Immigration, “Healing” Touchstones of Pope Benedict’s Appeals to U.S. Latinos

In a visit designed to gently quell concerns about cover-ups of child molestation, sexual abuse and other crimes in the Catholic church, Pope Benedict was greeted with gun-wielding troops, big Catholic crowds and much presidential pomp. And he arrived with a clear mission to appeal to the group that will determine the future of the Catholic Church in the U.S.: Latinos.

With the Pew Hispanic Center telling us that Latinos now comprise 1 of every 3 U.S. Catholics, the Pope’s message must of necessity include an unprecedented Latino PR component. And as Catholic fortunes continue their decline here, the importance of the Latino church grows. In the words of Susan Jacoby in the Washington Post,

Without Hispanic immigration, the situation of the American Catholic Church would be even more dire.

But, Jacoby says, even among the Latino faithful, the fate of the church looks Apocalyptic in a not-so-beneficial way,

But the majority of Hispanic children do not attend the declining number of Catholic schools, and, if the history of immigration is any guide, the attachment of Hispanics to the church of their parents and grandparents — a critical part of immigrant survival — will diminish in direct proportion to their assimilation into American life.

Still, the Pope’s visit provides yet another example of how Latinos will play an definitive role in shaping the policies and public statements of the powerful and corrupt. While Benedict’s visit is supposed “open the path of healing and reconciliation”" before the most devastating scandal in U.S. Catholic history, it’s not likely to succeed. The Pope has repeatedly declined to take one of the most fundamental steps to healing: meet the victims-including the many Latinos- of abuse cara a cara.

Such non-action makes clear that there are ulterior motives behind Benedict’s “healing” tour.

For example, how the flag of immigrant rights provides powerful interests a cover for their crminial acts was vividly displayed today as Benedict began his trip by previewing his “concern” for the undocumented. According to the L.A. Times,

Benedict, who will visit Washington and New York in the trip that ends Sunday, said he will raise immigration issues during his stay. He said he was especially concerned by what he called the grave problem of families that are separated by immigration policies and by border violence.

So, as you watch English and Spanish language propaganda…..I mean coverage of the Pope’s visit, don’t let any God be the sole judge of Benedict and his motives.

In An Absolut World, Latinos Have Drunken Dreams of (Re)Conquista

This ad, which was yanked by Absolut following threats of a boycott, speaks for itself and inspires but a brief comment: If you’re going to drink (I hardly do because of the violence and rape and colonial self-hatred and misplaced coping and genocide and conquest drinking inspires -and masks), do so safely, with your values attached to your dollars. The world should be free of racism and other Absolute(s). Also, please note the error in the ad: coloring the southwest U.S. green instead of coloring over Canada with the sandy pastiches of the decadent empire drunkenly searching for the cheap wine of manufactured enemies with which to wash down the Viagra of “new frontiers”. And note how the Absolut invasion is being launched from the dark brown revolutionary shores of Venezuela.

We are neither drunk nor dreaming when we work to make the world less inebriated with the spirits of empire.

One Raid at a Time: How Immigrant Crackdowns Build the National Security State

(NOTE: This piece, which originally appeared in Public Eye, is, in my opinion, one of the 2 most important things I’ll write this year. Though written for a think tank (Political Research Associates) and though not as literary as I’d like, it does represent my best effort to date to conceptualize something we all know: that the immigrant crackdown is neither solely nor primarily about immigrants, that efforts to end the raids and other repression against immigrants requires more than simply denouncing the racism and raids of the crackdown. At the same time, I try to contribute something that complements and challenges the political thinking in the immigrant rights movement, which, like you, I feel great urgency about. Should you read it, please do drop a note (robvato@gmail.com) as it is a work in progress, one I will weave into a larger project. Gracias, R)

One Raid at a Time: How Immigrant Crackdowns Build the National Security State

By Roberto Lovato

“He [King George] has erected a multitude of new offices and set hither swarms of officers to harass out people and eat out their subsistence.” The Declaration of Independence, 1776

I. Building Up the Domestic Security Apparatus

Most explanations of the relentless pursuit of undocumented immigrants since 9/11 view it as a response to the continuing pressures of angry, mostly white, citizens. The “anti-immigrant climate” created by civic groups like the Minutemen, politicos like (name the Republican candidate of your choice) and media personalities like CNN’s Lou Dobbs, we are told, has led directly to the massive – and growing – government bureaucracy for policing immigrants.

The Washington Post, for example, told us in 2006 that “The Minutemen rose to prominence last year when they began organizing armed citizen patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border, a move credited with helping to ignite the debate that has dominated Washington in recent months.”

Along the way to allegedly responding to “grassroots” calls about “real immigration reform” and “doing something about illegals,” the Bush Administration dismantled the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and created the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, whose more than 15,000 employees and $5.6 billion budget make it the largest investigative component of the Department of Homeland Security and the second largest investigative agency in the federal government after the FBI.2 In the process of restructuring, national security concerns regarding threats from external terrorist enemies got mixed in with domestic concerns about immigrant “invaders” denounced by a growing galaxy of anti-immigrant interests.

