again. Wasn't right then, ain't now.

[ThomCat]

11. Yes, that seems to be pretty acurate.

I think you've got it.

[RagingInMiami]

12. Yes, but as the old argument goes ...

When "we" did all that, there were no laws on the book stating that it was ILLEGAL (which always needs to be capitalized) to do so. That is why "we" are so righteous and all these Mexicans are not.

P.S. I am also not part of the "we".

[Jcrowley]

14. Yes and there is often

a gaping chasm between the law and what is just. And legality can be determined by the powerful who write the laws depending on the winds of commerce et al.

[lapfog_1]

15. What do you mean "we" kimosabe?

Also, why don't you ask the indigenous people of Mexico how they feel about your Mexican victims of our aggression.

[Jcrowley]

18. That's why

I put "we" in quotes.

Not sure how you could've read what I wrote and been in disagreement based on what you wrote.

"It's not a border it's a scar" - Carlos Fuentes

[entanglement]

16. Race, religion and nationality are medieval concepts and should be discarded

The sooner we do that, the better for everyone

[spoony]

34. So many things wrong with that.

which is impressive considering how short it is. But of course those concepts are not medieval. And of course, unless you're planning on painting people gray or poking out everyone's eyes, you cannot "discard" race. And I can't decide whether the idea of discarding nationality is more far-fetched or more unnecessary.

[entanglement]

39. Thanks for misunderstanding my post COMPLETELY

Race is more of a social construct than a biological one. Classifying people as belonging to one or the other race due to their melanin content makes as much sense, biologically, as doing so based on their fingerprint patterns or something else. Religion ('my capital G God is the one true gawd') and the absurd idea of drawing lines on a map to separate humans also belong in the dustbin of failed ideas, IMHO. (hence 'medieval' as in 'should've been abandoned by now')

Of course people resist such ideas, they find change too 'dangerous'.

[spoony]

42. Dangerous? No. Unworkably inane is what you're looking for n/t

[entanglement]

45. Why not?

Fifty years ago people found desegregation 'inane' and 'unworkable', that didn't stop it from happening, did it? Change happens in spite of naysayers. The timescale might well be different. The modern nation-state is a relatively new idea, a few hundreds of years old in its present form. Who is to say it will be the same five hundred years hence?

[Spider Jerusalem]

43. Actually, race is not a "social construct".

There are differences between human populations that involve not just melanin, but skeletal structure, distribution of body fat, tolerance for heat or cold, ability to metabolise alcohol, susceptibility to various illnesses, and so on. Not to mention that there are identifiable genetic differences in Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA between members of different population groups (see "mtDNA" and "Y-DNA haplogroups"). "Race" is the sum of the genetic and physical characteristics which correspond to specific regional geographic origin. It's race as something that determines identity that's a social construct.

[entanglement]

44. And why does *ONE* of those characteristics, like

the melanin content matter so much more than the ability to metabolize alcohol? :) That is the work of society, not biology. The fact that racial labels vary with time make it a social construct. 'White' meant something quite different in the 1800s than it does today (it was a more exclusive group, excluding, for example 'swarthy' Italians, Jews and other people considered white today). So yes, I agree people have specific biological characteristics based on their ancestry / origin, but it is also clear that terms like 'white' and 'black' are about far more than biology.

[Spider Jerusalem]

46. Actually, NONE of them should matter...

being as they are simply the results of environmental adaptation and genetic divergence among human population groups living in relative isolation from one another over a period of some tens of thousands of years.

This hasn't got anything to do with social definitions, though; as I noted, it's making the differences between human populations the basis for determining identity within larger society, and attaching perceived notions of superiority to belonging to a particular group, that are a social construction (and I'm well aware of the changing meaning of socially-defined "racial" labels; some of my ancestors were Irish, and others were among the Germans Benjamin Franklin called "swarthy Palatine boors...who could no more adopt our language or customs than they could acquire our complexion").

[Katzenjammer]

47. Actually, it *is* a social construct. Entirely so. It's a product of what we choose to notice.

It's as much a social construct as political borders. We treat them as though they exist outside our heads, but they don't.

[Spider Jerusalem]

48. But...

the biological and genetic differences between widely separated human populations DO exist. It's completely absurd to assert that they don't (just as it's completely absurd to assert that one group is superior to another on the basis of those differences). I'm sorry, but what you're saying is utter nonsense.

[Katzenjammer]

49. There is no "but"

Those "biological and genetic differences" exist WITHIN populations, too. We simply choose not to attend to them. We could just as easily classify people into races according to eye color, or hair color, or introversion/extraversion, or something else. It would be no less meaningful.

If you think racial classifications aren't mere cultural artifacts, then tell us why the way individuals are classified is different from one culture to the next. If there were any science behind it, any individual would be classified the same everywhere. But there isn't, and they aren't.

[Spider Jerusalem]

51. Actually, you're wrong.

There are differences that are fairly consistent between groups that don't exist within a specific group. For instance, there are mutations of Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA that are found among populations whose ancestry comes from a specific geographic region that aren't found in OTHER populations. There are morphological adaptations that are found among certain populations that are not found in others. Are you going to try to argue that the fact that South Asians have larger pituitary glands (and thus greater physical tolerance for extreme heat) than Northern Europeans is a "cultural artifact"? Or the fact that East Asians have epicanthic folds and lactose intolerance? Or the fact that Asians, sub-Saharan Africans, and Europeans exhibit consistent differences in the distribution of body fat? None of these things is a social construct; facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. But what you don't seem to get is that I'm not arguing that any of these things is SIGNIFICANT, either; they exist, yes, but their existence is the result, as I said, of tens of thousands of years of divergent adaptation to differing conditions in widely separated parts of the world among relatively although not completely isolated populations. The FACT that they exist does NOT mean that any group is either superior OR inferior, just that there ARE categorisable differences.

[Katzenjammer]

52. You seem to consistently mis-read what I'm saying.

I'm well aware that there are between-group differences that don't exist within-group. What I'm saying is that we preferentially attend to certain differences while dismissing as insignificant other ones of comparable (lack of) importance. The ones to which we prefer to attend are not more significant in themselves. There is no reason why skin color should matter more than hair or eye color for the purpose of defining human groupings.

[Spider Jerusalem]

53. Kindly point out...

where exactly I've said anything about skin colour as a basis for identifying human differentiation? I think it's you who's misreading what I'm saying.

[Katzenjammer]

56. "Kindly point out where exactly I've said"

Fine. Epicanthal folds, then. Anything.

The point is that we attend to certain things and disattend to others. We assign importance. It isn't there a priori.

Just to take a single example: sickle-cell anemia. Why don't we classify all people with that genetic disposition into a single "race" and those that don't into a different one? It's a pretty significant difference, much more so than epicanthal folds! Yet we choose to lump those that have the sickle gene and those that don't into groups depending on their skin color instead. If you still don't see the cultural nature of that choice then I give up.

[Spider Jerusalem]

58. Wrong again;

the sickle cell adaptation is found in people of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern ancestry as well as African; it has nothing to do with skin colour and everything to do with having ancestors from a region of the world where malaria is extremely common.

