Papers Please ...

"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian." -- Pat Paulsen

Protest Art

3 posters by Californian poet and artist Xico Gonzalez that I was given this last weekend at the Alto Arizona SB 1070 protest march:

Si Se Puede (Yes, We Can)

Today's protest of Arizona's anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, drew anywhere between 20,000 and 75,000 people, depending on who you listen to. The 5 mile march between Indian School Park and the Capitol was peaceful, multicultural and did not result in a single arrest, though you certainly wouldn't assume that considering the police presence:

I was heartened by all the groups in attendance.  You'd assume that it would only be Latinos, but there were a lot of Native Americans and African Americans, both as marchers and speakers.  They (and we) rightly see this as a basic issue of human rights. 

This might be an over-used (and over-revised) quote, but it still fits:

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

The spirit, creativity, and humor of all in attendance was evident:
 

I'm glad we went.  I think it was important to show our son the positive influence of a peaceful protest.  As they say, the family that protests together, stays together.  Maybe they don't say that ... but they should.

SB 1070 - anti-illegal immigration law

People are talking about this all over the place. Most have shown a remarkable lack of understanding of the law and its implications. I'm not interested in getting in flame wars in those places, so I'm just going to outline a few points here that you may not have thought about and then I'm not interested in talking about it any more:

- Police officers already have the power to arrest illegal immigrants and turn them over to the Border Patrol. This law will allow people to sue the police for both NOT enforcing the law and for racial profiling. It's an untenable law that even police think is BS. They will be damned if they do and damned if they don't.

- It requires police to make an effort to determine immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion". That is left within the police's discretion. How does an illegal look? I'll tell you, in the eyes of the police, he looks brown. That gives the them the right of asking legal American citizens for their proof of citizenship. If someone was in the country illegally from say, Canada or Ireland, what would make them identifiable by the police? Absolutely nothing! So, what makes our police so special that they can see something we cannot? They can't. That's the point. If you are brown, you are going down.

- If you are for this law, then you must be for all citizens carrying proof of their citizenship at all times and being required to provide it at the police's discretion. Sound familiar?

- In a already down economy, Arizona is doing something that is going to isolate them from the country in the world in a manner similar to what it did during the MLK day fiasco. I have personally spoken with business owners here who are getting cancellations by the truckload for resorts, hotels and conventions. There is a very real chance that Major League Baseball will relocate next year's All-Star game from Arizona. If our leaders want to be backwoods, ignorant xenophobes, do it somewhere else, because it is affecting the ability of non-racist people to make a living. This law, though signed, will not go into effect for at least 90 days. With all of the costly court challenges sure to come, I would suspect it may never go into effect. So, what has been accomplished? Nothing is done to help illegal immigration. The state will lose hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. The world will laugh at Arizona. Congratulations, Russell Pearce, Joe Arpaio, and Jan Brewer ... you are sure to go down unfavorably in the long list of Arizona political fuck-ups (Evan Mecham, Fife Symington).

"Reasonably Suspicious"

Some of those that work forces ...

"Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses ..." -- "Killing in the Name of" - Rage Against the Machine

From the Arizona Republic:

Mesa police plan to discipline an officer who admitted making an obscene gesture as he drove past pro-immigrant protesters Wednesday in a marked police vehicle.

Sgt. Mike Doherty, a 20-year veteran, admitted he made obscene gestures "due to his general distaste for protesters," according to Holly Hosac, a Mesa police spokeswoman.

Doherty was in uniform when he passed about 30 members of Immigrants Without Borders, an immigrant advocacy group that has protested in the past against crackdowns on undocumented immigrants by Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The group was protesting peacefully at Alma School Road and Main Street. Several group members reported an officer displaying an obscene gesture twice as he drove past them. Information from witnesses led police to identify Doherty.

"While Doherty stated that he did not know what the demonstration was about, he acknowledged his actions were inappropriate and unprofessional," Hosac wrote in a press release.

Police Chief George Gascón said the department is required to respect the Constitutional rights of everyone, saying, "there is no justifiable reason for this type of behavior."

