Turn It Around

Trey Smith

French MPs have voted to impose punitive fines on prostitutes' customers as part of a controversial new law going through parliament aimed at helping sex workers throw off the shackles of pimps and organised criminal gangs.

The measure, part of an anti-sex-trade bill, was approved by a show of hands in the Assemblée Nationale in the early hours of Saturday.

If the rest of the law is approved, customers of prostitutes will face a fine of €1,500 for a first "contravention", rising to €3,750 for subsequent offences, which will be considered crimes.

The proposals, introduced under a private members' bill, shift the criminal responsibility away from the estimated 40,000 prostitutes in France and on to their clients. Prostitution is legal in France, but soliciting, pimping and selling underage sex are not.

France's Socialist government introduced the legislation after examining a similar law in Sweden passed in 1999, which supporters claim has reduced the level of prostitution in the country by half.
~ from French MPs Vote to Impose Fines on Prostitutes' Customers by Kim Willsher ~

Personally, I think the act of prostitution should be legal between consenting adults, so I don't favor laws that seek to target prostitutes OR their clients. But this post isn't about prostitution anyway; it's about illegal immigration.

In the US, we don't go after the clientele of "illegal" aliens -- the corporations who enrich themselves on the backs of the immigrants. If we were serious about ending the flow of illegal immigration -- I submit that our political leaders aren't all that serious -- this is the tack to be taken. If we hammered those who hire illegal immigrants -- massive fines and/or jail time -- the market for those kinds of workers would dry up rather quickly.

But illegal immigration is vital to our national economy. Get rid of all the migrant workers and you can flush any economic prosperity goodbye. This is why we punish the "prostitute" and not the "john". It makes it appear as if something is being done about the "problem" when, in fact, almost nothing is being done.

TYT - Gay Activists Call Out Obama - 'No More Excuses'

It Is Always the Little Guy

Trey Smith

The Mexican drug cartels have caught the headlines again and again due to their murderous activities. The war between the different drug cartels and the war between the cartels and government security forces has spilled the blood of tens of thousands of innocent people. The drug cartels would find it much harder to profit from their murderous activity if they didn’t have too big to fail banks willing to wash their dirty money.

In March 2010 Wachovia cut a deal with the US government which involved the bank being given fines of $160 million under a ”deferred prosecution” agreement. This was due to Wachovia’s heavy involvement in money laundering moving up to $378.4 billion over several years. Not one banker was prosecuted for illegal involvement in the drugs trade. Meanwhile small time drug dealers and users go to prison.

If any member of the public is caught in possession of a few grammes of coke or heroin you can bet your bottom dollar they will be going down to serve some hard time. However, if you are a bankster caught laundering billions of dollars for some of the most murderous people on the planet you get off with a slap on the wrist in the form of some puny fine and a deferred prosecution deal.
~ from Money Laundering and The Drug Trade: The Role of the Banks by Dylan Murphy ~

The so-called Drug War suffers from the same problem as the fight against illegal immigration: Our government goes after the little guy and let's the big boys walk.

For government leaders from both corporate parties, illegal immigration is a HUGE problem. They talk incessantly about various plans to secure our borders to insure that folks from down south -- those simply looking for jobs and a better life -- are barred from illegally walking over the border. We build walls and fences. We have armed guards -- the Border Patrol -- in the thousands monitoring our southern border. Helicopters, planes and probably drones fill the skies.

And yet, illegal immigration remains a problem. Why? Because almost all of our various strategies are aimed at the individual immigrants themselves, NOT the people who hire them. If we genuinely were serious about stopping illegal immigration, the government would go after the factory farms and big corporations who regularly employ "illegals." If we threw a few of the offending corporate honchos in jail and levied significant fines against their companies, it would send a chill up the spine of their compatriots.

But we don't do that because our economy NEEDS illegal immigrants. It is because of them that our food prices are kept far lower than they would be otherwise. It is also true that illegal immigrant workers enrich the corporate honchos who hire them by keeping labor costs low.

In this same vein, our government drops the hammer on citizens and residents who purchase small amounts of illegal drugs, while turning a blind eye to the banks who launder drug money. In the deal mentioned by Murphy above, Wachovia agreed to pay a fine equal to around 0.0004% of their ill-gotten gains. To put that percentage in perspective, that would be like someone being fined 4 pennies for stealing $100! That is not a strong deterrent by ANY stretch of the imagination.