And I haven't assigned importance to anything (note also that I said, "none of these differences is significant"...did you miss that?). All I've done is acknowledge that there ARE differences. YOU'RE the one who seems to think that amounts to attaching some importance to those differences, when in fact it doesn't.

[Katzenjammer]

60. You aren't reading!

I'm fully aware that sickle cell is distributed across multiple 'races' and 'sub-races'. I'm pointing out that, EVEN THOUGH it is a much more significant difference than the ones we used when creating 'races', we didn't and don't use it as a 'race' determinant.

YOU are the one claiming that racial groupings aren't cultural in their origin and motivation.

I'm saying our choice of characteristics to group by is completely cultural. Race is cultural.

[Spider Jerusalem]

64. I HAVE been reading;

and again, I reiterate that there's nothing "cultural" about consistent and consistently observable genetic and morphological differences between human populations originating in widely separated geographic locations. I haven't said a single thing about which characteristics American society uses to classify people by "race", so it would appear that YOU haven't read ANYTHING that I've said.

[Katzenjammer]

65. You said "Actually, race is not a 'social construct' "

Which is false, unless you have a special, personal definition for "social construct". Me, I define it as "a figure-ground relationship perceived by a cultural group".

Race is a social construct. It is created by aggregating some number of biological characteristics and saying that that particular aggregation is more important than the infinity of other possible aggregations. The next step is to impute psychological trait clusters to this newly-defined "race". And after that, genocide, colonialism, eugenics ...they're all just a step away, and fully, "scientifically" justfied.

Race is a social construct.

[Spider Jerusalem]

66. Wrong again;

consistent and observable differences between human populations that do not exist WITHIN those populations are NOT social constructs. Genetic variation between human populations is not a social construct. You apparently have a hard time accepting this fact, but it's nonetheless a fact. It's not my fault that you're incapable of drawing a distinction between the real differences that exist between human populations and the social conception of "race", and the negative consequences of that social conception; these are two different things, and are not at all related.

[Ms. Clio]

70. I don't think K is denying that there is genetic variation

it is how people choose to interpret or use those observable characteristics that constitutes their social construction of race, or perhaps more simply, "otherness."

[Katzenjammer]

75. Ms Clio gets it. Entanglement gets it. Why don't you get it?

It's the CHOICE OF GROUPING that makes race a cultural construct. When we hear "this arbitrarily-chosen grouping of biological mutations is important", that's Culture's voice, not Science's. Science merely says "these are ways in which individuals can differ, and some of them are highly significant for the individuals concerned". Science doesn't value differences, it notes them.

[Spider Jerusalem]

78. And again:

I've said, repeatedly, that NONE OF THE DIFFERENCES that exist between human populations is significant of anything at all other than divergent morphology and genetic mutation. Yet even so those differences DO exist, and it's becoming increasingly recognised that they have a broad genetic basis (see here, for instance)--which makes them more than a social construction. Apparently YOU don't get it.

[Katzenjammer]

79. I give up. Such persistent "misunderstanding" defeats me. (nt)

[Ms. Clio]

69. I think this is the crux of the matter

thanks to you both for a very interesting conversation.

[EFerrari]

19. What's with this past tense deal?

We messed with the election in Mexico. We messed with the election in Nicaragua. We are messing with the upcoming election in Venezuela. And those are just the ones I know about. :shrug:

[barb162]

20. Who "stole" Mexico from the native peoples living there

And which native peoples "stole" it from the previous native peoples who lived in that spot? I hope you don't think that the history of the tribal peoples on this continent was all peaceful and eden-like before Europeans came. Indigenous peoples were often exterminating other indigenous peoples on this continent before Europeans came along. If you apply the term genocide to the Europeans, you better apply it to the indigenous peoples too.

"...Slavery was common among the Aztecs; it was not, however, racial or permanent. One became a slave by being captured in war, by committing certain crimes, such as theft, by voluntarily entering into slavery, or by being sold by one's parents. If one was captured in war, slavery was a pleasant option, for the purpose of Aztec warfare was primarily the capture of live human sacrifices. If, however, one had a useful trade, the Tenochca would forego the sacrifice and employ the captive in that trade. "
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CIVAMRCA/AZTECS.HTM

[flying_monkeys]

22. But that was then!!!!! Whiiiiine

You want us to share our slice of the pie NOW???????????



(Bang on post, JC)

[Spider Jerusalem]

23. Well, actually, it goes a little more like this:

The Spaniards arrived in the Americas in the late 1400's-early 1500's, and brought smallpox with them, which spread throughout the native tribes and killed perhaps as many as 95% of the inhabitants, who had never been exposed to the disease and hadn't even the small amount of immunity that Europeans had. So when the English arrived and began the project of permanent colonisation in the early 1600's, they found far fewer native inhabitants than they would have had they shown up a century earlier. Those they did find were friendly at first, but turned hostile when it became evident that these strange new people were just going to keep coming and that their swelling numbers would force out the natives. So those natives decided to do something about it, and attacked the white settlers (the colony at Jamestown was almost wiped out more than once), but more white men just kept coming, and they had guns, and they sought bloody vengeance. And this pattern of white expansion, native resistance, and finally total subjugation continued for nearly three hundred years. And it was inevitable from the moment the first European set foot on the continent. Anyone who's not completely ignorant of history should be aware that humans have ALWAYS engaged in territorial expansion, and that the side with more advanced weapons, superior tactics, and greater numbers is always going to win. There's nothing new, or unique, in what happened between Europeans and natives in North America. It's ALWAYS happened like that, everywhere. Just ask any of the ancient tribes subjugated by the Egyptians, or the Romans, or the Persians.

And the Spaniards stole all of Mexico, most of the Western US, and South America by armed force and used the natives as slave labour in the silver mines. And brought religious persecution with them, too; the Inquisition was active in Mexico until 1821. They were't any better, you know.

And whatever happened in the past is competely irrelevant to the question of immigration and border security in the present; I can't think of any modern nation with established borders that allows free and unfettered immigration across those borders. A US citizen can't just move to Mexico if he wants, without going through proper channels, you know (you could, I suppose, but you're likely to be arrested and deported).

[barb162]

24. Great post and historically accurate. Love it!

It's so good, I am going to save it.

Mexico actually has pretty strict immigration laws and they have soldiers posted at their southern border. I looked at their fines for illegal immigration and it's not pretty.

[Jcrowley]

28. How did it spread?

After disease swept through the Micmac communities of Nova Scotia around 1747, French accounts of the epidemic blamed the British, claiming that British officers and traders intentionally spread disease by distributing infected clothing. See "Motifs des sauvages mickmaques," in Baston du Bosq de Beaumont, LES DERNIERS JOURS DE L'ACADIE (Geneva, 1975), 46.

