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Waging War on Immigrants
by Stephen Lendman
Earlier articles discussed Washington’s racist war on immigrants. It’s longstanding. It mocks notions of welcoming tired, poor, wretched masses yearning to breathe free.
White supremacist Judeo/Christian extremism prevents it. Poor and desperate people aren’t welcome. People of color are scorned. Exploiting unwanted masses is policy. Helping them is verboten.
America never was beautiful and isn’t now. Wealth, power, privilege, and dominance alone matter. Equity and justice are four-letter words.
The New York Times claims otherwise. On January 28, it headlined “Senators Offer a Bipartisan Blueprint for Immigration,” saying:
They “agreed on a set of principles for a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system, including a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million (undocumented) immigrants that would hinge on progress in securing the borders and ensuring that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire.”
According to CNN, Obama’s “ready to double down on immigration reform.” He broke earlier promises made. He failed to deliver. “(H)e made it a top legislative priority” in term two.
Expect no more now than earlier. More on that below.
On January 28, a Times editorial headlined “Now We’re Talking.”
What they mean matters more. What they’ll do matters most. According to The Times:
“Eight senators, four from each party” released a January 28 memo. A “statement of principles” was explained. They call for “more border and workplace enforcement, more visas for needed workers and legalization – with a path to citizenship….”
Omitted details and deliberate vagueness assure disappointment. “What’s encouraging is that (anything) exists at all.” No plan is better than a bad one.
Nothing positive occurred for years. Expect nothing now. According to TimesSpeak, “no longer does the immigration debate consist of two groups yelling across a void.”
Republicans and Democrats proposed “pragmatic” solutions “most Americans accept. The citizenship path….won’t be easy or short.”
A new “probationary legal status” falls short of citizenship or permanent residency. Undocumented immigrants may live and work in America “provided they pass criminal background checks and pay back taxes owed.”
They also have to learn English and prove they’re employed. They’ll be subject to mandatory employer E-Verify. It’s a government-run online system. It enforces draconian harshness.
It compares employee information to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security data. Numerous false alarms are triggered. Millions of legal immigrants are falsely targeted.
Millions of family members of legal US residents await permanent residency status.
Undocumented immigrants will be forced to the back of the line. US citizens trying to bring unmarried Mexican children to America requires waiting 17 years or longer. Most never succeed.
Proposed legislation blocks the road to citizenship until borders are secured. So-called disqualifying crimes are largely minor misdemeanors or youthful indiscretions. They’re enough to deny citizenship.
They ignore sweeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) discriminatory harshness. Post-9/11, hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been mercilessly hounded, harassed, and persecuted.
Billions have been spent on ruthless targeting. Obama deported record numbers. They deserve better.
Sweeping workplace and community raids target them. They’ve been rounded up, incarcerated, brutally treated, denied all rights, and sent home for being the wrong color from the wrong country.
One-quarter or more deported are parents of children born in America. They’re US citizens. It doesn’t matter. They can stay. Parents can’t. Policy separates families trying to stay together.
Claiming “immigration reform finally began” turns truth on its head. Expect no better now than earlier. Even The Times admits it’s “easy to be skeptical.”
Immigrants never were treated fairly. The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act grudgingly went further than previous laws. It made immigrants of all races eligible for citizenship based on strict quotas.
White Judeo/Christian Europeans get preferential treatment. People of color get shortchanged. The 1996 Immigrant Responsibility Act and Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act proved bipartisan harshness.
Due process and judicial fairness were ignored. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agents were empowered to detain legal immigrants without bond, deport them without discretionary relief, restrict their right to counsel, bar judicial appeals, and use misdemeanors or youthful indiscretions be reasons for deportation.
No second chances are allowed. Unwanted immigrants get unwelcome messages. Immigration courts target them unfairly. They don’t leave home easily.
They come to America because NAFTA and other exploitive trade agreements destroyed their ability to earn a living at home. Come north or perish. Millions have no choice.
ICE heads them off at the border. Gloves off policy targets them ruthlessly. Wanting to live free and survive is criminalized. Poor, desperate people are called dangerous.
Immigration reform won’t help them. Earlier proposed legislation replicated Bracero Program harshness. From 1942 – 1964, it persecuted immigrants ruthlessly.
Indentured servitude was policy. Immigrants became serfs with no rights. Employers were empowered to exploit them. They got temporary low wage jobs.
They were cheated out of pay. Employers seized their documents. They were held in virtual captivity. They were denied vital medical care or benefits for injuries received.
A cycle of abuse punished them. They couldn’t resist or complain. As undocumented workers, they had no rights. They were sent home when no longer needed.
Why expect better now. Conditions today are worse than earlier. Whatever final congressional legislation emerges, expect it to reflect anti-immigrant harshness.