When a rational person looks at who our government prosecutes in terms of illegal immigration and drugs, it becomes more than obvious that they aren't serious about stopping either. When huge sums of money are involved, politicians -- despite what they say -- don't really want to turn off the golden spigot.

The Melting Pot

Trey Smith

As one of the world’s largest news outlets, the Associated Press’s linguistic mandates significantly shape the broader vernacular. So when the organization this week decided to stop using the term “illegal immigrant,” it was a big victory for objectivity and against the propagandistic language of bigotry.

Cautious AP executives did not frame it exactly that way. Instead, editor Kathleen Carroll portrayed the decision as one in defense of grammar, saying that the term “illegal” properly “describe(s) only an action” and that it is not an appropriate label to describe a human being.

“Illegal,” of course, has been used as more than a mere label — it has for years been used as an outright epithet by xenophobes. They abhor the notion of America becoming more diverse — and specifically, more non-white — and so they have tried to convert “illegal” into a word that specifically dehumanizes Latinos. Thus, as any honest person can admit, when Republican politicians and media blowhards decry “illegals,” they are pretending to be for a race-blind enforcement of immigration laws, but they are really signaling their hatred of Latino culture.

How can we be so sure that dog-whistle bigotry is the intent? It’s simple, really. Just listen to who is — and who is not — being called an “illegal.”

Almost nobody uses the term to attack white immigrants from Europe or Canada who overstay their visas. Nobody uses the term to describe white people who break all sorts of criminal laws.
~ from There Are No “Illegal Immigrants” by David Sirota ~

Conservatives like to talk of America as the beacon for the rest of the world. We are the shining city on the hill. To be patriotic is to honor our glorious past. Words and sentiments written during our halcyon years are to be treated like words written in granite.

And yet, these very same people somehow don't like the idea of honoring the words of The New Colossus affixed to the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of our supposed beacon-ness.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
(emphasis added)

Doesn't that sound to you like an open-ended invitation?

How then can we call the people who come "illegal"?

Some Difference! 13/17

Trey Smith

4 Immigrants must be jailed and deported in record numbers. To be really fair, one should note that on this issue Republicans talk a mean game about sending them all back and jailing tens or hundreds of thousands along the way. But only President Obama has walked the walk, deporting over a million immigrants in his term in office, often with little or no due process and after housing many for months in atrocious privatized immigration prisons.
~ from Closer Than You Think: Top 15 Things Romney and Obama Agree On by Bruce A. Dixon ~

It has been pointed out by MANY commentators that Obama has rounded up and deported MORE immigrants in 4 years than Bush did in 8 years. But let's not quibble over numbers. Both totals are egregious!

States that have passed stringent anti-immigrant laws are now discovering that their xenophobia is causing a serious problem that they somehow didn't factor in: It's hurting their economy! Crops are rotting in the fields and not making it to market. Farmers either are bearing increased labor costs (Americans sure as hell don't want to work for the piddly wages formerly paid to the illegals) OR some are facing bankruptcy.

And why is so much animus being laid at the feet of illegal immigrants? Because politicos need scapegoats to divert the public's attention from the real culprits who are robbing the country blind!

Can You Believe It?

Trey Smith

With anti-immigration fervor reaching a fevered pitch in many states, new laws have been passed to stem the flow of illegals. While conservatives pat themselves on the back for a job "well done," an odd thing has occurred. Surprising as it might be to some, farmers are reporting LABOR SHORTAGES!

It's SO hard to believe. (Note: That last statement was dripping with sarcasm.)

On more than 10,000 acres of drained swampland in western New York, Maureen Torrey’s family farm grows an assortment of vegetables in the dark, nutrient-rich soil known as “Elba muck.” Like other farms in the area, Torrey Farms Inc. of Elba, N.Y., depends on seasonal labor, mainly undocumented field hands from Mexico, to pick, package and ship its cabbage, cucumbers, squash, green beans and onions throughout the nation.

With the peak harvest season at hand, Torrey’s concerns about a labor shortage are growing. A crackdown on illegal immigration, more job opportunities in Mexico and rising fees charged by smugglers are reducing the number of workers who cross the U.S. border illegally each year to help make up more than 60 percent of U.S. farmworkers.

