A week ago I read (nytimes.com) about abuses of illegal immigrants by large scale US
farmers. The abuses have been highlighted for many years by human rights
activists, but recently Americans, many of them African American, who live
close to the farms but can’t get work are adding their voices to the protest.
They say they are discouraged from applying for work even, and treated very
badly. Farmers prefer to employ illegal Mexican workers because they’re easier
to exploit and abuse.
Generally, the
comments to the article were expressions of disgust that abuses were happening
at all. One of them, though, Amanda Burton of Oakland California, had this to
say:
“Here's my experience
as a California employer in food processing with close ties to local farmers:
immigrant workers of all ethnicities, legal or illegal, work very hard, are
generally smart contributors to their job processes, and are loyal to employers
who treat them with consideration.
“Americans of all
ethnic backgrounds, on the other hand, do not want the jobs we offer and in the
rare instances where they take them (or are placed into them by well-intended
social service agencies) are unable to keep up with the team, have poor work
skills and poorer attitudes, are untrustworthy and unreliable, and never in my
experience stay longer than a few weeks.
“Oh, and the children of immigrant workers are
remarkable for carrying full academic loads AND working productively alongside
their parents.”
Scary mentality;
recommending a system that exploits children for their labor and believing that
children who are forced to work in the fields so families can barely survive
and farmers can make a fat profit, are somehow noble. As for the racism, cheaply plastered over with
Protestant work ethic, it’s beyond scary.
That American farmers are
still treating illegal Mexican workers like dogs is beyond horrifying. These are the same people who don’t want the Mexican
workers to have legal status because then they’ll have rights they can fight
for. That African Americans don't want to work under such terrible conditions
and be treated like animals is a good sign, not a bad one. Exploitation is not
a good thing.
I've found in my life
that people who are neurotically entitled and are driven by greed and bigotry,
and happily exploit others, are quick to stick the denigrating label
"lazy" on anybody who won't let themselves be abused. It's a cheap
trick.
I've also found that
people who let themselves be exploited often can't face the shame of what the
exploitation says about their intrinsic worth. They side with the exploiter.
The truth is, it's the people who object to exploitation even when they're
desperately in need of work who are the most courageous. African Americans who refuse to let themselves be abused
deserve the utmost respect. After all, it's what led to the abolition of slavery.
On Tuesday President
Obama spoke to a high school in Las Vegas about immigration reform that can’t
be put off any longer, and the proposals a bipartisan group of Senators had
presented to him the day before. He agreed with most of the points but also
said that if Congress delays on their response he will put forward proposals of
his own and call for a vote.
Richard Quest, speaking to
Julie Myers Davis, former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, ICE, on Quest Means
Business, Jan 29, said “let's be realistic. There is no way that the
Republicans are going to give a Democrat president at this particular point in
the -- who's already -- who's already routed them on the budget and the fiscal
issues, another victory on immigration.”
Julie Myers Davis didn’t agree, although she deftly avoided
saying anything directly committal about what she would like to see in reform. She spoke about something real needing to be
done and parties putting aside their differences. Which has become
Republican-speak for ‘why won’t Obama let us have our way, the selfish bastard’.
But New Jersey
Democrat Senator Robert Menendez said “Democrats want it. Republicans need it”
which pretty much sums up why reforms are likely to happen this time round, and
why Congress isn’t going to win this round if they put up too much resistance.
It’s a pity that humanity
and good sense won’t be the driving force behind the Republican change of
heart. That it won’t means trouble down the line for them because they will
revert and make life as difficult as possible for present illegal immigrants as
soon as they think they can get away with it. But that won’t affect the
immediate outcome.
In his speech yesterday
President Obama pointed out that once all Americans were immigrants escaping
persecution or an impossibly difficult life, looking for something better. A
point that seems to be lost on the people who are so passionately resistant to
any kind of reform that gives undocumented immigrants legal status.
At the same time that
President Obama’s speech was being aired on CNN, Christiane Amanpour gave this
issue a human face, by talking to an 11 year old boy Jose Garcia Ramirez, born
in the US to a father from Guatemala who is illegally in the country, and to
Viridiana Hernandez, a Hispanic college student from Arizona who is also
undocumented, and who fights for immigration reform as an activist. Both of their stories were difficult to hear.
