Illegals Today

Poor Margaret Wente. Her American ancestory [her family left the U.S. after the War of 1812], female gender and German name give her a lot to be worried about. She's going to end up apologizing and paying reparations to herself for all the immigrant wrongs of her ancestors!

"Canada has honed the arithmetic of grievance to the second decimal point. We are, as Joe Clark said, a community of communities, each with its own set of gripes. Even as Stephen Harper prepared his apologies for the Chinese head tax, members of the Sikh community were demanding redress for the harsh treatment of their great-grandfathers aboard the Komagata Maru. That's the ship that was forced back to India after trying to land in Vancouver in 1914. "We want a clear and unequivocal apology from the government of Canada," said B.C. politician Raj Chouhan. "We have an apology for the Chinese head tax. We have an apology for Japanese internment. Why not an apology for the Komagata Maru?" . . .

The [Canadian] government has a pot of money for a program called Acknowledgment, Commemoration and Education. Victim groups are swarming to this pot as bees to nectar. According to government records released to the Winnipeg Free Press, Ukrainians want $12.5-million for their internment during the First World War. The Germans want $12.5-million, too. The Italians want $12.5-million for the internment of 700 men during the Second World War. The Sikhs want $4-million, the Croats $2.8-million, and the Jews $2-million for being barred from immigrating to Canada between 1923 and 1945. African Canadians and Doukhobors want another $7-million for unspecified grievances.

What happens when identity lobbyists are allowed to rewrite history? Take a guess. Some of those interned Italians, for example, were no doubt treated unjustly. But plenty of them were loyal fascists with a fierce allegiance to the Axis cause. "With a backroom accord, the government and community associations are -- unwittingly, I hope -- trying to treat a group of fascists as innocent bystanders," wrote Angelo Principe, a former University of Toronto professor who is an expert on the history of the internees."

Read the whole piece at Canada's community of victims

Cross posted at Collecting My Thoughts:

"The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., announced today that former President Bill Clinton, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are among the confirmed speakers for the upcoming NCLR Annual Conference which will be held July 8-11 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA.

“We are deeply honored that President Clinton has accepted our invitation to address more than 2,000 community leaders from across the nation, and we are also excited by the wide array of speakers from the worlds of business, labor, government, nonprofits, and politics who will be joining us at this year’s Conference,” stated Janet Murguía, NCLR President and CEO." But it's just for lunch. News release

Today's selection for coffee shop reading was Chapter 23, "Immigration and Education in the United States," Companion to American Immigration (Blackwell, 2006) by Paula S. Fass, a Professor of History at UC Berkeley, and editor of Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society. I've already written here about the foundational Marxism in many of these essays, but it is also important to hear the drumbeat for distinctive and continued separateness of La Raza, based on what these writers see as important patterns in the immigration of the 19th century.

"The absence of homogeneity in population, experience, and social habits was from the beginning an American characteristic, related to the unsystematic manner in which the British North American colonies were settled." p.492 However, she is careful to announce that the "expansive definition" of immigration [i.e. colonizers of Spanish and French America, African slaves, and British settlers of the east coast] will not be used in her chapter on education.

This technique of severing the United States from its northern European, British and African roots--its entire pre-civil war history--permeates modern immigration studies. It also effectively isolates the authors' views from the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the rise of a republican and representative form of government, the various contracts and creeds of the early colonists, the national debate on slavery and any struggles and accomplishments of European people who had endured great hardship to strike out for more freedom and liberty.