Since 2004, Border Patrol staff doubled. Numbers are ninefold greater than 30 years ago. Plans call for increasing their numbers. Untold billions more will be spent. Efforts will be as futile as earlier.
Greater militarization of Mexico’s border is planned. So are harsher crackdowns. Drone surveillance is proposed. A commission of governors, state attorneys general and community leaders will decide if policies succeed.
Senators say they’ll monitor “progress of securing our border and make a recommendation regarding when the bill’s security measures outlined….are completed.”
It could take years. Immigrants who come forth voluntarily will get “probationary status.” It’s ill-defined. They’ll have no rights. They’ll be at the mercy of federal and local authorities, as well as exploitive employers.
They can be deported on a whim. They’ll have no right of appeal. They’ll be separated from family members. Parents and children will be split.
The path to citizenship requires millions of undocumented immigrants to wait 11 years or longer. Many or most perhaps won’t qualify.
“Comprehensive immigration reform” is a figure of speech. Reality suggests otherwise. Previous Bush and Obama initiatives failed. They were aborted.
Immigrant rights aren’t prioritized. They’re exploited and abused. They’re not wanted. Most come from Mexico and Central America. At best, they can expect Bracero Program 2.0.
They’ll be exploited, persecuted, denied all rights, underpaid, and hung out to dry when not wanted. America’s race to the bottom assures it. Planned immigration reform assures none at all. It’s the American way.
A Final Comment
On Tuesday, Obama addressed immigration reform. His comments were long on what he does best – doublespeak duplicity, promises made to be broken, and disdain for society’s least advantaged.
His scheme largely mirrors what eight senators proposed. It’s long on draconian inequity and short on long denied solutions.
Likely congressional legislation will discourage undocumented immigrants hoping for better. Bipartisan racism prevents it.
The Immigrant Solidarity Networks says “We are all humans (and) no one is illegal.” It’s long past time legal and undocumented immigrants were treated that way.
About the Author: Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
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Posted by Stephen Lendman on Jan 31 2013, With 0 Reads, Filed under Editor, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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I always read your articles carefully Stephen and appreciate your work. Never thought I’d say it, but with respect, this one is noble in principle, but fails from a practical perspective.
……..”Indentured servitude was policy. Immigrants became serfs with no rights. Employers were empowered to exploit them. They got temporary low wage jobs”.
In reality, if you are not in the cabal, then everyone on the planet is a serf with no rights Stephen…..to borrow and adapt a phrase from George Orwell, it’s just that ‘some serfs are more equal than others’.
No decent human being wants this to be the case, but allowing a country to be overwhelmed by migration (legal or otherwise) is not going to solve the problem for those who are seeking a better life and will place massive pressure on the infrastructure of the host country. Believe me, I know…..we are packed in like sardines in the UK.
The answer is to defeat the cabal and get those other countries back to productivity, health and happiness. There is no need for the world to be like this at all and we know the reasons for it…..our duty is to stand up and defeat the psychopaths who have caused it.
By way of illustration, the UK is one of the most benevolent nations on the planet in terms of acceptance on immigration. The reason for that immigration in my opinion is deliberate subversion under Frankfurt School influence.
Over 63 million people (probably an underestimate by several million because of poor census survey control) are packed onto an island around 94,000 square miles. Here’s a practical example of the kind of pressure on infrastructure that has occurred:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2272195/The-town-thats-We-visit-town-countrys-biggest-influx-East-Europeans.html
awww…the poor huddled masses……
In 1937, the ruling elites’ Tavistock Institute adopted the German author Oswald Spengler’s monumental work, “The Decline of Western Civilization” as the blueprint for a new working model to bring about the decline and fall of Western civilization necessary to create and establish a New World Order inside a One World Government.
“Spengler held it bound to happen that alien elements would be introduced into Western civilization in increasing numbers, and that the West would fail at that time to expel the aliens, thereby sealing its fate, a society, whose inward beliefs and sound convictions would become at variance with its outward profession and thus Western civilization would fall by the wayside in the manner of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome.
Classical and Western are the only two civilizations that could bring a modern renaissance to the world. They had flourished and progressed just as long as these civilizations remained under the control of the Anglo-Saxon Nordic Alpine, Germanic races. The unsurpassed beauty of their literature, art, their classics, spiritual and moral advancement of the female sex with a very large corresponding degree of protection, was what distinguished Western and Classic civilizations from others.
It was this bastion that Spengler saw coming under increasing attack and the thinking at Tavistock ran on parallel tracks, but with a totally different goal. Tavistock saw this civilizations a stumbling block to ushering a New World Order, as did the emphasis on protection and elevation of the female sex to a place of high respect and honor.