Jose’s father was torn
from him by members of ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) – wearing
jackets bearing the logo, surely something to fill any illegal immigrant with
terror - when he was getting into the car to take his kids to school. The
cruelty of that is beyond measure. The children were traumatized, and watching a
distraught Jose talk about it, trying not to cry, trying to be brave, was
heartbreaking.
He said his father was
supposed to have been deported that morning, but so far he hadn’t been. The
game ICE played with that family was like executioners standing with their guns
pointed and firing blanks at the last moment, but with the threat of the next
time firing real bullets. Jose and his family are left without means of
survival beyond their community, as the father was the breadwinner.
Veridiana’s story,
although she wasn’t facing immediate trauma, was equally shocking. She spoke of
how she grew up with constant humiliation and being treated as if she didn’t
deserve respect, as if she was worthless and stupid. Despite that – and that
she faces the danger of being deported every day of her life – she has grown up
to be a remarkable, beautiful young woman, courageously fighting for her own
rights and those of her community.
Perhaps Jose’s father
will get amnesty, because of the publicity, and that will be a wonderful thing.
But what about all the other lives that get smashed up every day by a system
that parades as being there to protect the American people but is partly driven
by plain old racism and fear of people losing a world that’s familiar, a world that
gives them a sense of knowing who and where they are, a feeling of being safe. A world they know somewhere deep within that they can’t hold onto.
Just like Facebook’s
options for relationships, ‘it’s complicated’. But the meanness of some
Americans, the ease with which they shut off their humanity, and the cruelty of
their behavior towards undocumented immigrants makes it so hard to have
any compassion for them. Added to which, many of those immigrants are doing work that their
employers think is beneath them, often being paid dirt wages by the very people
who despise them so that the latter can sustain a certain lifestyle that
contributes to their own sense of self worth.
Here’s the thing; when we
lose our humanity, we lose the plot for ourselves and our dignity is under seige.
In the end we suffer at a core level. So in a way those Americans who are so resistant to
immigration reform are kind of being rescued from themselves by shifting demographics that are
out of their control, and by a President who has won enough battles with
Congress to have shifted the power. Good guys sometimes win.
Images in the Public Domain: President Obama, Christiane Amanpour (juxtaposed J. Stewart)
Nowhere has the divide between the kind of rational
thinking that results from a deep-rooted emotional fluency and the thinking
that is muscle bound with fear and prejudice been more apparent in any western
society than in America in the time leading up to the 2012 Presidential
elections. The country was and still is almost split down the middle between
the two. Almost. But, miraculously,
there was enough of an imbalance to create a momentum towards health.
Dealing with somebody over-run by their fear is intensely
frustrating because of the denial. They’re always unable to acknowledge their
fear, which means they can’t see how neurotic their behavior is. They have a
kind of logic to their thinking, but its premise is hopelessly limited and
their hallmark is that they shift with the wind and are constantly looking for
opportunities to manipulate.
It’s the profile of a bully, whose only desire is for
power, and who will do whatever they can to get it, regardless of the impact on
anyone else. Regardless even of the long-term impact on them. In the US,
Conservative Republicans have illustrated this so beautifully in the past four
years. Congress doggedly set out to resist anything President Obama put before
them, regardless of whether it was ultimately good for America or not.
In fact a good yardstick for what was good for the country
was if Congress blocked it. Their blind spot was their inability to recognize
that Third World elements have become a part of the US in a way they never have
before. The US civilization was disintegrating at the core, and as with the
decline of any civilization, those causing it wouldn’t acknowledge that it was
happening or that they were instrumental in it.
For a long time globally the First World didn’t want to
have much to do with the massive poverty and disempowerment that characterizes
the Third World. But gradually the more enlightened have accepted that if you
don’t deal with poverty it deals with you. Countries with huge disparity of
wealth have had to recognize it. But I think conservative America hasn’t wanted
want to acknowledge that it’s a US problem too. America isn’t supposed to be
Third World. It’s supposed to be a world leader.
But like all civilizations that get too powerful and
over-reach themselves, the country started eating itself up, creating a
polarity that only the blind could ignore, until the middle class was in danger
of disappearing altogether. It’s the mistake that the over-powerful always make
– they want somebody else to pay for their wealth and/or power and don’t
realize they’re killing the golden goose. For a while they can ignore the
consequences of their behavior, which only makes them greedier and more
reckless.