Since we didn't have a huge federal goverment in the 19th century pulling every string from prayer to safety belts to grams of fat, leftist scholarship superimposes a mythical federal nanny on U.S. history of education, which Fass says was an important expression of the development of state authority as the American economy grew. "Nineteenth schooling (which was virtually all under local control) intersected in important ways (a favorite academic phrase)" with "the growth of industry and the need for a disciplined well-socialized labor force which the schools could provide. . . Schooling permitted public oversight of the habits and manners of the young." It [the hodge podge of common schools, academies and colleges] became a system tied to the state. "Above all, they [immigrant children] were exposed to a social institution not within their parents' control." All efforts by the immigrants to retain their culture were "strangled by the nativist sentiment and laws." Poor confused parents--by 1870 61.1% of the children of the United States were enrolled in school, becoming upwardly mobile, and leaving the lower classes! If it weren't for the fact that so many home-schoolers are Christians, analogies could have been drawn in this essay to that movement as a desire of parents to keep the education of children within their control

Bi-lingual education is lauded here--even trotting out the 19th century German schools and Italian language classes that flourished in various communities before WWI. But statistics have a sneaky way of over riding myths. For instance, Fass notes that Asian immigrants are less likely to be bi-lingual than children of Hispanics. She also concludes that more Jews than Italians, more Magyars and Czechs than Poles, and more Japanese than Mexicans took advantage of an educational system designed to be a tool of the government as it consolidated its power for the benefit of industry, and "suppressed home language."

So which groups were/are more successful and less likely to flounder in the bottom quintile? One might conclude that the goal of "immigration studies" is to keep a "forever poor" class in America.

Here's what I've got so far:

Table of Contents

Gender and Immigration

The scholarship of immigration studies

The gatekeepers

Halls of Ivy need weeding

Food for thoughts

The Marxist foundation of this book

Immigration and education

Immgration, mobility and residency

Immigration and race relations

This midwife can't understand the training being given to Border Patrol. She's got a check list on how to do it. Read it here.

This is a news release summarizing Pamela Starr's longer article for the Council on Foreign Relations which will be updated after July 2.

"The victor of Mexico’s hotly contested July 2, 2006 presidential election will inherit significant domestic policy challenges and a bumpy relationship with the United States. “How these problems are addressed during the six-year tenure of the new president will determine Mexico’s economic and political course well into the future,” says a new Council Special Report."

and stuff cotton in your ears for about 15 minutes to prepare for reading Suzanne M. Sinke's essay on "Gender and Immigration" in A Companion to American Immigration (Blackwell, 2006), my choice for vacation reading at the lake and my companion at the coffee shop this morning. From "women used their consumption roles to support the war (i.e. the Revolutionary War)" to "polygyny was a more widespread idea than monogamy" to citing herself in journals you've never heard of (so they should spell out the acronym), this essay has it all.

Sinke is an associate professor of history at Florida State University and seems to write about Dutch women and immigration. I haven't followed up on this hunch, but her one book is probably her PhD thesis tuned up and tweaked.

Perhaps this is Blackwell's template for its "Companions to American History" series, but I'm very surprised to see all the essayists relying so heavily on secondary and tertiary sources in the references, (NYT, Le Monde, Civil War History). The primary sources do exist (like United Nations studies), but they are extremely difficult to sort out in parentheses next to parenthetical phrases.

My "summer reading" is not chick-lit at the beach. I am at Lake Erie, but the book I've brought along is "A companion to American Immigration" (see table of contents at my regular blog, Collecting My Thoughts).

Erika Lee begins her essay (Chapter One) with, "When the act [Chinese Exclusion Act] was passed in May [1882] the United States took on a new role as a gatekeeping nation, one which used immigration laws to exclude, restrict, and control allegedly dangerous foreigners, often on the basis of race, ethnicity, class and sexuality." (p.5)

Ms. Lee is an associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota and writes about Chinese immigration. Race, language, gender and ethnicity have been the mother lode of history "studies" and "survey" courses at universities for over forty years*--so much so that their mines are filling with the water of speculation. Ms. Lee and others are coming to the rescuse with immigration laws and policies to throw into the mix.

The gate theme continues and her views are clear within four paragraphs: liberal, unrestricted immigration policies are a force for progress, and restrictive measures legalize racism and discrimination.