Police said disciplinary action against Doherty is pending but did not elaborate. He was working as a school resources officer for the past two weeks, but will be reassigned, police said.

I personally know several policemen and their intentions are noble and they seem to be in law enforcement for the right reasons. But civil service, whether it be police or politics, can also attract those that seek nothing but power. The goal of both should be to be the voice for those that don't have a voice.

This police officer should have been vigorously defending this group's right to protest. Instead, while in a position of authority, he let his inner-racist show.

One Day You’re Gonna Wake Up

One Day You’re Gonna Wake Up
by David Michael Green

One day you’re gonna wake up, America.

And, like every other one since last you can remember, it’s gonna be an ugly morning.

One day you’re gonna wake up and go to your lousy job with its lousy salary and non-existent benefits. You might even remember the good job you once had. Or that the government you once supported gave tax breaks to companies like the one that exported that good job of yours to the Third World (which is what they’re now starting to call your country). Or that that same government undermined the labor unions which fought to get you your good wages and benefits.

One day you’re gonna wake up and be furious at the monstrous tax burden you are carrying, a tab which accounts for fifty of the seventy hours you must work each week just to eke by. You might even figure out why your tax bill is so high. You might remember that the government you once supported shifted the tax burden from the rich onto people like you, and from the taxpayers of the time onto those of today. And that they borrowed money in astonishing quantities to fund their sleight-of-hand, so that you work thirty hours a week just to pay the interest on a mountain of money borrowed decades ago.

One day you’re gonna wake up in anger at the absurdly poor education your children are receiving. You’re gonna remember that it wasn’t always that way, that even after the military’s voracious appetite was temporarily sated, your country still managed to find a few bucks to at least educate a workforce. No more. And you’re gonna remember how you applauded when your educational system was twisted in to a test taking industry that is careful, above all, not to teach children how to think.

One day you’re gonna wake up literally sick and tired. You’re gonna want treatment for your maladies but you won’t be able to touch the cost. You’re gonna wonder what you were thinking when believed your country had the best healthcare system in the world, even though it was the only advanced democracy in the world that didn’t provide universal care, even though it devoted fifty percent more of its economy than those other countries to pay for a system that left fifty million people uninsured, and even though there were massive layers of unnecessary and harmful private sector bureaucracy skimming hundreds of billions of dollars of profits out of the system in the name of free enterprise.

One day you’re gonna wake up too tired to go to work anymore. You’re gonna want to retire in dignity but will be left instead to laugh bitterly at the cruelty of that joke. And you’re gonna wonder what in the world you had been thinking voting for a president who’s primary goal was to allow Wall Street to raid Social Security, destroying what had once been considered the most successful domestic program in human history.

One day you’re gonna wake up and wish that it wasn’t so bloody hot, and that there weren’t so many diseases and species eradications and violent storms lashing the planet. And maybe you’ll even remember that you once supported a government that lied about the very existence of global warming - back when it might have been curtailed - a government that scuttled the barest remedy for the problem in order to protect oil company profits.

One day you’re gonna wake up and wish you had a government that could simply and competently do the basic things it was designed for. A government that could protect you from foreign attack, that could come to your rescue after a devastating hurricane, that could properly manage a new program or other people’s security. An administration that didn’t pervert the purpose of every agency within the government to its opposite, using civil rights lawyers to fight civil rights, for example, or the EPA to protect polluters.

One day you’re gonna wake up and cry out for simple justice, blindly applied without bias. And perhaps you’ll remember when that principle died. When your country stood by and watched the politicization of its judicial system for purposes of partisanship, and said nothing. When it stood by and watched its highest law enforcement officials in the land lie about their failing memory of events and pretended to believe that was acceptable.

One day you’re gonna wake up and wish that you weren’t being drafted to go fight wars you don’t believe in. You’ll remember how soldiers were sent to their deaths for lies. You’ll remember how badly they were treated when they came home maimed and twisted. You’ll remember how real, patriotic, former soldiers were mocked and humiliated by dress-up, unpatriotic, former non-soldiers. And suddenly you’ll understand why no one would volunteer for the military anymore, and why people like you had to be drafted.