The American Farm Bureau Federation projects $5 billion to $9 billion in annual produce-industry losses because of the labor shortages...
~ from Fewer Workers Cross Border, Creating U.S. Farm Labor Shortage by Tony Pugh ~

Political Calculus 101-A

Trey Smith

Barack Obama has the worst record on immigration of any president in US history. No one else comes close. In the last 3 and a half years, Obama has rounded up, detained and deported more than 1.2 million immigrants, roughly 400,000 per year. That’s more than double the number of deportations that took place under his predecessor, George W. Bush, in the same amount of time. Obama also launched the controversial Secure Communities program, which uses local police departments to help federal authorities collect fingerprints so that victims can be watched, harassed, detained, abused and deported more easily by the Gestapo thugs at Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE]. Obama intends to make the program mandatory by 2013.

Now, after nearly four years of terrorizing the immigrant community, Obama has softened his stance in order to win back the 60% of Latinos who voted for him in 2008, but who no longer trust him or approve of his reactionary policies. Last week, in a cynical political stunt that was clearly aimed at winning votes, Obama directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to stop the deportation of immigrants under the age of 30 who came to the U.S. before age 16 “and who do not present a risk to national security or public safety, and meet several key criteria will be considered for relief from removal from the country or from entering into removal proceedings.”

Obama’s policy-reversal was intended to throw his liberal constituents a bone while putting the Republicans on the defensive on an issue that deeply divides their rank and file. (emphasis added)
~ from The Great Pretender Throws His Base a Bone by Mike Whitney ~

OK, I know what some of you are thinking, Trey already highlighted this issue a few days ago in Political Calculus 101. Why rehash it?

I think it's important to examine this issue owing to the simple fact that, as Whitney points out, Barack Obama's administration has deported far more people than the supposedly evil George W. Bush. Progressives railed against Bush for his draconian immigration policy and yet the man of "hope" has a far worse record.

A person must be insanely naive to think that Obama had an abrupt change of heart that has absolutely nothing to do with his reelection bid. If you've been paying only half attention to the upcoming election, you know that the growing power of the Latino vote may prove crucial. Since Obama has given Latinos few reasons to vote for him due to his over-the-top immigration policy, his advisers knew that he had to do something spectacular to turn the tide.

Barack Obama is not the first president to utilize this ploy and he certainly won't be the last, but that doesn't mean we should shy away from speaking clearly and frankly now! This "new direction" is nothing more than a cynical attempt to win key votes. It is as simple as that!

Political Calculus 101

Trey Smith

...since the Obama administration itself initiated the most massive wave of deportations in US history, it also could have stopped them six months, a year, two years ago. So calling press conferences, as Chicago Congressman Luis Gutierrez did, to thank the Obama Administration for maybe stopping deportations just of vets and college-bound youth with spotless records is like expressing sincere gratitude to a brutal assailant who's beat every square inch of your body the last three years, when he announces he might start going easy on the head and groin shots from now on. If you ask him nicely.

This is not a victory for the human dignity of immigrants. It's a no-cost cynical ploy by the Obama Administration a few months before the election to shore up his sagging support in the Latino community.
~ from Obama Memo Deferring Some Deportations Not a Victory For Latinos, Immigrants or Human Rights by Bruce A. Dixon ~

I am always dubious of presidential proclamations and policy shifts in the lead-up to a presidential election. Too often, as in this case, the rhetoric of the announcement makes a tiny stone sound like it's as large as the Rock of Gibraltar! (If you read Dixon's column, you'll see Obama's memo isn't all it's cracked up to be.)

Dixon's fellow columnist at the Black Agenda Report, Margaret Kimberley, points out something rather curious about our current Commander-in-Chief.

When President Obama doesn’t want to do something, he pleads the limits of presidential power or resistance from Republicans. But, when a novel move is to his political benefit, the world is his oyster. So far, gays and Latinos have benefited from Obama’s newfound insights or powers. Obama could just as easily issue executive orders “to change policies on incarceration, or address the foreclosure crisis, or bring federal dollars to economically devastated communities.”

But he doesn't seem interested in doing any of that. Why? It's all based on political calculus.

Throwing a bone or two to gays and Latinos doesn't upset Wall Street all that much. As long as the titans of capital aren't impacted by such vote-chasing ploys, there is little political risk. The money from the well-to-do will keep flowing into Obama's campaign coffers unabated.

And that's really all that matters as the campaign season picks up steam. Obama can do about whatever he wants to shore up his base, so long as he does not cause corporate profit to fall by as much a penny. That's the one bridge he will refuse to cross.