This is hardly the right-from-the-horse's-mouth evidence that we have for Amherst's program, but if it is true, it might explain where Amherst got his idea. Amherst arrived in Nova Scotia in 1758 in anticipation of his attack on Cape Breton Island. During his short stay in Nova Scotia, he certainly learned the rhetoric of hating the Micmac, as his speeches to his troops in 1758 make clear. Amherst almost certainly had very little personal interaction with the Micmac themselves. He learned his hatred from others who had been in Nova Scotia longer. Is it possible that he learned more than their attitudes, but maybe also their methods of operation?

(I suspect that this might be true, but I don't think I could prove it.)

<snip>

On the plan to use smallpox as a weapon against the Indians; Parkman, in _The Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (Vol 2, pgs 39-40, in the new Bison edition) discussed this proposal. The idea, apparently, came from Lord Amherst, in a letter of orders to Col Bouquet, saying "Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occassion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them". Bocquet replied that he would try and use infected blankets as a means of introducing the disease among the Indians, but was wary of the effects that it would have on his own men. Bouquet then proposes using- in "the Spanish method"- a combination of hunting dogs, rangers and light horsemen, in an effort to "effectually extirpate or remove that vermin" at little risk to his own men. Amherst readily agreed, hoping that the use of smallpox infested blankets, as well as any other method be used that "can serve to extirpate this execrable race", although he did not think that the hunting dog idea was practical. Parkman states that there is no evidence that Bouquet ever used the smallpox plan, although an epedemic raged among the Ohio Indians "a few months after" the July 1763 correspondence.

<snip>

In this context of deliberately using disease as a weapon against Native Americans, the English trader James Adair asserts that in 1738 "the Cherake received a most depopulating shock by the small pox, which reduced them almost one-half, in about a year's time: it was conveyed into Charles-town by the Guinea-men, and soon after among them, by the infected goods." The Guinea-men could either refer to slaves from the Guinea coast or, and I think more probably, to the slavers themselves. In any event, the transmission of such goods was deliberate and it also came at a time of rising tension between Carolina and the Cherokee. Trade with the Cherokee was halted for about 18 months and when it resumed the remaining half of the Cherokee suffered another major epidemic -- this time of suicide as the survivors viewed their scarred faces for the first time in the mirrors sent as trade goods.

http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~west/threads/disc-smallpox.html

[Spider Jerusalem]

29. This has nothing to do with Amherst and his smallpox blankets;

the Spanish conqustadors brought smallpox to the Aztecs in the 1500's, and it spread throughout North and South America, killing by some estimates as much as 95% of the population (thriving villages of the Mississipian culture observed by DeSoto were gone 50 years later, and the population of the area greatly reduced). It wasn't deliberate, and it had nothing to do with biological warfare. This first epidemic was the result of exposure of the natives to a disease they'd never encountered. (It seems you're not very well-versed in the history you claim to be expounding.)

[Jcrowley]

31. Oh

The Trent Diary does indicate the blankets were removed from the small pox ward and given directly to Indians, so if the virus holds its force at all this could do it. On the other hand the existence of such a ward means the disease was already in the area and therefore could have been spread by personal contact whether deliberately or not. Knollenberg's last footnote, by the way, says "This discussion leaves out of consideration of course the medical question of to what extent smallpox can be communicated by infected objects (fomites). Because medical authorities are not in agreement on the question, a conclusive answer is not possible." Based on our discussion so far that seems to be true still, although there may be some conclusive study out there in medical literature that we just don't know about yet. Should you come upon it, I'm sure the whole world would be delighted to know. No need for the jabs, unless you have that, at least from my point of view. The point of the OP stands.

[Spider Jerusalem]

35. We're talking about a time difference of 250 years here.

So anything you're saying is totally unrelated to what I'm saying. Smallpox brought by an infected Spanish soldier with Cortez' conquistadors in 1513 that wiped out most of the native population of the Americas hasn't anything at all to do with what Lord Amherst may or may not have done in the French and Indian War nearly 250 years later.

[Jcrowley]

37. Oh they're very related

I'll try to express the connections less fuzzily tomorrow.

As Pulitzer Prize winning historian Mark E. Neely Jr. said, as I was sitting right next to him, "History don't mean a damn thing unless you connect it to the present."

Great quote by Mencken by the way.

'Night

[Jcrowley]

25. Not so

And of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They are by nature the most humble, patient, and peaceable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome. These people are the most devoid of rancors, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the world. And because they are so weak and complaisant, they are less able to endure heavy labor and soon die of no matter what malady. The sons of nobles among us, brought up in the enjoyments of life's refinements, are no more delicate than are these Indians, even those among them who are of the lowest rank of laborers. They are also poor people, for they not only possess little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not arrogant, embittered, or greedy. Their repasts are such that the food of the holy fathers in the desert can scarcely be more parsimonious, scanty, and poor. As to their dress, they are generally naked, with only their pudenda covered somewhat. And when they cover their shoulders it is with a square cloth no more than two varas in size. They have no beds, but sleep on a kind of matting or else in a kind of suspended net called bamacas. They are very clean in their persons, with alert, intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to receive our holy Catholic faith, to be endowed with virtuous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion. And once they begin to hear the tidings of the Faith, they are so insistent on knowing more and on taking the sacraments of the Church and on observing the divine cult that, truly, the missionaries who are here need to be endowed by God with great patience in order to cope with such eagerness. Some of the secular Spaniards who have been here for many years say that the goodness of the Indians is undeniable and that if this gifted people could be brought to know the one true God they would be the most fortunate people in the world.

The island of Cuba is nearly as long as the distance between Valladolid and Rome; it is now almost completely depopulated. San Juan and Jamaica are two of the largest, most productive and attractive islands; both are now deserted and devastated. On the northern side of Cuba and Hispaniola he the neighboring Lucayos comprising more than sixty islands including those called Gigantes, beside numerous other islands, some small some large. The least felicitous of them were more fertile and beautiful than the gardens of the King of Seville. They have the healthiest lands in the world, where lived more than five hundred thousand souls; they are now deserted, inhabited by not a single living creature. All the people were slain or died after being taken into captivity and brought to the Island of Hispaniola to be sold as slaves. When the Spaniards saw that some of these had escaped, they sent a ship to find them, and it voyaged for three years among the islands searching for those who had escaped being slaughtered , for a good Christian had helped them escape, taking pity on them and had won them over to Christ; of these there were eleven persons and these I saw.

More than thirty other islands in the vicinity of San Juan are for the most part and for the same reason depopulated, and the land laid waste. On these islands I estimate there are 2,100 leagues of land that have been ruined and depopulated, empty of people.