I know a bit about gatekeeping myself--having been a peer reviewer and a member of the promotion and tenure committee in my own field. As it applies to scholarly research, the gatekeepers don't allow opposing views into the pipeline of journals or monographs, so young faculty must toe the line, or not receive a green card contract to teach, or citizenship tenure.

*I was at the birthing of the Russian Language and Area Studies Dept. at the University of Illinois when I was a student.

Yesterday's WSJ (June 22, A1) reported that there's not much incentive to be a "good politician" in Mexico. "Of the 10 million Mexican immigrants in the United States--legally and illegally--fewer than 50,000 have bothered to register to vote [in Mexico]. . . Migration not only removes voters, it also makes a certain kind of patronage less important. Fewer voters are lining up for low-paying government jobs or subsidized government loans because they know they can count on money sent home by relatives living in the U.S."

Why do our elected officials think this is a good system?

Today I was talking to a friend about her daughter's nanny search. The last one she interviewed was an undocumented immigrant from Ireland. The woman didn't accept the job, but apparently it was offered.

What are people thinking!

"If you think these critics [of demonstrations in the U.S.] are mad about U.S. immigration policy now, imagine how upset they would be if we adopted an approach far more radical than the bill they rail against which was adopted last year by the House of Representatives - namely, the way Mexico treats illegal aliens." Center for Security Policy. Following its links you get to "Mexico's Glass House" which pretty much confirms an article I found in Lexis Nexis about the classism in Mexico's citizenship.

• Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.
• Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.
• Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.
• Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities.
• Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.

No wonder their citizens try so hard to stay here, and not go home.

Eighty-five percent of the firefighting crews in Oregon and Washington who fight forest fires are Hispanic. No one really knows if they are legal--the assumpution is they are not, but it takes months to check and employers only have to make a good-faith effort. Pew estimates that half of the 300,000 Hispanics in Oregon are illegal, so the percentage is probably about the same for firefighters from that state. But they certainly don't speak English, which can make understanding your crew chief a little dicey. Story here.

We were in Montana (Glacier National Park) in 2003 during the worst fire season in years, and I'm pretty sure we heard at the lodge that the locals were part of the crews and used this gig as extra income. No Americans for these jobs?

This story is being used as one more "what if" we really cracked down. We'd go up in smoke. Just remember the same lame excuses were used to keep slavery going.

with fake documents, because they’d be encouraging them if they didn’t. Huh? The price of a cup of coffee just went up.

"Rafael Ruiz, an undocumented worker, was employed by Farmers Brothers Coffee as a manual laborer. He had used a fake social security card and fake green card to get the job. After repeatedly lifting heavy sacks of coffee beans, the 35-year-old Mexican native injured his shoulders, back, and neck. He then put a false social security number on a workers' comp claim form and was awarded benefits. Farmers Brothers contested the award, but the workers' comp judge, followed by the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board, confirmed that Ruiz was an employee for the purposes of workers' comp. The employer appealed that ruling to California's Second Appellate District. [and lost]"

"California's Second Appellate District affirmed the appeals board's order denying reconsideration. Because the California Workers' Compensation Act benefits aren't a penalty imposed on the employer and there's no provision in the Act imposing penalties for the employment of illegal aliens, it doesn't conflict with any federal law. The court explained that the Act's purpose is "to furnish, expeditiously and inexpensively, treatment and compensation for persons suffering workplace injury, irrespective of the fault of any party, and to secure workplace safety." The court further emphasized that California law has expressly declared immigration status irrelevant to the issue of liability to pay compensation to an injured employee; otherwise, unscrupulous employers would be encouraged to hire undocumented aliens."

