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Apr. 14th, 2006 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taratemimaOK--do I clean bathroom so I can do social stuff on Saturday or Sunday or just konk out?
Konk out, but first, a rant about immigration, flyers, and modest proposals.
Some 'Minutemen' group (or rather a man with a cane) are advertising a 'taxpayer rally' against 'illegal foreign nationals'. Now, people argue more for enforcement of border laws, while others want make it easier for honest people to become citizens, and not be exploited for cheap labor. Also, paperwork. You'd think that people who go on verbal jihad against the IRS would be sympathetic to the idea of snafus turning honest folks into 'criminals'?
Me? I have no clue. I think the debate would be a whole lot clearer if people like that group just admit they do not mean the nice Irish bar backs in Southie when they say 'illegal foreign nationals'. They mean OMG BROWN PEOPLE WHO TALK FUNNY. I'm not sure if they exempt Cubans from that. I know people who really do mean 'any group without paperwork'. However, they would talk about the law, not 'invasion'. I'm more worried about what the current administration would do to 'life as we know it' than new arrivals.*
Because when the flyer said "Remember the Alamo! Remember Pearl Harbor! Remember 911!", I thought "Remember the 1910s Red Scare. Remember Manzanar. Remember immigration laws that stood in the way of people trying to escape Nazi Germany. Remember lynchings. Remember Leo Frank. Remember 'No Irish Need Apply'. Remember the Zoot Suit Riots. Remember that 911 took out some foreign nationals, hopefully not illegal since that would not reflect well on their employers. Remember that brown people who talk funny also contribute their blood, their money, and their time." I didn't write it on the flyer. I didn't tell the man with the cane hanging them up. I was too tired to write that on all the signs and too cowardly to talk.
I read some article about some anti-'illegal immigrant' group taking pictures of Brazilians doing gardening work. I wonder if they took pictures of the employer? I wonder if the Brazilians actually did have the paperwork? I wonder if they even found their employer and stated their case?
It's a weird disconnection similar to the war on drugs: if drugs/illegal immigration is so bad and awful, who's buying/hiring them? If a lot of jobs required a green card, someone will find the time and money. Maybe more time around than money, but people will try, and most do. Plus, people want to be citizens, even with the bad things that happen in the US. The fact that while people taking ways around it are vilified, the people providing are not talked about much, except by commie bastids like me. The ones who do, I'm told, don't like the ones who don't, but they seem to forget if the ones who don't are their relatives.
Either enforce the laws or change them. Do not rough up some and ignore the ones working under the table and out of the protection of things like, oh, sexual harrassment laws, minimum wage, and much more.
*snark on*
If lawmakers do decide on enforcement-only, could they deport their employers too? You ask, yeah, it's easier if they are their own folks, but what about Americans? Sure, most Americans are mutts, but genetic testing can help determine which country they are to go back to. As for disregard of unalienable rights and what not, well, they haven't cried foul so far.
*Some of them believe that there is a fiendish plan by Mexico to take back land from the Mexican-American war by, erm, fruit picking. I'd mention 'aliyah bet', but I think this group is the part of the Venn diagram between 'right-wing' and 'thinks Israel is evil'
Konk out, but first, a rant about immigration, flyers, and modest proposals.
Some 'Minutemen' group (or rather a man with a cane) are advertising a 'taxpayer rally' against 'illegal foreign nationals'. Now, people argue more for enforcement of border laws, while others want make it easier for honest people to become citizens, and not be exploited for cheap labor. Also, paperwork. You'd think that people who go on verbal jihad against the IRS would be sympathetic to the idea of snafus turning honest folks into 'criminals'?
Me? I have no clue. I think the debate would be a whole lot clearer if people like that group just admit they do not mean the nice Irish bar backs in Southie when they say 'illegal foreign nationals'. They mean OMG BROWN PEOPLE WHO TALK FUNNY. I'm not sure if they exempt Cubans from that. I know people who really do mean 'any group without paperwork'. However, they would talk about the law, not 'invasion'. I'm more worried about what the current administration would do to 'life as we know it' than new arrivals.*
Because when the flyer said "Remember the Alamo! Remember Pearl Harbor! Remember 911!", I thought "Remember the 1910s Red Scare. Remember Manzanar. Remember immigration laws that stood in the way of people trying to escape Nazi Germany. Remember lynchings. Remember Leo Frank. Remember 'No Irish Need Apply'. Remember the Zoot Suit Riots. Remember that 911 took out some foreign nationals, hopefully not illegal since that would not reflect well on their employers. Remember that brown people who talk funny also contribute their blood, their money, and their time." I didn't write it on the flyer. I didn't tell the man with the cane hanging them up. I was too tired to write that on all the signs and too cowardly to talk.
I read some article about some anti-'illegal immigrant' group taking pictures of Brazilians doing gardening work. I wonder if they took pictures of the employer? I wonder if the Brazilians actually did have the paperwork? I wonder if they even found their employer and stated their case?
It's a weird disconnection similar to the war on drugs: if drugs/illegal immigration is so bad and awful, who's buying/hiring them? If a lot of jobs required a green card, someone will find the time and money. Maybe more time around than money, but people will try, and most do. Plus, people want to be citizens, even with the bad things that happen in the US. The fact that while people taking ways around it are vilified, the people providing are not talked about much, except by commie bastids like me. The ones who do, I'm told, don't like the ones who don't, but they seem to forget if the ones who don't are their relatives.
Either enforce the laws or change them. Do not rough up some and ignore the ones working under the table and out of the protection of things like, oh, sexual harrassment laws, minimum wage, and much more.
*snark on*
If lawmakers do decide on enforcement-only, could they deport their employers too? You ask, yeah, it's easier if they are their own folks, but what about Americans? Sure, most Americans are mutts, but genetic testing can help determine which country they are to go back to. As for disregard of unalienable rights and what not, well, they haven't cried foul so far.
*Some of them believe that there is a fiendish plan by Mexico to take back land from the Mexican-American war by, erm, fruit picking. I'd mention 'aliyah bet', but I think this group is the part of the Venn diagram between 'right-wing' and 'thinks Israel is evil'