As for the vast mainland, which is ten times larger than all Spain, even including Aragon and Portugal, containing more land than the distance between Seville and Jerusalem, or more than two thousand leagues, we are sure that our Spaniards, with their cruel and abominable acts, have devastated the land and exterminated the rational people who fully inhabited it. We can estimate very surely and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe without trying to deceive myself that the number of the slain is more like fifteen million.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/02-las.html

2. Of the island of Hispaniola
On the island of Hispaniola, which was the first, as we said, where Christians came in and
began the great slaughter and destruction of these peoples and which they first devastated
and depopulated, as the Christans began taking women and children from the Indians to use
them and abuse them and started to eat the fruits of their sweat and toil, not content with
what the Indians offered them of their own will according to what each could afford (which
is always little, since they tend not to keep more than what they normally need and can make
without much labour, and what is enough for three households of ten persons each for a
month a Christian will consume and destroy in one day), and the many other forced and
violent exactions which they committed against them, the Indians began to realize that those
men could not have come from the sky, and some began to hide their foodstuffs, others their
women and children; others fled the hills to escape such a hard and terrible relationship. The
Christians hit them, punched them, and beat them with sticks until they laid hands on the
lords of the settlements. And all this came to such a point of brazen shamelessnes that one
Christian captain raped the wife of the greatest king and lord of the entire island.

18

It was then that the Indians began to look for ways of driving the Christians out of their
lands; they took up their weapons, which are feeble enough in inflicting or parrying blows
and even less use for defence, so that all their wars are little more than our tilting or even
children’s games. The Christians with their horses and swords and lances now begin to inflict
slaughter and extraordinary atrocities against them. They went into settlements and left no
children, old men, or women, whether pregnant or just delivered of their babies, whose
bellies they did not slice open or hack to pieces, as if they were attacking lambs penned in
their sheepfolds. They laid wagers on who could split a man open with one slash or cut off
his head with a pike or disembowel him. They took babies by the feet from their mothers’
teats and threw them headlong on the rocks; others threw them over their shoulders into
rivers, laughing and joking, and as they fell into the water shouted ‘Swim, damn it!’. Other
babies they put to the sword together with their mothers, and everyone else they found in
their path. They erected tall gibbets, leaving their feet just off the ground, and then put
firewood, set fire to it, and burned them alive thirteen at a time in honour of our Saviour and
the twelve Apostles. Others they tied up and wrapped entirely in dry straw; then they lit it,
burning them that way. Others, and all those they chose to capture alive, they cut off both
their hands, took some to hang round their necks, and told them: ‘Take a message’ (meaning,
take the news to the people hiding in the hills).

Normally they killed lords and nobles in the following way: they made some griddles con-
sisting of bars resting on trestles, tied them to them, and then placed a slow fire underneath
so that little by little, howling with agony in this torture, in a state of despair, their souls left
them. Once I saw that, having four or five leaders and lords roasting on the grills (and I also
think there were two or three pairs of grills where others were burning) and because they
were howling so loudly that it was upsetting the captain or keeping him awake, he gave
orders for them to be strangled; and the sergeant who was burning them, a man worse than
any hangman (I know what he was called and even met his relatives in Seville), not wanting
to strangle them, put wooden bungs into their mouths with his own hands to stop them
making a noise and then stoked the fire under them until they roasted slowly, as he wanted.
I saw all the things described above, and infinitely many others. And since all the people
who could flee hid in the forests and went up into the mountains to escape these pitiless and
inhuman men, these ferocious beasts, exterminators and mortal enemies of the human race,
they trained and exercised hounds, the wildest of dogs, who would tear an Indian to pieces
in a twinkling of an eye as soon as they saw him, and leaped on him and ate him better than

<snip>

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:RrTmJY1XX-kJ:www.art.man.ac.uk/SPANISH/ug/documents/casaseng.pdf+las+casas+columbus+diaries&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=15&client=safari

So should we shut the borders down? To everything? Commodities and people?

[Spider Jerusalem]

27. ...

Exactly how do the actions of the Spanish in Latin America and the Caribbean have anything at all to do with what happened in BRITISH North America following settlement of Jamestown and the Massachusetts Bay Colony? Oh, that's right, they don't. (Note that I specifically said "when the ENGLISH arrived"...or did you miss that part of it? Nice try, though.) You did say "we got here in the early 1600's", which means "British colonists", not Spanish...the Spanish were already well along in colonising South America and Mexico by the early 1600's, after all...and so you're talking about two different and unrelated things.

[Jcrowley]

30. My bad

I meant early 1500's. Typo, 5 and 6 being close together and all. Too late to edit.

Even so they are quite intertwined as is history itself. It's all connected. All of it.

Everyday colonialism. Maybe those "illegals' are just looking for what has been taken from their lands.

:shrug:

[Spider Jerusalem]

32. Yeah, but...

if you say "early 1500's" can you still say "we"? None of MY ancestors were conquistadors. And the USA was formed of former British colonies, not Spanish, so there's no real continuity between what the Spaniards did and the actions of the US--nor, for that matter, is there a real continuity betweeen Spanish and British colonial policies; the Spaniards were interested in gold and silver, and converting the native populations to Christianity; most Spanish colonists were soldiers and priests. British colonial policy was geared towards settlement (with colonies such as Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania being established as havens for English Puritans and Separatists, Catholics, religious dissenters of all stripes, and Quakers, respectively).

[Jcrowley]

73. Clarification

It's important to use one's adverbs properly that is why I put the word 'we' in quotes. What the ruling class and media does is to lump the people into the WE and so I thought it was rather clear from the use of quotes that my OP was not implying that the WE was the entire caste of immigrants who came here in the 1600's etc., whatever date number you want to refer to. And of course the question left off the table is why were so many coming here? What were the conditions they were leaving behind? The answer to that question remains relatively the same then as now. This is why what has happened in the past is completely relevant to the immigration issues of today. The patterns of history shape what we live in today. There is quite a fluidity and consistency to the situation. It's all connected

[MUSTANG_2004]

54. Excellent post! n/t

[elocs]

26. Well, that was then and this is now.

You want to apply the morals and thinking of today to that of 400 years ago. Why stop at only 400 years because you could go back much further. If you could go back and make amends, where and who would you start with? Everybody gets lumped into the "we", even the children of the earliest immigrants (mine came in 1628, but my great grandmother was a Cherokee)? If only they had been blessed with the foresight of hundreds of years to realize their moral shortcomings. If there is one thing we learn from history is that it is never fair, to somebody.

Immigration is a complicated issue in the here and now with no easy or simplistic answers. Any idea or solution is inevitably going to be unfair to somebody. Historical hand-wringing is not helpful because there is nothing to do about it now. I understand what you are saying and agree with you, but guilt-tripping is not a good way to make friends and influence people.

[loyalsister]

33. from our ancestors

It's easy to disavow the past as "their acts not mine," but it is important to recognize the priviledges those actions created.
Should we give some thought to how we have treated people in the past and what similarities may be present in our current situation?? I would say "yes."
Because our neighbors bear some of the burdens of our priviledge.

[spoony]

36. Shall we ignore...

the corrupt corporations murdering the middle and lower class by using slave labour because of some misguided sense of inherited guilt? No ta, I think I'll continue to be concerned about how both sets of people are being squeezed dry.

[silverojo]

38. Most of "we" didn't come here at that time, or do those things

The majority of white Americans are of German and/or Irish descent. Look it up in the history books--we came here far later, settled in cities and towns, and basically came here LEGALLY and ASSIMILATED.