One day you’re gonna wake up and want very badly to run outside and scream in anger about a government that long ago stopped serving your interests in favor of the narrow interests of a tiny oligarchy. But instead you’ll stay inside and keep your scream tucked safely in your belly. Because you’ll know that in your country dissent has long since been outlawed, on pain of torture and death. You’ll remember concepts like due process, limitations on government search, seizure and wiretapping, habeas corpus, trial by peers, legal representation and prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment as historical artifacts no longer even taught in schools.

On day you’re gonna wake up and want so badly to change governments. You’re gonna treasure the concept of democracy like no Soviet dissident ever did. You’re gonna crave the opportunity to own your own government, to make your own societal choices, to make a change of direction never before so desperately necessary. And you’re gonna wonder why you didn’t speak up as you watched first-hand the dismantling of the democracy you had been handed by previous generations of patriots. You’re gonna wish you had been patriotic enough yourself to demand, above all else, free and fair elections, and you’re gonna shake your head in puzzlement at how you stood by watching in silence those that patently were not.

One day you’re gonna wake up and want to get the hell out of your rotting, repressive country. You’re gonna remember a time when that wasn’t true. But, oddly enough, you’ll find that other countries remember too. They’ll remember your country’s arrogance, its unilateralism, its walls, its racism, and its politicized abuse of immigrants. And they’ll remember how your government undermined and violently replaced theirs whenever corporations from your country had their profits threatened. You’re gonna want to leave, but there will be nowhere you’ll be welcome. You’re gonna find out that walls can face both directions.

One day you’re gonna wake up in a hostile world where your country no longer has any friends. There will be governments of other countries - former long-standing allies - that cannot afford to have anything to do with you, lest their publics angrily remove them from office for collaborating with a country as hated as yours. Nor will those governments trust yours anyway. They will perhaps possess intelligence that could save your life, but they will not share it. They will possess forces that could help you survive real security threats, but they will not provide them. Your country will have become an international pariah, the South Africa of the twenty-first century.

And because no one will assist you, one day you’re gonna wake up fearing for your life as your country is brutally attacked by angry militants deploying weapons of mass destruction against your cities. Long dormant connections in your brain will resurface, and you will dimly understand why. On this day - perhaps March 20, 2023 - you might be assisted in your comprehension by the message of one of the attackers, someone whose family your country callously destroyed in its mission accomplished in Iraq, and who spent the next twenty years plotting this day’s revenge. And you will wonder again why you stood by as your country attacked Iraq on a completely bogus pretext. You’ll remember applauding when this mailed fist was long ago sent. And, just as it comes hurling back in your direction at a lethal velocity, stamped “Return to Sender”, you’ll wonder what you were thinking. And you’ll realize just how much you weren’t.

One day you’re gonna wake up, America, and you’re gonna find out what was happening while you were sprawled on the couch watching endless mind-numbing loops of CSI, Desperate Housewives or Dancing with the Stars.

One day you’re gonna wake up and realize that catching all the action during week seven of the 2011 NFL season really wasn’t so critical in the greater scheme of things after all.

One day you’re gonna wake up and wished you’d invested a little more energy into monitoring and choosing the people who made monumental decisions on your behalf.

One day, with a flash of remorse greater than you thought it possible that one human vessel could contain, you’ll remember the ignored warning shots across your bow. Moments later, you’ll discover the human capacity for searing remorse is actually even greater still, as you contemplate your inattention even to the shots that were fired right through the bow. With a fury you would yesterday have thought yourself incapable of, you’ll hurriedly attempt to affix Band-Aids to the tattered splinters remaining from your country’s once sturdy hull. But you’ll learn quickly the toll of those years spent wasted in a civic coma. You’ll find that no amount of patchwork can any longer save this sinking ship from its appointment with the dustbin of history.