"Regarding Ruiz's submission of fake documents, the court clarified that a person who has been convicted of a violation of Section 1871.4 is barred from receiving or retaining any compensation obtained as a direct result of the fraudulent misrepresentation. In Ruiz's case, however, there was no conviction. Further, he wasn't required to be a lawfully documented alien to be an employee entitled to workers' comp benefits. It was employment -- not the compensable injury -- that he obtained as a direct result of the use of fraudulent documents. Farmers Brothers Coffee v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board (Ruiz) (October 17, 2005)." CALIFORNIA EMPLOYMENT LAW LETTER, NOVEMBER 7, 2005, Volume 15, Issue 17

illegal immigration
California
Workers' Compensation
undocumented workers

Today's WSJ noted that Ford plans to build a plant in Mexico that will create 150,000 jobs. Good. Those jobs will help create a middle class who will need goods and services, and that will creat more jobs in their own country. Eventually, the Mexicans may even get rid of their government which tries to dump their poor on us, and instead they'll vote someone in who will build a strong Mexico. What a concept.

Of course, the UAW is unhappy. They want new members here--and they don't require a green card or citizenship to join the union. Well, let the union officials cross the border and see how far they can get organizing down there. There's more than one way to take in rake in dues.

"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics today represent more than 13 percent of the U.S. population, making them its largest minority group.(2) Hispanics age 65 and older represent 6.03 percent of the total U.S. 65 and older population. This portion is projected to increase to 16 percent by 2050.(3)"

1 The classification of Hispanic designates persons
from a Spanish-speaking country or their descendants.
Hispanics are not a race.

2 Estimates from 2002 indicate that Hispanics
accounted for 3.5 million, or one-half, of the
population increase of 6.9 million for the nation since
April 1, 2000. More than one in eight people in the
U.S. are of Hispanic origin.
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Profiles/Ch
g/2002/0102/Tabular/010/01000US1.htm.

3 Ibid.

This AARP Public Policy Institute Fact Sheet (2004) available at the National Hispanic Council on Aging is about the sources of retirement income for Hispanics. It never addresses the fact that many Hispanics in this age group are not here legally, and that could be the cause of their reduced pension sources.

"Immigrants have been consistently observed to enjoy more favorable health/mortality outcomes than natives, even after controlling for SES and other demographic and social factors" and this MA thesis in Sociology (2005) from Bowling Green State University by Weiwei Zhang suggests the "salmon bias." That means, the sick among the immigrants become emigrants and go home leaving the more healthy in the U.S.

From the abstract (OhioLink ETD): "The hypothesis concerning migration selection is that the foreign-born appear healthier because of a greater tendency for healthier persons to immigrate, and reversely, a greater tendency for unhealthy persons to emigrate (commonly referred to as the “salmon bias” hypothesis). Using March Supplements of the annual Current Population Survey (CPS) and the matched NHIS-NDI files, this paper examines health disparities between Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, and explores the possibility that emigration among Mexican immigrants residing in the United States affects the assessment of their general health situation. A new approach for estimating emigration rates based on the matched CPS files is applied in the analysis. The results generally support the salmon bias hypothesis, showing higher emigration rates for unhealthy foreign-born Mexicans compared with their healthy counterparts. This pattern holds for young and old Mexican immigrants, but not among people at working ages. Gender differences show that the out-migration effect is stronger among female Mexican immigrants compared to males. Duration of residence does not appear to be related to health selectivity in emigration independent of age. Although the selectivity effect appears small when observed over the course of a single year, the effect cumulates over time, reaching levels that may produce the relatively high level of health observed among Mexican immigrants who remain living in the United States."

"Explaining The Hispanic Paradox: An Examination of The Out-Migration Effect on The Health Composition of The Mexican Immigration Population." Zhang, Weiwei.
Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, Sociology, 2005.

"Team of Rivals; the political genius of Abraham Lincoln" is our book club selection for September, so I've been listening to it on CD while I walk. Right now (disc 2) the author is building the backgrounds of Salmon P. Chase, William H. Seward, and Edward Bates, all Lincoln's opponents in the 1860 election and all appointed to his cabinet.