The Fence

Trey Smith

For those of you sitting at home getting yourselves all worked up with worry about our porous southern border, a recent article from Reuters should make you feel better.

U.S. authorities have upgraded six miles of border fencing in a remote Arizona ranching town with a taller barrier that will be tougher to breach, in the latest effort to tighten their grip on the isolated stretches of the Mexico border.

Isn't it good that we're pouring so much money and resources into protecting ourselves from those scary illegal immigrants? These days they are flooding over our borders in droves, right? Um, no. Arrests of border jumpers haven't been this low since the days of Richard Nixon!

The fence seems to be doing the job as intended. But I have a better idea. Why not build a 20 foot high concrete barrier all along the Mexican border? Just in case a few hearty souls are able to get over, under or through it, let's patrol the area with drones that will fire missiles at anything that moves. Sure, we may have a bit of "collateral damage" in the form a few border agents or Arizonians getting vaporized by accident, but wouldn't that be worth the cost?

Once we construct this type of an almost impenetrable barrier, life will become so much better in these United States of America. It will be like heaven on earth, since we will know that our pure Yankee blood can no longer be defiled by those hideous creatures from "down south."

Yes, this is the general argument of narrow-minded bigots! It is painful to write and I hope, for most of you, it is painful to read. Still, this is basically what their argument boils down to.

Of course, if we adopted this inhumane strategy -- actually, we HAVE adopted a significant portion of it -- I'd like to be around when these smug ne'er-do-wells realize the damage it will cause to the overall American economy.

While the way we treat migrant farmworkers is deplorable, in it's own right, this institutionalized mistreatment fuels our agricultural economy. Remove the migrants from the mix -- that's what would happen with a giant wall and drones flying overhead -- and a good amount of American crops would go unpicked, rotting in the fields.

This would lead to vastly higher consumer prices in our stores and a staggering number of farm bankruptcies, including many corporate-owned farms.

Is that what these wisenheimers truly want? (Me thinks not.)

Afternoon Matinee: Immigrants for Sale

Blowback

Shortly after the group of Mexican “guestworkers” arrived at a Tennessee tomato farm, they realized that their job was killing them, literally. In addition to being crowded into filthy trailers with no source of clean water, they and their living quarters were regularly showered with poison. Despite requirements for protective equipment, they had to go into the fields while exposed to pesticides. Risking abuse and retaliation for challenging their boss, some tried to use cellphones to record the spraying. In the end, they got their evidence, but then got fired.

The workers' struggle, which led to a lawsuit filed earlier this year, illustrates all the paradoxes of America's natural bounty. No form of labor is more ingrained in humanity than farm work, but the people who grow our food are being eaten alive every day by the toxins of modern industrial farming. Though consumers are more anxious than ever these days about the effects of pesticides on the food we eat, they seldom consider the health hazards facing the workers who feed our consumption. Yet the further you get up the production chain, the greater the danger.
~ from Pesticides and Farm Labor Yield a Bitter Harvest by Michelle Chen ~

With the spate of state legislatures passing laws aimed at stemming the flow of illegal immigrants into their states -- particularly farmworkers -- they are creating the framework for a major hit against their own agricultural output. There is a realistic chance that a significant amount of crops will rot in the fields and unpicked crops mean less money for farmers.

As we know, one of the supposed motivators for this kind of legislation is that illegal immigrants are stealing "American" jobs. This, of course, is pure malarkey due to the information Chen highlights above. Few red-blooded Americans -- no matter how desperate they are -- would agree to work in such toxic conditions! Many would run home to mommy at the first whiff of this carcinogenic soup of high-powered pesticides.

This certainly is not to suggest that the indiscriminate application of these poisons should be permitted in the first place. Their continued usage not only poisons farmworkers and the food we eat, but it is despoiling the environment as well. Consequently, this kind of legislation is going to have a blowback that its advocates never dreamed of.

If the legislation remains in place -- which I think is doubtful in the long-term -- then the farming industry will be forced to change the way they operate. The farming lobby is very powerful and they will resist any type of mandated change along this line. However, the more they resist, the more farmers will find it difficult to land enough able-bodied workers to harvest the bounty.

Consumers will not be left out of this equation either. Fewer crops harvested means decreased supply. When supply is low and demand is high -- we Americans are very demanding -- prices go up. High food prices will represent yet another hit on our fragile economy and may well deepen the ongoing recession on Main Street.