In shame, you’ll regret the callous arrogance with which you laughingly dismissed those who sounded the early clarion call. “We are destroying ourselves”, they tried to tell you. But even on the rare occasion when you roused yourself from your stupor long enough to learn the slightest bit about the very threats that jeopardized your life and that of your species, still you found it more reassuring to follow the blustering worst amongst us, with their patently absurd pretended confidence, and their ever constant resort to the cheapest of false solutions, and the rudest of demeanors.

One day, you’ll desperately search for hope of any sort, but none will remain. Nothing will be left to save you.

One day you’ll realize that once there were solutions, but that that day is now long past. You’ll see that human technological capacity ran its evolutionary race with wisdom, and the latter came in second. You’ll sadly realize that you stood by while your country led the once great tool-making species to its own destruction.

One day you’re gonna wake up, America, and realize how far it’s all gone. But if that day isn’t very soon, it won’t matter.

Because one day you’re gonna wake up, and it will be far, far too late.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York

The Myth of Illegal Immigration Crime

If you asked most people, they would indicate to you that an increase of immigration (legal and illegal) would spell the doom of their community. "There goes the neighborhood." But a new study would find fault with this assumption. Study: Immigrant crime rate low:

By MARLA JO FISHER
The Orange County Register
IRVINE – Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, according to a study released Monday by a UC Irvine professor for the Immigration Policy Center, based in Washington D.C.

UCI sociology professor Ruben Rumbaut found that immigrants of all national backgrounds were incarcerated at much lower rates than their American-born counterparts, according to the 2000 Census. The numbers applied to both legal and illegal immigrants.

His study also described a precipitous drop in crime rates nationwide throughout recent years – a period during which immigration has been at all-time record high. "While immigration is going up, crime is going down," Rumbaut said. "I think it's important to get the facts out there."

"Even as the undocumented population has doubled to 12 million since 1994, the violent crime rate in the United States has declined 34.2 percent and the property crime rate has fallen 26.4 percent," according to the report.

That crime drop was true even in cities with large immigrant populations such as Los Angeles or Miami, the report said. Orange County was not studied specifically.

According to the study, 3.5 percent of American-born men aged 18 to 39 were incarcerated in jails or prisons in 2000, compared to 0.7 percent of foreign-born men – five times higher.

The risk of incarceration went up significantly by the second or third generations of immigrants, according to the study.

John Keeley, spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank focused on immigration reform, disputed the results of the study and said census data for incarcerated and other institutionalized people were flawed in 2000.

Keeley added that migrant communities tend to underreport crimes and that all immigrant criminals might not be in jail.

Keeley also said that the children of immigrants posed a crime problem not considered in the statistics.

"That is something we intend to monitor in terms of gang activity and truancy," Keeley said.

Rumbaut co-authored the study with Harvard University professor Walter A. Ewing.

They reported that "the impression that immigration and criminality are linked" is a myth fueled by political expediency and groups with outside agendas.

Rumbaut said politicians frequently exploit fears about immigrant crime for their own purposes – or pander to uninformed voters. While immigrants may underreport crimes, the data still holds true for homicides and other crimes that are fully reported, he said.

"There has been a Mount Everest of data going back 100 years that indicates immigrants have a low crime rate," Rumbaut said.

So why do we continue to associate immigration with violent crime and property crime? And please spare me the line about all illegal immigrants already having committed a crime by being here. It's not constructive and it's not relevant to this study.

A lot of it is human nature. Throughout history, we have tried to blame the outsiders for anything that goes wrong (Jews, Italians, Irish, etc.). A lot of it is xenophobia. "Those people don't look like us or sound like us. They don't worship the right God."

And a lot of it is that those people that we should be able to trust to be level-headed and truthful mislead us. President Bush's Immigration Reform Address

"Illegal immigration puts pressure on public schools and hospitals, it strains state and local budgets, and brings crime to our communities."

If you have concerns about immigration ... fine. Many people have valid ones. But don't try to pretty up your racism by saying that you are only concerned about our safety.