Slavery was the devisive issue of that century up through the end of the Civil War (but it still haunts us today). As I was listening to the different points of view on slavery and its merits and evils I was struck by the similarities to the illegal immigrants issue. For instance, there were Christians who believed it was evil, but in the longer course would work for good if the slaves left their pagan ways and cultures. Even slavers believed they were rescuing them from a worse fate. Then there were those who favored gradual emancipation, so that some slaves became free over their life times--New York giving up slavery completely by the late 1820s by this method. Others thought it an economic necessity for some states, but didn't want to see it expand to the newer territories. Others could see no way the country could survive without the labor of slaves.

I'm sure someone more erudite and scholarly has already assembled these ideas with footnotes, but they are just my Sunday afternoon, after-the-walk thoughts.

What are we enabling? Wouldn't it make more sense to stop this at the source, rather than mop up later?

"Overcrowded motor vehicle crashes caused by the very active criminal enterprise of smuggling illegal immigrants in the desert of the Southwest is a recent and under-recognized trauma etiology. A computerized database search from 1990 through 2003 of local newspaper reports of overcrowded motor vehicle crashes along the 281 miles of Arizona's border with Mexico was conducted. This area was covered by two level I trauma centers, but since July 2003 is now served only by the University Medical Center. Each of these crashes involved a single motor vehicle in poor mechanical shape packed with illegal immigrants. Speeding out of control on bad tires, high-speed rollovers result in ejection of most passengers. Since 1999, there have been 38 crashes involving 663 passengers (an average of 17 per vehicle) with an injury rate of 49 per cent and a mortality rate of 9 per cent.

This relatively recent phenomenon (no reports from before 1998) of trauma resulting from human smuggling is lethal and demonstrates the smugglers' wanton disregard for human life, particularly when facing apprehension. Even a few innocent bystanders have been killed. These crashes overwhelm a region's trauma resources and must be recognized when planning the distribution of trauma resources to border states."
"Overcrowded motor vehicle trauma from the smuggling of illegal immigrants in the desert of the Southwest." Lumpkin MF and others, Am Surg. 2004; 70(12):1078-82

President Bush is just following in the footsteps of other presidents with guest worker proposals.

Here's an article in American Conservative about how black workers were imported to do back breaking, awful work Americans refused to do for Big Sugar.

"Through an intergovernmental agreement on March 16, 1943, Roosevelt launched what later became the British West Indies Program (BWI). This opened the gates to farm workers from Jamaica, the Bahamas, and other Caribbean isles.

But FDR's plan was not just about opening the borders to these workers. Under FDR's BWI program, the federal government became an active partner with the sugar growers. Historian David McCally writes, "Between 1943 and 1947, the United States government played a direct role in negotiating employment contracts for offshore laborers and paid the cost of round-trip transportation for all workers between their homes and the United States."

Once again, Big Sugar was getting by on Big-Government largesse, but Uncle Sam's help in this situation was not merely in footing the boat fare for the cane cutters. Roosevelt's BWI program—and the guest-worker program that it grew into—provided sugar growers with the ideal worker."

. . ."A typical employer in a free market has only the power to stop paying his worker or possibly sue him if he doesn’t perform promised services. But under guest-worker programs, the employer gains the power of deportation.

In recognition of the fact that the employer/guest-worker relationship exists outside of the free market, the federal government provides special protection for these guest workers, guaranteeing adequate housing, food, and other conditions. In the rest of the economy, the enforcement mechanism for the worker’s needs is called freedom of movement. In a free market, a dissatisfied worker can walk away from a job. In the 20th-century indentured servitude of the cane fields, no such freedom."

Doesn't this sound like something we outlawed in the mid-19th century?

"With the tremendous escalation of the drug war over the last few decades, the United States has been more concerned with what crosses the border than with who crosses the border. Despite the enormous resources allocated to prevent drugs from entering the country, the United Nations estimates that only a fraction of the total drug imports are being confiscated. The world drug trade remains robust, earning approximately $400 billion annually. This number is especially troubling when one realizes that terrorist organizations have profited tremendously from the drug trade in the past.