Thus the whole thrust of Tavistock was to “democratize” the West by an attack on womanhood, and the racial, moral, spiritual and religious foundation upon which Western civilization rested.”
—from Dr. John Coleman’s book, ‘The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations’
Mission accomplished I’d say…just look around you.
“Open the floodgates for immigration” declared the Jew, Senator Jacob Javits of New York, in his and the Jewish Lobby’s promotion of the Immigration Law of 1965. In plain terms, Javits & US Jewry were declaring war on America’s dispossessed majority, white Christian Americans.
American Jewry, a highly organized, intensely ethnocentric & abominably wealthy minority, is hell bent on ruling over a pummeled and guilt-ridden white majority. Jewry accomplishes this by diluting and fragmenting the white Christian population through ‘multiculturalism’ vis-a-vis acts of Congress and the Jewish-run mass media. Jews fear and will do anything in their power, (and they now have all the power in America), to eradicate any semblance of nationalism emanating from white Christian Americans.”
—Brother Nathanael Kapner from ‘Dilute and Conquer-One Minority Grows Stronger’
time to be labeled a “racist ” and hold the government accountable to the ppl of your country- the long term plan is to mix all the races together except jews , so be warned
Shalom…..absolutely accurate in every respect, well said and if that’s what they want to falsely label us, then so be it.
Yeah, lets let in a few more millions of ignorant and often violent white hating immigrants into America and further drag wages down to the point where Americans will no longer be able to get a job.
Yes, let’s allow more violent Latin criminals from El Salvador and Mehico where they can rape, murder and rob and then run to an asylum based U.S. city to escape prosecution.
By all means let the cities of America be over run by violent Latin drug gangs, so dangerous even the cops don’t dare mess with them. When they come to your town what are you gonna do, Lendman, give them milk and cookies? hell, they’ll kill you and your family and then steal everything.
We do not have enough jobs for the millions of Americans now out of work, out of their foreclosed homes and living day to day thanks to this corrupt criminal entity in Washington, let alone for millions more.
BTW have you ever seen the mess of garbage left behind outside Phoenix where all your lovable ILLEGALS left on their way to wherever they go? It’s absolutely mind boggling.
The fact that so many violent criminal acts are being committed every day by these illegals : gang rapes, murder, theft, and of course drug gangs…the most violent and dangerous ever.
We’ve a problem here and we need to address it or America will turn into a shit hole like Sweden.
As far as I’m concerned we need to round up every illegal and send them back where they came from.
Establish a twenty five year moratorium on all immigration.
No more Pakis, Indians allowed who take over jobs that could be given to Americans instead.
I’m sick and tired of seeing companies who will not hire Americans but foreigners instead…as far as I’m concerned the owners should be taken out and hung. I’m sick and tired of millions of illegals being given social security checks, free medical care….how about a few more million anchor babies…. to the point where some hospitals have closed, at our expense.
When are we the people going to take a stand?
Sorry Lendman, but you obviously don’t see any negative effects of this unchecked immigration or is it that you want America to plunge further down the rat hole?
Lendman, you know I appreciate your work, but this article is a punch in the face to citizens. There are tens of millions OUT of WORK, there are citizen’s kids on the streets by hundreds of thousands, this country is 16 Trillions in DEBT. This is not forty years ago when there was no welfare and people who would WORK could be ‘free’ to do so, now it’s about free money, from the earnings of other people, courtesy of government taking from some to give to those who do not work because they don’t have to and do not want to. You most get an A from this reader, this one gets an F.
I will not argue that local old timer have a resistance to immigrants. It is not an American disease it is world wide since tribal time. Instinctive protection of keeping what they have and not having to slice that pie ever so small.
Apart from that, the first quote is wrong it entered the mantra via a poem by a Jewish immigrant grateful for the help. It should never have become a quasi Constitutional premise. I had the opportunity to tell that to someone answering mail at the White House due of a message I sent there. The answer was “we are following the law on the Statue….” I simply replied that that poem was N OT the Constitution or the law of the land, just a nice thank you poem. and the rule to be applied most still come from the Constitution. I have the same objection to the constant repetition :”we are a nation of immigrant” repeated to become the law of the land. We may be a nation of immigrant but we came to be American and help build America. Too many are coming now come just for money not for our values. And that is why the Precious premise and values that made America are disappearing. Without actual LOVE for America this nation will not be protected, only exploited. Resistance to large immigration is not racist it is love of this nation from sea to sea, They see factories we see pollution and disappearing open spaces. We do not resits refugee but most now are not refugee from tyranny only from overcrowded condition they created and we do not want them to reduce this nation to the like of India and so many overcrowded places. All due to the people lack of real love and responsibility for their country.
My sister’s other half, though legal in USA now, had such a journey on foot from El Salvador – though even that cost a few thousand dollars for the trafficker gangs.