"We" did not "steal" anything from Mexico by force. The Mexicans only owned that land for roughly 25 years...and, by the way, the Mexicans aren't too kind to their REAL indigenous people, even to this day. So they're not the ones to be pointing fingers at anybody....

There's this little thing called the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo...the USA did not "steal" anything. In fact, they paid VERY handsomely for the land that would eventually become part of the USA.

Mexico EXCHANGED 525,000 square miles to the United States in exchange for $15 million--a HUGE amount in those days. The United States also agreed to take over $3.25 million in debts Mexico owed to American citizens.

This land is OURS, not theirs. Whatever happened in the past, the entire international community (except the corrupt politicians in Mexico) recognizes the US/Mexico border. The Germans did far worse to the Jews, but that doesn't mean Jews can flood into Germany and claim it's "their" land. They must obey Germany's immigration laws.

For Mexicans and Central Americans to come here without going through the proper legal process is ILLEGAL, no matter how you slice it. People from MANY countries have urgent reasons to come here--political persecution, poverty, the list goes on and on.

It's not fair for people from ONE region to be able to cut in line ahead of all these other people who must go through the proper channels to enter our country. It's also not fair for people from one region to expect laws to be waived for them, while people of all other races must obey our laws or be prosecuted.

ALL IMMIGRANTS WHO ENTER LEGALLY ARE WELCOME. ALL IMMIGRANTS WHO ENTER ILLEGALLY ARE BREAKING THE LAW.

You can frantically pull all the excuses out of your ass that you wish, but none of them will change this basic fact. The law is the law.

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jcrowley]

50. The Hungarian freedom fighters

violated the law every step of the way. Should they have obeyed the laws?

Ignorance of what's just is no excuse for obeying the law.

The US definitely stole many people's lands and took over the lands of Mexico through aggressive invasions. This is ongoing. Historical amnesia is a deep part of the process of assimilation which is basically the empire's word for capitulate.

It was an aggressive war against Mexico that extended the nation's boundaries to the Pacific. In the 1819 treaty with Spain the United States had given up any claim to Texas. But this did not stop it from trying to bribe Mexican officials to sell Texas, as by United States Minister Anthony Butler in Jackson's administration. This failing, it gave active support to the revolution which separated Texas from Mexico and made it, for ten years, the Lone Star State. The United States had its eye not only on Texas, but on California and all the land between-about half of what was then Mexico. After Texas was annexed in 1845, President Polk sent secret instructions to his confidential agent in California, Thomas O. Larkin, to work for annexation.

Polk first tried to buy California and New Mexico, but Mexico refused, whereupon he sent troops into the disputed territory between the Nucces River and the Rio Grande, which both Texas and Mexico claimed. When Polk took the question of war to his cabinet, the suggestion was made that it would be better for Mexico to start the war. By some remarkable coincidence, a dispatch that same night reported Mexicans coming into the disputed area, and a battle ensued, with sixteen American casualties. Polk asked Congress to declare war, saying that Mexico "has invaded territory and shed American blood upon the American soil." Polk's claim to be protecting Texas was rather weak, m view of the fact that in nine years Mexico had made no effort to retake Texas.

The war was won without difficulty, and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave the United States what it wanted: New Mexico, California, and the disputed territory in Texas-altogether, half of Mexico. The States could even point to its restraint in not taking all of Mexico. During the war, that thought had been widespread. At a Jackson Day dinner, Senator Dickinson of New York had offered a toast to "a more perfect Union, embracing the whole of the North American continent." The liberal New York Evening Post urged America not to withdraw from Mexico...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/AggressiveLiberalism_HZOW.html

From Howard Zinn:
"A quick survey of American foreign policy shows that aggressiveness, violence, and deception accompanied, from our first years as a nation, the development of those domestic attributes which (seen in isolation from other domestic traits) made us the prototype of Western liberal democracy. This survey is of course a selective one, but for purposes of taking a hard look at our nation in a time of social crisis, it is a useful corrective to more orthodox-selection. I suspect there is an important difference between individuals and nations which supports the idea of a critical selection. For a person, the overlooking of past miscreancy may have a positive effect on future conduct, as a psychological spur to change. For nations, there is not that sensitivity. A hardened, mindless mechanism requires not psychological encouragement but a taking apart and reassembling by its citizens-a task so arduous as to be spurred only by a sense of great peril, reinforced by a concentrated recollection of the number of times the mechanism has failed."

I would suggest a reading of Zinn's "A People's History" as a first step to understanding the real history of the United States.

"Expansionism was given a moral justification; the nation had a "natural right" to security in the West, it was said. This was the customary jump in modern history, from an idealistic nationalism invoked to justify independence from colonial rule, to the stretching out over others' territory by a new nation. "The very peoples who had drunk most deeply of the new humanitarian nationalism succumbed most rapidly to the expansionist intoxication which led into the age of imperialism," writes Arthur K. Weinberg, in his classic study, Manifest Destiny." - Howard Zinn

[Xithras]

84. All of which misses the actual point.

When looked at objectively, Spain had no more of a legitimate right to the western portion of North America than England did. Both were conquering powers which subjugated the previously independent indigenous populations. The United States and Mexico, as nations originating from the conquering foreign forces, likewise had no legitimate claim on lands they had "inherited" from their former colonial masters. Aside from a tiny elite sitting on massive land grants, the actual Mexican population of the ceded lands was almost non-existent. Most of the population consisted of Christianized indigenous people who were granted limited rights under the Mexican constitution.

When the US and Mexico went to war, it was essentially one colonial government going to war with another colonial government for the control of land that neither really had any right to own. For the actual indigenous populations of the land, the war was simply a conversion from one invading oppressor to another.

Does that make the war right? Of course not, but the suggestion that Mexico somehow had a right to the land is just silly. None of the European powers, or the nation-states they spawned, truly have a "right" to any of the land in North America. My mother in law is a reservation born Native American. Her people have a right to this land...all others are the inheritors of illegitimately claimed wealth.

I once watched my mother in law go toe to toe with a Chicano activist who claimed that all of North America legitimately belongs to the Mexicans. I honestly wish I had a tape recorder, because that turned into one of the most entertaining conversations I've ever heard in my life. By the time she was done with him, HE was questioning his own beliefs and self-identity. "Mexico" is a European creation, and those who identify themselves with it are identifying themselves with the forces that ended their nations in the first place. She grilled him on his true racial identity, on who his people were, on what his native language was, and what tribe he was affiliated with. When he couldn't answer, she blasted him for continuing the Spanish colonialist influence by attempting to reinforce the control of an invading European power over natives who were largely uninterested in being subjugated by ANYONE. Sh lectured him for five solid minutes on how, if he were TRULY interested in restoring "his peoples lost culture and lands", he would be fighting to re-establish his tribes original landholdings and tribal borders rather than fighting for the control and social domination of lands that legitimately belonged to tribes unrelated to his own. In the end, he conceded his point to her. Mexicans, whether illegal or legal, are simply the latest wave of invaders to overrun a land that doesn't belong to them.