Eventually, the corporate elite will figure all this out. It is at that point that I expect to see much of this legislation rolled back. At that juncture, things can return to "normal." Illegal immigrants will again pick our crops for low wages...and be poisoned as our way of saying, "Thank you for your services!"

Them "Wetbacks" Are a Money Drain

According to many folks, "wetbacks" -- a derogatory term for illegal immigrants, particularly those who hail from Mexico -- are a money drain on the local, state and national economy. Supposedly they pay little or no taxes, yet utilize all sorts of government-based assistance programs. We spend money on educating their children and we subsidize their health care. Even worse, it is said they steal jobs from hardworking, red-blooded Americans.

If you listen long enough to the haters of "wetbacks," you would come to think that their presence represents a big drag on this country's economic lifeblood.

Of course, this picture is wholly unrealistic. Farmworkers -- legal or illegal -- are the main reason food prices in this country are still within reach of most families. If these farmworkers were removed from the picture, consumer prices would be significantly higher than they are now. With so many Americans unemployed, a lot of people would not be able to afford basic food stuffs and the poverty rate would show a steady increase.

We may soon get to see if my assessment is correct. The states of Alabama, Arizona and Georgia have passed stringent legislation aimed at illegal immigrants and, two of those states, have a lot of farms and cropland.

A recent report from Georgia indicates that over 11,000 agricultural jobs are going unfilled and attempts to get unemployed probationers to fill these positions is not going well. It seems that American citizens don't like the backbreaking work in stifling heat for meager pay!

I find it truly ironic that those who support these draconian illegal immigrant legislative efforts will soon see an actual money drain -- just not the kind they expect! With illegal immigrants staying away from their states, crops will rot in the field and agricultural revenue will drop. Less crops picked means more farms going under and higher prices for consumers.

All in all, these legislative efforts at least are consistent; they represent a lose-lose-lose proposition for all concerned.

Bravo, bigots. Bravo.

Can You Spell S-H-A-M

Following in the infamous footsteps of Arizona, the Georgia legislature has passed a strong anti-illegal immigration law, HB 87. Like its Arizona counterpart, it allows the police to stop and question people who look illegal. Let this be a warning to illegal Poles, Germans and Martians!

Aside from immigrant rights groups, the business community is acting like it's not very pleased with the bill's passage. One of the new requirements is that employers must use the federal E-Verify program in order to confirm that anyone hired is eligible to work in the US. Business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, have complained that this requirement will place an undue burden on businesses.

With these complaints intensifying, the Georgia legislature showed that it has a heart -- it also shows the Chamber has muscle -- by exempting businesses with 10 employees or less. Isn't it nice to see that government leaders always seem willing to provide loopholes to the business community?

For me, the part of this legislation that makes little sense (which is NOT to suggest that I agree with this discriminatory kind of legislation at all!) is the penalty section. It comes down very hard on illegal immigrants caught with fake IDS by punishing them with up to 15 years in the Georgia pen AND up to $250,000 in fines. Businesses who hire illegal immigrants, on the other hand, are afforded a 30-day grace period to correct "good faith" mistakes and can be fined up to $10,000.

Think about this for a moment. The businesses who profit mightily from illegal workers can hire them on 30-day contracts without penalty and, even if they exceed this, the penalty is a paltry $10,000 max. It's not $10,000 per illegal immigrant. With such a low fine -- and it could easily be less than $10K -- big agribusiness will continue as usual.

No, as is usual, the major onus falls on those who simply are looking for work to feed impoverished families. This new law pretty much guarantees there will be no unionization efforts amongst illegal immigrants which means big agribusiness can abuse them with impunity.

The crazy part of the legislation is the $250,000 maximum penalty that can be levied against an illegal worker. Most of these people work for less than minimum wage! The very idea that they could pay a $500 fine is laughable.

And so it goes in this country. The people who make the big bucks on the backs of illegal immigrant workers will be able to get off with a fine that amounts to little more than a slap on the wrists, while the state throws the book at the workers themselves!

If the Georgia legislature was SERIOUS about the stated intent of this bill, the penalties would be the other way around. If they truly wanted to rid their state of illegal workers, they would target their fines at business and make the max fine $250,000 per individual. Even big agribusiness would have to rethink their business strategy in the face of such severe punishment.

But bills of this nature aren't really about putting the clamps on business at all. No, they are about legal scapegoating!

Let's Give 'Em Back

Back in 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry hinted in a speech to Tea Party backers that it might be time for his state to secede from the USA. This past week leaders in Arizona have suggested much the same thing for their state.