The Taliban have controlled as much as 96% of the opium growing area in Afghanistan, supplying around 90% of the opium in the United States for a total drug revenue of over $50 million that has at least indirectly aided al-Qaeda in their attacks against the United States. These statistics indicate that the "war on terror" significantly overlaps with the "war on drugs." p. 554

. . . "Despite the fact that 77% of Americans believe the government is not doing enough "to control the border and to screen people allowed into the country," and 68% want the government to militarize the border, [p576] pressure from powerful lobbying groups and a fear of losing the Hispanic vote seem to trump public opinion politically. The Latino population in the United States numbers around 38.8 million, making Latinos the largest minority group in the nation. As such, Latinos carry substantial voting power, particularly in key political states, such as California, Texas, and Florida. President Vicente Fox of Mexico continues to pressure President Bush to find more ways to ease Mexican access across the U.S. border."

"SLAMMING THE DOOR ON TERRORISTS AND THE DRUG TRADE WHILE INCREASING LEGAL IMMIGRATION: TEMPORARY DEPLOYMENT OF THE UNITED STATES MILITARY AT THE BORDERS," by BRIAN R. WAHLQUIST, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Summer, 2005. p.551

This article has extensive notes [233], references to which I've removed in these excerpts.

We went to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner tonight and said good-bye to our regular waiter [no names of business or waiter]. He said he was starting work on Monday at a really huge insurance company after graduating from a really huge university on Sunday [no names, but this is Columbus, OH]. He told us he'd been working about 40 hours a week while taking up to 20 hours of credit.

"So you'll not have so much debt will you?" I suggested. He laughed and said, "No, I've got about $50,000 because I was out-of-state for two years." "So what do you think about illegals being able to get in-state tuition in the new Senate bill?" I asked. "Well, we've got a lot of Mexicans who work here in the kitchen--they sure are hard workers--a lot are illegals." "Yes," I persisted, a bit surprised that he was so open about it, "but do you think it is fair that you had to pay out of state tuition and you're a citizen, and they and their kids can get a break?" He smiled and wished us well, knowing from experience that to get a really good tip it is best not to talk politics or religion or sex (I also chided him a bit for living with his girlfriend, but that's even more hopeless than the immigrant issues.)

illegal immigration

A business woman called the Glenn Beck show this morning. She said her company hires many Mexicans in their business. They all have a "resident" green card, and a Social Security card. She is not allowed to check to see if they match, or report anything if she notices an irregularity. Glenn asked her "Whose rule is this?" "The federal government," she said. This is not known by most Americans who wonder why the illegals flood our borders and how they can be hired, but it is a result of the 1986 law (with amnesty) that did not stop illegal immigration. I understand there is a demonstration today in Chicago by illegals protesting the loss of their jobs after being found to be here illegally. Really. Could anyone have written a fictional piece crazier than what we get from Congress?

I'm just saying--I heard this craziness on the radio and haven't checked the sources, which is probably illegal to do anyway.

Kay Ryan in the May issue of Poetry (p.155) writes about the 16th century nonsense rhyme we've all known since childhood:

Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
I've been to London to see the Queen.
Pussycat, Pussycat, what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under a chair.

The humor is that the Pussycat went a long way at great effort to do something she could have done at home. It's so silly, we can say it without even thinking about the circumstances. How about a 21st century version?

Senator, senator where have you been?
I've been at the border looking at sin.
Senator, senator what did you find?
What we tried before, the amnesty bind.

OR

Media, media where have you been?
Looking for scandals, multiplied by ten.
Media, media what did you find?
Not much because we're so blind.

The fight for law enforcement and sound policy on illegal immigration is not the place for bigotry and racism. We need our immigrants. We also need our Congress to stop mucking around, take a look at how this is hurting our country and Mexico, and just do the right thing. Lots of bad guys were backing the immigrants' marches and work stoppage in May; lots of bad guys at the other end will be infiltrating movements to stop the illegals and their buddies, the labor unions, the drug cartels, the business interests, and the trouble makers that want to turn the U.S. west over to Mexico. They are flip sides of the same pancake (or tortilla).