[Jcrowley]

87. I'd have to say

we are very much in agreement. "Mexicans, "Americans", "Swedes" etc. are what they are because the nation-state tells them who they are and shapes their identities with innumerable techniques.

To assimilate essentially means conform and capitulate. If you do not do it willingly you will be forced. If you do not come around after force you'll be offed.

The "actual point" which you are making is in fact true and even deeper than what I am discussing in this particular thread. But the point I am making here is not about Mexico or "Illegals" so much as it is about the hypocrisy and historical nearsightedness, I'm being diplomatic, of those who call for some form of "immigration reform" or tightening the borders or....

Nowhere am I saying Mexico has the right to the land for when I think of Mexico I think of the nation-state not the people.

Excellent post

Here's an article you may find to be of interest:
http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/PerlmanNationalism.htm

Again I want to thank you for your profound insight into this situation and for deepening the discussion. I have for years been looking for a book that described what your mother-in-law was getting at, a book that had to do with the naming of 'America' itself as a mechanism of internal colonialism. If that rings a bell send some references over.

[Ms. Clio]

62. Completely wrong about U.S. and Mexican history

Some "history books" on the subject:

David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America

David J. Weber, Foreigners in Their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans

Thomas E. Sheridan, A History of the Southwest: The Land and its People

Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West

Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America

Juan Gomez-Quiñones, Mexican American Labor, 1790-1990

Zaragosa Vargas, Proletarians of the North: Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933

Barbara A. Driscoll, The Tracks North: The Railroad Bracero Program of World War II

Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry 1930-1950

Arnoldo De Leon, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900

Sarah Deutsch, No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940.

George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945

Richard A. García, Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, San Antonio, 1919-1941

[Cleita]

40. Thank you. n/t

[Jose Diablo]

55. The big question is why would they need to come here to get jobs

All this NAFTA stuff, you'd think there would be plenty of jobs where they come from, unless we were lied to about NAFTA also.

The deal is, these people have had their land and resources stolen by the same "forces" in operation here.

We can look at the churches for their hand in it, way back when or even today too.

We can look at how the royalty kicked people off the land in Great Britian back in the early 1800's and the resulting flood of Irish that came here just to be able to eat.

All of this has been going on for hundreds of years, all in the name of making the wealthy more wealthy.

Until the issue of disparity of wealthy is dealt with, nothing will change. Contrary to what we were taught in history class, this isn't the land of the free, never has been. Well, we are free to work for peanuts and fighting each other over table scraps. In that we are free.

[treestar]

63. True, but I don't see the big problem with "them" coming "here" for jobs

If they can find a job, then what's the big problem?

I don't see any reason to be so concerned about it. Give them a visa and and ID to assauge security concerns, it's better than having 12 million people underground.

When people get so emotional about people having the nerve to be in the US illegally, it, I find it very surprising, especially on DU. It's so bothersome to see a crowd of Mexicans sitting around somewhere, waiting to be hired for these individuals? It upsets them that the guy behind the counter in 711 is Arabic? Or that the cab driver is Arabic?

And the attitude contributes to outsourcing, to top it off. That could bite us all in the butt.

[pat_k]

59. I'd like to see us "move the game". . .

. . .by dumping the current rhetoric and offering a new approach.

It's not directly responsive to your post, but I haven't posted this for awhile and think it bears repeating.

Controlling Our Borders
Enacting and Enforcing Laws that Reflect Our Values]
The first step in finding a solution that serves the common good on immigration (or anything else for that matter) is to look at the problem from a new perspective -- one that is grounded in some basic truths and moral principles.

Here's my stab at outlining such an approach.

Controlling our borders with the stroke of a pen

Building a wall takes time. We don't need to wait. We can effectively control immigration with the stroke of a pen by passing legislation that includes two basic elements:

• Going after predatory employers.


• Offering a path to citizenship for whistleblowers and their families.

More. . .

[Jcrowley]

67. The link wasn't working

Let me know if this is what you are referring to:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=364&topic_id=2235650&mesg_id=2235912

It seems it is and if so I would offer a few comments after further reading.

[pat_k]

80. Sorry about that. It's here

http://january6th.org/borders.html

That earlier post is basically the same, but I revised it a bit when I put the draft up on the site.

[Jcrowley]

82. Analysis

Guest worker programs have a place, but too often; such programs have been used to give employers a ticket to pay substandard wages and subject workers to unsafe conditions. We cannot tolerate programs that set different standards for "guests."

Yes, that has happened in the past. But there is nothing inherent in a guest worker program that dictates this at all. The issue of corporations seeking ways to get cheap labor is not something that is directly related to immigration, since this is what corporations are doing all of the time. There is no reason to think that rounding up immigrant workers or punishing employers who are willing to employ immigrants solves the widespread and international problem of different standards for different workers.

To be consistent with American values, we need to "just say no" to the exploitation workers -- documented or not. Continuing to permit predatory employers to operate within our borders will only drive more and more of Us and "Them" into poverty.

Since when is protection of workers an “American value?” Every Labor movement has sought the goal of internationalism, and the “values” of the Labor movement have rarely been supported by our government, and then only when pressured. The labor movemet in America has been getting thrashed in every conceivable way from Carnegie to date. Use of the emotionally charged words “American” and “values” is fancy window dressing on a very ugly historical reality.

Controlling our borders with the stroke of a pen

“The stroke of a pen” sounds innocuous and benign, but of course the reality for the human beings involved will not have anything toi do with pens, but rather with guns, clubs and prison cells,

Going after predatory employers.

What is a “predatory employer?” If anyone is breaking the law or mistreating people, then they should be charged within the guidelines of the Constitution and our legal system, including due process and the presunption of innocence, as well as the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. If the current laws protecting employees cannot be or are not being enforced, then no stroke of the pen will change that. Let's go after NAFTA et al and the predatory corporations that are usurping the land. Then and only then will the problem be resolved.

Offering a path to citizenship for whistleblowers and their families.

Could you clarify what you mean by this? Who are the whistleblowers? Who are they blowing the whistle on?

[pat_k]

90. I probably need to clarify the draft. . .

. . .it seems there may be a disconnect between what I intended to convey and what came across.

Last question first.

. . .Who are the whistleblowers?

First and foremost, existing law governing wage and working conditions must be expanded to explicitly cover undocumented workers, as described in the draft.

Any individual or group, whether documented or undocumented, that is subjected to, or has direct knowledge of, employment conditions that violate worker wage, hour, or safety requirements (i.e., conditions that violate FLSA or OSHA standards) can become a whistleblower by reporting the violations.

Whistleblowers must be given protections in the law that guarantee their anonymity throughout an investigation of their charges. The law would probably need to provide for legal intermediaries between the whistleblower and enforcement agencies.

. . .Who are they blowing the whistle on?

They are blowing the whistle on predatory employers.

Predatory employers are employers who fail to provide the working conditions and wages that are required under the law

When and if the charges are proven, the whistleblowers would receive a monetary reward. If the whistleblowers are undocumented workers, those workers and their families become eligible for a "fast track" to legal status. The monetary reward would then be held and applied against fees associated with achieving fast track legal status. (The "fast track" process would need to be worked out)

In other words, we mandate and enforce the same labor standards for all workers, documented or undocumented. We provide a mechanism of enforcement by empowering and encouraging workers to blow the whistle, whether or not they are documented.