Arizona lawmakers have just released a new bill, referred to as SB1433, that would allow it to essentially secede from the country without officially doing so.

How? By creating a 12-person committee that allows its members to vote by majority for or against federal, or national, law. While not officially removed from the nation and any of its mandates, the freedom allowed with the bill will give the state more leeway in what rulings are actually accepted within its borders...

If you look at all the rhetoric and shenanigans going on in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas lately, it's enough to cause a thinking person to scratch their head.

Well, I think I have a simple solution to this festering problem. Since all three states used to be part of Mexico, why don't we give them back?

Imagine their shock when the citizens in these states -- states that have each passed anti-immigration legislation -- wake up to discover that all their non-Latino residents are now the immigrants!! Imagine how all the white citizens will feel being asked to show their papers anytime Mexican authorities request it! Imagine how the white citizens will feel when the US Border Patrol rounds them up as they try to flee to Colorado, California, Utah or Arkansas!

Ooh, This IS Embarrassing

We all know how it has become too common, if you're on the Right and you rail loudly against the evils of homosexuality, that this indicates you most likely are a closeted homosexual. Well, it now seems to appear that this predilection extends to other issues as well!

Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs -- a man who has become rabid on the cause of anti-illegal immigration -- turns out to have been an employer of...drum roll, please...many illegal immigrants. Who would have thunk it?

In Lou Dobbs's heyday at CNN, when he commanded more than 800,000 viewers and a reported $6 million a year for "his fearless reporting and commentary," in the words of former CNN president Jonathan Klein, the host became notorious for his angry rants against "illegal aliens." But Dobbs reserved a special venom for the employers who hire them, railing against "the employer who is so shamelessly exploiting the illegal alien and so shamelessly flouting US law" and even proposing, on one April 2006 show, that "illegal employers who hire illegal aliens" should face felony charges.

...But with his relentless diatribes against "illegals" and their employers, Dobbs is casting stones from a house -- make that an estate -- of glass. Based on a yearlong investigation, including interviews with five immigrants who worked without papers on his properties, The Nation and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute have found that Dobbs has relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of his multimillion-dollar estates and the horses he keeps for his 22-year-old daughter, Hillary, a champion show jumper...

Sigh. What is the world coming too when you can't trust a conservative to tell the whole truth?

Another Voice on Immigration

I've posted this once before -- I think it was two years ago. I am posting it again because it speaks my mind. The snippet shown below was written by a blogger who went by the name, greenink. It was one of my two favorite blogs -- Church of the Churchless being the other -- back when I lived in Salem, Oregon.

Greenink's blog hasn't been updated in 2 1/2 years, though I check it every now and then. I will admit that I miss his writing a lot. The post I'm quoting from is entitled, "Easy immigration reform — legalize it".

...Make it legal to enter this country. End the dangerous desert crossings, the lucrative human trafficking trade and the stupid Minuteman vigilante border patrol. End the INS sweeps and the paperwork hassles for employers. Stop making people afraid to pay their taxes or send their kids to school. Legalize immigration and let workers demand good pay and benefits instead of taking whatever they can get, afraid to assert their rights to fair wages and fair treatments.

Morally, putting limits on immigration is wrong. Who gave anyone the right to say where someone else can and cannot live? What right do Americans, whose ancestors pillaged, plundered, murdered and stole their way across the continent, have to draw lines on the map and say, “this is ours, now go home”? What right does ANY government have to control people in this way?

When did America become a big country club, where we go out of our way to tell everyone how great we are and then tell them they can’t get in without a membership? Screw that. I say, if someone wants to come here, let them. Actually, “let” is the wrong word, because nobody has an inherent right to tell anyone else where they can go.

“But they are breaking the law,” people keep saying to me. Well, the law is wrong and deserves to be broken. People need to get over the idea that just because something is illegal, it’s morally wrong. No it’s not. There were a lot of perfectly legitimate laws passed in Nazi Germany back in the 1930s that no sane person would argue should have been obeyed.

If a law is clearly unjust — if it seeks to impoverish, discriminate or otherwise harm people — it should be ignored until it is repealed.

Think about it this way. You live in a small town. Most of the jobs are in a single large factory. It burns to the ground and the company decides not to rebuild. You have a family to support, so you drive to the city up the road to find work. But when you arrive, there are cops at the entrance to the city who refuse you entry because you don’t already live there. It seems the city council passed the law shortly after the factory in your town was burned.