Eventually the class they rely on to create wealth for them
is bled dry. The stupidity of it is mind-boggling. And it’s not as if history
hasn’t illustrated this process over and over. There is never another outcome.
Humans aren’t built to be disempowered, so they will always rebel at some
critical point and correct the imbalance. We do it as societies and in our
private lives. In the latter we usually have to hit a severe crisis.
America was going the same way. The middle class was
becoming poorer and poorer and the poor were falling off the edge of the earth.
But the country produced a leader who recognized that unless the middle class
was nurtured back into its power and allowed opportunity again, unless the
burden of carrying the wealthy was taken off its back, the US would
disintegrate completely.
Of course conservative Republicans resisted. Of course they
did everything in their power to obstruct President Obama in his first term.
They didn’t want him to succeed, even if it cost them and the whole country.
Such is the power of fear of losing what you’ve amassed in unhealthy and
manipulative ways. But the narrow-minded, self destructive, short-term thinking
that drives conservative Republicans has had its day, because their supporters
are outnumbered. Unless they change they will die out.
Survival of the fittest in the best, most humane sense.
When the election results were announced, everyone was saying $6 billion was
spent but nothing has changed. They were wrong. Everything has changed. America
has had its revolution so quietly that half the country doesn’t even realize
it’s happened. The kind of reasoning that is about the health of individuals
and societies has triumphed over corrupted power. America remains a world
leader, but a new era of that leadership is dawning.
People with a predisposition to violence or oppression always
have short memories. Take Texas. From the anger conservatives hold towards Mexican 'illegal' immigrants,
anybody would think Texas has always belonged to Americans. But it hasn’t
and I’m not just talking about it being stolen from American Indians. Once
Europeans had done that, Americans were in fact the
original illegal immigrants in Texas. And they disobeyed the law.
By 1803 the Louisiana Territory (15
current states including northern Texas) ‘belonged’ to the French and Napoleon
sold it to the United States. Texas was included in the deal. A new boundary
was set between it and New Spain to the west, which was ignored by US settlers
wanting to push west. So they were the first illegal immigrants with no respect
for the local law.
They were a minority at that point. 21
years later Mexico took over that Spanish part of Texas and to increase the
population, the Mexican government relaxed immigration laws, granting land to empresarios
who recruited settlers from the US, Europe and Mexico. By 1825 the population
of Texas was about 3,500, most of them Mexican, but within 9 years it had grown
to around 37,800, and only 20% were of Mexican descent.
Many American Texans openly flouted Mexican
law, particularly the prohibition against slavery. So in 1830 Mexico prohibited
further immigration from the US, and imposed stringent customs duties. The
latter of course angered everybody, not just the US immigrants. And thus began
the Texan fight for independence from Mexico. In part because the Mexican
government abhorred slavery and the American Texans found it useful.
Considering Texan history, the
conservative resentment of Mexicans is absurd. It’s common knowledge that ‘illegal
immigrants’ prop up the Texan economy. I wonder how much of the desire to
secede from the US is driven by this racism. As always racism sows the seeds of
its holder’s destruction. This is what ultra conservatives always do. Ignore
reality. Ignore the facts. Fabricate whatever supports your prejudice.
This is how I envision life would be
in an independent Texas. No more government aid. No more cheap labour. Higher
taxes for the middle class because of course the wealthy wouldn’t pay. And
that’s the middle class who’d be doing the work they think is beneath them. Hardly
a recipe for a strong economy and happy citizens. Then there are all the guns.
Well you can’t shoot yourself out of a flagging economy.
And besides, who would they shoot? All
their enemies would be gone. They’d have to shoot each other. Conservative
Texans who want stricter immigration laws and want to secede from the United
States would do well to read their history books, take some lessons in the
value of human rights and be done with fabricating. They should get rid of
their guns too.
The hatred of illegal immigrants is
tragic and the whole scenario of secession is so absurd it’s hard to take it
seriously. But when you add the guns, the fear of Mexican immigrants and disregard for
their human rights, the propensity to rationalise with twisted logic and
absence of truth, you’ve got a mix that could be lethal. The Middle East
doesn’t have the monopoly on violent liberation organizations.
Could it happen in America? Surely
not. I hope not. The light in the tunnel here is that, just as in the 1800’s
American immigrant population that started out as a minority quickly became a
majority, it’s happening in Texas too, the other way round. Ironic.