If an employer reports wages to the IRS, pays taxes, and provides conditions of employment that are in accord with wage, hour, and safety laws, they are not a target even if their entire work force is undocumented.

Predatory employers can exploit undocumented workers because they know those workers are unlikely to report abuses because they fear they'll being caught and deported themselves if they come forward.

Eliminating the risk of coming forward, and replacing it with a potential reward (fast track to legal status and citizenship) turns things upside down. Predatory employers are no longer protected by their worker's fears of exposure.

. . .There is no reason to think that rounding up immigrant workers or punishing employers who are willing to employ immigrants solves the widespread and international problem of different standards for different workers. . .

The goal is to force predatory employers to comply with the law. If workers get together as a group and report their employer for exploiting them, and their charges are subsequently proven, those workers are put on the fast track to legal status.

"Rounding up" workers is not the goal. The goal is to give workers the incentive to report employers who are exploiting them by violating wage, hour, or safety laws.

The motivation to employ undocumented workers disappears when the law requires that you treat documented and undocumented workers the same.

.. . .Since when is protection of workers an “American value?”. . .

The employment and safety legislation we have passed to date reflect our collective values -- our belief that workers should not be subjected to life-threatening conditions and that they should receive a living wage. (As a nation, we have failed on the "living wage" front, but vast majority of Americans believe we must make the changes necessary to the law to reflect this value).

I call these values "American Values" because we have formalized them in our laws, and because the vast majority of the nation subscribes to them.

. . .If anyone is breaking the law or mistreating people, then they should be charged within the guidelines of the Constitution and our legal system . . .

Of course. But (1) until the wage, hour, and safety laws are explicitly expanded, they do not apply to undocumented workers, and (2) the current system is full of incentives that keep the exploitive underground economy underground. This is a proposal to radically change those incentives.

. . If the current laws protecting employees cannot be or are not being enforced, then no stroke of the pen will change that. . .

Changes to the law ("a stroke of the pen") can radically change the incentives. Of course the term "stroke of a pen" is hyperbole that doesn't convey the changes that must be made within our government to implement the law. My point is that the change to the law, all by itself, will be enough to cause many employers who are currently engaged in predatory practices to come within the law because if they don't they are likely to be reported by the people they have working for them.

[Jose Diablo]

68. The link is to www.Xxx.com

Are you sure this is the link to your position on our reflected values?

[pat_k]

81. Opps. Sorry 'bout that. Here it is:

http://january6th.org/borders.html

[Workers To Power]

71. How to repay? It's simple.

Someone said they didn't know how the U.S. could repay the victims of slavery, genocide and imperialism. It's pretty simple.

Reparations need to be paid to black and native people. They need to be given the chance to decide whether or not they want to secede from the U.S. In other words, they must be given the right to form their own countries from parts of the present day U.S. (black people could form a country in the "black belt" of the south and native people could form countries in parts of the south east and south west). On top of this, all police must be withdrawn from black and native people's neighborhoods.

Puerto Rico needs to be granted full independence, with reparations paid for the exploitation of its land and people.

Guantanamo Bay must be immediately evacuated, and given back to Cuba.

The south western states which were forcefully stolen from Mexico must be given the right to rejoin Mexico or claim independence for themselves.

The Vietnamese, Korean, Nicaraguan, Yugoslavian (Serb, Croat, Bosnian, Albanian), Somalian, and Salvadoran people must be paid reparations for the outright destruction of their countries.

All U.S. troops must be immediately withdrawn from every country they are stationed in.

When all of these things are done - and only then - can the road to repaying the victims of years of oppression and exploitation even begin to be built.

[Jose Diablo]

72. Do you stand to gain by your generousity of other peoples money? n/t

[Workers To Power]

74. Ha ha!

It's "other people's money" now, when you're going to give it back to the people it was stolen from. But it was never "other people's money" when it was stolen from them to begin with.

What hypocracy!

How do you think the U.S. became a super power, or in fact THE super power?

Hint: Stolen land, free labor, stolen resources.

[Jose Diablo]

76. Your responsed seemed to include all people that had stuff stolen from them

yet your original post only speaks of those with ethnic backgrounds that could be documented.

So now it's all the people huh?

My question stands, do you gain personally if only those with documentable claims can benefit. If this is the case, then the "reparation solution" is a phoney elite class argument designed to separate one people from another, keeping the elite on top.

Spare the "power to the people" argument that will exact a payment from everyone except a narrow group of people. I've heard and seen this solution before only to see it screw an entire generation of white males from job opportunities and training.

You should read MLK rainbow coallition ideas, and as for separate countries, that is so Malcolm X. Pushing for benefits of one group or another, will only fail, but that is the plan with these "reparation solutions", to fail and split people up into groups fighting each other.

[Xithras]

85. That's why very few Native Americans support any kind of reparations.

It's insulting. If I beat you up and take $1000 from your wallet, and then hand you $50 of your stolen money back as "reparations", does that somehow make it better? Most Native Americans don't buy into reparations because they understand that no reparations can repay the losses they suffered, and that any reparations they receive will be derived from the lands stolen from them in the first place.

[Nye Bevan]

77. Puerto Ricans don't *want* independence

In a referendum in 1999 only 3% voted for independence.

[NorthernSpy]

83. Oh, I get it. Americans have no right to America, but the rest of the world does.

:eyes:

[Workers To Power]

86. Nonsense.

"Oh, I get it. Americans have no right to America, but the rest of the world does."

Why kind of chauvanist shit is this? For one, it's the US. Not "America". "America" is two whole continents, of which the U.S. only makes up a part.

Second, "Americans" have no rights. The average U.S. worker has no rights or ownership of anything. We are landless wage-slaves that will owe money until we die. As for groups like "Johnson & Johnson" - direct descendents of plantation owners - they have the "right" to have their money seized and redistributed to the descendents of the people enslaved, displaced and murdered for profit.

Third, "the rest of the world" has been subject to the whims of the U.S. ruling class for years. The U.S. has no "right" to invade countries and overthrow leaders who act against their interests. It has no "right" to invade countries to preserve markets and access to cheap resources. The "rest of the world" has a right to be paid back for the atrocities carried out against them by the U.S. government and its military (and this goes for all former colonies and violated countries. France owes Algeria as much as the U.S. owes Puerto Rico).

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"In a referendum in 1999 only 3% voted for independence."