What would you do? Go home?

The answer is simple. It’s called freedom, something Americans used to value above all else.

The Immigration Uproar

I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about the anti-immigration furor that is sweeping through many parts of the country. In my opinion, there are three chief components to it, one that tends to be discussed often and two that I rarely see mentioned at all.

Needless to say, conservatives -- particularly conservative Christian evangelicals -- are the ones leading the charge. While I believe their overall numbers aren't that large, they make up for their smallish size by voicing their opinions as nosily and frequently as possible. The mainstream media has a penchant for shining its spotlight on whomever can yell the loudest.

The first component is one we're all familiar with: racism. Latinos have a culture and language different than white America. They also look different. Add to this the fact that, in some states, demographic studies show that Latinos may become the majority ethnic group within a few generations and it's easy to understand why some in the white majority are going bonkers -- Groups responsible for much subjugation ALWAYS worry when it looks like the tables will be turned.

There are two other components, however, that I think sometimes are given a short shrift when discussing this issue. The first of these concerns the white conservative evangelical love-hate response to Latino immigrants.

On the love side, they love the fact that Latinos are willing to perform those icky dirty jobs that no upstanding white American would willingly choose to do. They understand the benefits to business owners and consumers alike in having workers who will toil away for minimum wage or less in horrible working conditions. It benefits the business owner because reduced costs means more money to pocket. It benefits consumers because it keeps prices for consumer goods within reach.

However, the very thing they love about Latino immigrants represents the very same thing they hate them for. Since these Latinos are willing to work in our fields and slaughterhouses as well as scrubbing our toilets and landscaping our palatial estates, they are willing to do the kind of work that any self-respecting white conservative evangelical would be loath to do!

This means that something must be inherently wrong with them!!! They must be a second class (or even sub-human) type of species to allow themselves willingly to be exploited. "Second class people" are not to be trusted because you never know how low they may stoop. So, it seems to me on this issue alone, many white conservative evangelicals are suffering from a woeful split personality disorder!

But it is the second of the rarely discussed components that I submit is the most important AND the driving force behind the increasing vitriol: Most Latino immigrants are CATHOLIC. The CIA world factbook reports that over 76% of Mexico's residents identify as Roman Catholic.

For me, this goes to the heart of one of the strange things about Christianity, in general, and evangelical Christianity, in particular. According to the overall Christian doctrine, people must 1) Accept the Christian God as the creator; 2) Accept Jesus Christ as a person's Lord and Savior; and 3) Believe that the bible is God's word. If you accept these three suppositions, then you're a Christian.

Aah, but not so fast! Evangelicals SAY that this represents the base criteria, but their words and actions seem to indicate otherwise. Though Catholics meet the three suppositions, many evangelicals don't consider Catholics to be full-fledged Christians and some don't consider them to be Christians at all. (The same could be said of Quakers, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses and several other groups too.)

Since overall Christian membership is declining and this trend has even been seen in many evangelical circles as well, the idea of Catholics streaming into the country is downright terrifying. The evangelical movement is already a minority and, if Catholic membership increases due to the influx of Latino immigrants, it will mean that the evangelical slice of the pie will grow ever smaller!

If you think that I'm being a bit over dramatic, then I ask you to consider the following. What if the vast majority of Mexicans were self-identified evangelical Christians? Do you think the evangelical movement would be bouncing off the walls like they are now?

The immigrants would help to swell their membership. The immigrants would help to swell their church budgets. These immigrants would make it possible for them to claim they represented the largest growing segment of the population in the country. It would mean increased standing AND increased influence (which is NOT to suggest they don't have influence now).

But alas, Latino immigrants are not predominantly evangelicals. So they must be thwarted at all costs.

Help Wanted

The United Farmworkers have started a campaign, Take Our Jobs, that borders on brilliant. It should help put to rest the wacky notion that the majority of illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from "red-blooded Americans!"

There are two issues facing our nation--high unemployment and undocumented people in the workforce--that many Americans believe are related.

Missing from the debate on both issues is an honest recognition that the food we all eat - at home, in restaurants and workplace cafeterias (including those in the Capitol) - comes to us from the labor of undocumented farm workers.

Agriculture in the United States is dependent on an immigrant workforce. Three-quarters of all crop workers working in American agriculture were born outside the United States. According to government statistics, since the late 1990s, at least 50% of the crop workers have not been authorized to work legally in the United States.