You don't know what Puerto Ricans want. You ever heard of taking on the mindset of the oppressor? Alot of Puerto Ricans have societal stockholm syndrome. They've been subjigated so long that they've become dependent in large part on government "assistance," which in reality keeps them tied to the deterirating colonial system. They're affraid they'll end up blockaded and under attack, isolated and opposed, if they win their independence. And for good reason! It's the same reason alot of Nicas voted against the FSLN in the second election. If you don't think alot of Puerto Ricans want independence, you're ignorant to the situation, see: http://www.freepeoplesmovement.org/fpm/page.php?201

"It's insulting. If I beat you up and take $1000 from your wallet, and then hand you $50 of your stolen money back as "reparations", does that somehow make it better? Most Native Americans don't buy into reparations because they understand that no reparations can repay the losses they suffered, and that any reparations they receive will be derived from the lands stolen from them in the first place."

What's this based on? I'm from a family of native people, and most of my family wants reparations. Most of the native people I know want it. AIM wanted it, and fought for it, and that's why Leonard Peltier is rotting in a U.S. prison right now. There's nothing insulting about it. It's not going to be a handout. It's going to be something we get only as a result of a long and sustained fight. It's going to take working class unity across the board (black, latino, asian, white).

The fact that the reparation are derived from the lands stolen from native people is the exact reason why it must be paid back. Native people are in a sustained condition of poverty and misery. Lack of education and unemployment affect native people deeply. The only way to even begin to reverse that, in order to have real "equal rights for all" is to pay reparations. And the same goes for black people.

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"yet your original post only speaks of those with ethnic backgrounds that could be documented.

So now it's all the people huh?"

I can't make heads or tails from your posts. The mix of rhetorical questions (?) and jumbled thoughts makes for difficult decyphering.

Reparations need to be paid to the oppressed nations within the U.S.: blacks, native people, chicanos, Puerto Ricans; and the nations ravaged by imperialism, which were previously mentioned.

This money needs to come from the corporations that benefited from their exploitation and destruction. The average working person doesn't owe, they're owed! Big business does owe, in a major way.

"My question stands, do you gain personally if only those with documentable claims can benefit. If this is the case, then the "reparation solution" is a phoney elite class argument designed to separate one people from another, keeping the elite on top."

Because I'm of native heritage this is a "phoney elite class argument designed to separate one people from another, keeping the elite on top" ??

What is this a joke?

Black, native and Chicano people are the poorest, least educated, most unemployed and most imprisoned. This is a direct result of the miserable history of this country and the development of its capitalist system.

Paying reparations isn't going to create "a new elite," it's going to BEGIN (and ONLY begin) to give oppressed people equal footing, and the foundation for real "equal rights for all". Without it, the condition of these people will remain unchanged.

"Spare the "power to the people" argument that will exact a payment from everyone except a narrow group of people. I've heard and seen this solution before only to see it screw an entire generation of white males from job opportunities and training."

Here comes the veiled racism and U.S.-chauvanism. "White males" are not oppressed as "white males' buddy, sorry to break it to you. There is no "judeo-feminazi front" holding the white man down.

Now, most white people, like all other people, are workers, and are exploited. But black, native and chicano people are ALSO exploited as NATIONS. They are doubly exploited. No one is denied a job for being white. There are no stereotypes of white people that keep them from gaining employment and housing. Police don't murder white people BECAUSE THEY'RE WHITE, and then get promotions.

Until you realize that your interests, as a "white male" worker (and I'm assuming that's what you are), are tied in with the interests of black, native and Chicano people, and their fight for liberation, you won't get anywhere.

I can smell the underlying tones of anti-immigrant and protectionist garbage in your post, and to that I'll respond with a part of a good article on the subject:

"The ridiculousness of anti-immigrant hysteria, which is being promoted by the capitalists and their agents in the mainstream media, in a country made up almost entirely of immigrants should not go unnoticed. The waves of European immigrants at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, and their radicalization as industrial workers gave rise to the first real struggles for workers’ rights in the U.S.. Influenced by the strong revolutionary movements in Europe, and later by the October Revolution in Russia, they fought for, and won, the eight hour work day, overtime pay, the right to unionize, benefits, workplace safety standards and much more.

"Today, all of those gains are coming under attack, made possible by the disintegration of the unions, which is caused by betrayals by union bureaucrats and a series of assaults by the bosses and their representatives, starting with the smashing of the PATCO air trafic controllers’ strike by Ronald Reagan in 1981.

"The current increases in immigration are driven directly by capitalist globalization and “free trade agreements,” which have eliminated national industries, driven down wages and working conditions, and generally destroyed what little protection and benefits workers had in places like Latin America (where most immigrants to the U.S. come from).

"Working people need to come together, despite petty divisions created and fostered by the ruling class and their agents, to fight for our combined interests. There is a real possibility of turning this fight into a fight to fundamentally change society for the better, and to win." - http://www.freepeoplesmovement.org/fpm/page.php?182

"You should read MLK rainbow coallition ideas, and as for separate countries, that is so Malcolm X. Pushing for benefits of one group or another, will only fail, but that is the plan with these "reparation solutions", to fail and split people up into groups fighting each other."

What's wrong with Malcom? Absolutely nothing is. Malcolm has the correct line on black liberation; Dr. King did not. When Dr. King became more radicalized and began to understand what needed to be done (fight for black liberation as a part of the fight of all workers for real democracy), he was killed.

Calling for reparations is calling for THE ROAD to equality to be built. It won't give black, chicano and native people any "special standing," and in fact, it won't even make them EQUAL! But it will be a beginning.

Don't blame the plight of workers on black, chicano and native people standing up for their rights. That sort of scapegoating is what lead to holocaust. Black, chicano and native workers are your friends, white bosses are not - no matter what color you are.

[Xithras]

88. re: reparations

My mother-in-law is full blooded Osage. My wife is half. My children are a quarter. That makes them all far more native than your typical suburban "I'm an Indian because my great-great-great granduncle twice removed on my wifes side" wannabes that often chime in on the subject. I have no way of knowing if you are legitimately what you claim to be, but for the sake of argument I'll assume you're being truthful. I know LOTS of Native Americans. My wife and children regularly participate in inter-tribal powwows and events, and over the years I have come to know many Native Americans and have become very familiar with their political views. I even know a few who were active with AIM back in its heyday (my MIL participated in the 1970 Alcatraz occupation, and later became an early member of the AIM.) I know that there are some natives who would like to see some sort of reparations, but in all the years I've been involved with them, I've only actually met ONE who was serious enough about it to advocate the position and argue for them. You make two. Most Native Americans support of the idea is pretty much limited to "I'd cash the check if they sent it to me".

Native American activists have plenty of real issues that are pushed with some regularity. Improved access to educational resources. Tribal sovereignty. Control of ancestral religious sites. Economic opportunities for reservation dwellers. Restoration of treaty rights. An increased voice in the affairs of their ancestral lands. The list goes on and on, but I have never seen any kind of real advocacy for "reparations" to the Native peoples for their losses. Most simply want their treaties with the US to be honored, and to be given the same opportunities as everyone else.

[Jcrowley]

89. Who are you speaking to?

I'm guessing this wasn't pointed at the OP but that is who the response is towards.

Maybe you could clarify.

Because if you are stating there is an anti-immigration protectionist hint in my post you could not possibly have read it for it is perfectly the opposite of that. Again, I think you are just responding to another poster and instead mistakenly responded to the OP.