We are a nation in denial about our food supply. As a result the UFW has initiated the "Take Our Jobs" campaign.

Farm workers are ready to welcome citizens and legal residents who wish to replace them in the field. We will use our knowledge and staff to help connect the unemployed with farm employers.

Why is it that mainly foreigners from south of our borders make up the vast majority of farm workers? The reasons are many.

For starters, the pay is incredibly low -- particularly for the amount backbreaking work involved. And why is the pay so low? Because if it was higher, consumers -- especially during the current economic hard times -- wouldn't be able to purchase produce in adequate amounts. Far too many of us wouldn't be able to satisfy our daily nutritional needs and this might lead to food riots in the streets. No sitting political leader wants that!

Secondly, as mentioned above, the work is incredibly difficult. Except during the most extreme weather, farm workers are out in the fields for 6, 8, 10 or 12 hour days. I don't know about you, but the thought of toiling away in 95 degree heat isn't my idea of a picnic.

Thirdly, farm workers routinely are exposed to all sorts of noxious poisons and known carcinogens. In order to keep yields high, too many farmers use all sorts of pesticides. You don't see farm workers sporting haz mat suits, do you? Not at all. They get to breath it all in!

I'll be interested to see how many hundreds of thousands (yeh right) of unemployed legal residents flock to sign up for this program. What would be EVEN better is for Congress to adjourn for one week and for all of our able-bodied senators and representatives to take to the fields under typical working conditions. I bet the immigration debate would lose steam very quickly!

Blast From the Past

Back when I lived in places other than South Bend, one of my favorite blogs was GreenInk. For reasons I do not know, the blog went silent in October 2008 and nothing has been posted there since. It's a shame because the fellow who authored this blog was very insightful and, often, quite humorous.

One of my favorite posts, "Easy immigration reform — legalize it" is shown below in its entirety. Hopefully, GreenInk will one day rise again!

The Mexican Consulate’s road show rolled through Eugene over the weekend, handing out the controversial matricula consular cards to a few dozen people who are, in all likelihood, illegal immigrants. People without green cards or other legal papers use the matricula to get a drivers license and open bank accounts.

Big deal.

Predictably, a handful of protesters were on hand as well. You can see their comments and pictures from the event by going to orblogs.com and surfing through the usual suspects — Vonski, Gullyborg, etc.

(I at least give the locals credit for not acting like bigots, but sticking to their message about illegal immigration being, well, illegal, which is a fine argument that does absolutely nothing to address the real issues.)

Politicians love this sort of event, of course, because they can play to their closet-racist base while proclaiming they just want to uphold the law. Well, they should change the law!

Make it legal to enter this country. End the dangerous desert crossings, the lucrative human trafficking trade and the stupid Minuteman vigilante border patrol. End the INS sweeps and the paperwork hassles for employers. Stop making people afraid to pay their taxes or send their kids to school. Legalize immigration and let workers demand good pay and benefits instead of taking whatever they can get, afraid to assert their rights to fair wages and fair treatments.

Morally, putting limits on immigration is wrong. Who gave anyone the right to say where someone else can and cannot live? What right do Americans, whose ancestors pillaged, plundered, murdered and stole their way across the continent, have to draw lines on the map and say, “this is ours, now go home”? What right does ANY government have to control people in this way?

When did America become a big country club, where we go out of our way to tell everyone how great we are and then tell them they can’t get in without a membership? Screw that. I say, if someone wants to come here, let them. Actually, “let” is the wrong word, because nobody has an inherent right to tell anyone else where they can go.

“But they are breaking the law,” people keep saying to me. Well, the law is wrong and deserves to be broken. People need to get over the idea that just because something is illegal, it’s morally wrong. No it’s not. There were a lot of perfectly legitimate laws passed in Nazi Germany back in the 1930s that no sane person would argue should have been obeyed.

If a law is clearly unjust — if it seeks to impoverish, discriminate or otherwise harm people — it should be ignored until it is repealed.

Think about it this way. You live in a small town. Most of the jobs are in a single large factory. It burns to the ground and the company decides not to rebuild. You have a family to support, so you drive to the city up the road to find work. But when you arrive, there are cops at the entrance to the city who refuse you entry because you don’t already live there. It seems the city council passed the law shortly after the factory in your town was burned.

What would you do? Go home?

The answer is simple. It’s called freedom, something Americans used to value above all else.