Implicit in daily media reports about “immigration reform” is the idea that bottom-up pressure led to the decision to dismantle the former INS and then place the immigration bureaucracy under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Citizen activism contributed significantly to the most massive, most important government restructuring since the end of World War II. Nor do press accounts mention Boeing and other aerospace and surveillance companies, which, for example, will benefit as government contractors to the federal Secure Border Initiative (SBI) that is scheduled to receive more than $2 billion in funding for fencing, electronic surveillance and other equipment required for the new physical and virtual fence being built at the border.3

Nowhere in the more popular explanations of this historic and massive government restructuring of immigration and other government functions do the raisons d’etat – the reasons of the state, the logic of government – enter the picture. When talking about immigration reform, what little, if any, agency ascribed to the Bush Administration usually includes such mantra-like phrases like “protecting the homeland,” “securing the border,” and others. And even in the immigrant rights community few, for example, are asking why the Bush Administration decided to move the citizenship processing and immigration enforcement functions of government from the more domestic, policing-oriented Department of Justice (DOJ) to the more militarized, anti-terrorist bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security.

Little, if any, consideration is given to the possibility that immigrants and immigration policy serve other interests that have nothing to do with chasing down maids, poultry workers, and landscapers.

Failure to consider the reasons of state behind the buildup leading to the birth of the ICE, the most militarized branch of the federal government after the Pentagon, leaves the analysis of, and political action around, immigration reform partial at best. While important, focusing on the electoral workings of the white voter excludes a fundamental part of the immigration bureaucracy equation: how immigrants provide the rationale for the expansion of government policing bureaucracy in times of political crisis, economic distress, and major geopolitical shifts. Shortly after the attacks and the creation of DHS, the Bush Administration used immigrants and fear of outsiders to tighten border restrictions, pass repressive laws and increase budgets to put more drones, weapons and troops inside the country.

Government actions since 9/11 point clearly to how the U.S. government has set up a new Pentagon-like bureaucracy to fight a new kind of protracted domestic war against a new kind of domestic enemy – undocumented immigrants. While willing to believe that there were ulterior motives behind the Iraq war and the pursuit of al Qaeda, few consider that there are non-immigration-related motives behind ICE’s al Qaeda-ization of immigrants and immigration policy: multi-billion dollar contracts to military-industrial companies like Boeing, General Electric and Halliburton for “virtual” border walls, migrant detention centers, drones, ground-based sensors, and other surveillance technology for use in the Arizona desert that were originally designed for war zones like the deserts of Iraq; the de-facto militarization of immigration policy through the deployment of 6,000 additional National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border4; hundreds of raids in neighborhoods and workplaces across the country; the passage of hundreds of punitive, anti-migrant state and federal laws like the Military Commissions Act5, which denies the habeas corpus rights of even legal residents who are suspected of providing “material support” to terrorist groups.

In the same way that private companies like the Pinkerton Detective Agency provided highly profitable policing, surveillance, and other government services targeting immigrants and citizens in the 20th century, companies like Halliburton, Blackwater, the Corrections Corporation of America, Boeing, and others are reaping profits by helping build the government’s immigrant policing bureaucracy today.

Contrary to the electoral logic prevailing in “pro-immigrant” and mainstream media explanations of the current buildup of the (anti)immigrant government bureaucracy, ICE’s war on immigrants is not solely, nor even primarily about shoring up support for the Republicans and other prowar political and economic interests as most analysts and activists would have us believe. A look at precedents for this kind of government anti-immigrant action yields the conclusion that using immigrants to build up government policing and military capabilities is, in fact, a standard practice of the art of statecraft. The historical record provides ample evidence of how national security experts, politicians, elected officials, bureaucrats and other managers of the state have used immigrants and anti-immigrant sentiments and policies as a way of normalizing and advancing militarization within the borders of the United States (the “homeland”).

At a time when the mortgage and banking crises make obvious that the American Dream is dying for most, a time in which even its illusion is hardly tenable as revealed in polls that found that less than 18 percent of the U.S. population believes it is living the “American Dream,”6 the state needs many reasons to reassert control over an increasingly unruly populace by putting more ICE agents and other gun-wielding government agents among the citizenry.

Focusing on non-citizens makes it easier for citizens to swallow the increased domestic militarism inherent in increasing numbers of uniformed men and women with guns in their midst. Constant reports of raids on the homes of the undocumented immigrants normalize the idea of government intrusion into the homes of legal residents. Political scientists, investigative journalists, and activists have long reminded us of how elites are constantly concerned with creating the structures that may be needed to control a potentially unruly population, especially one protesting for its rights like the millions of immigrants who marched in 2006.

History and present experience remind us that, in times of heightened (and often exaggerated) fears about national security, immigration and immigrants are no longer just wedge issues in electoral politics; they magically morph into “dangerous” others who fill the need for new, domestic enemies required by an economy, a political system, a citizenry, a country created, nurtured and dependent on civilizational warfare and expansionism. Historians write about the geopolitical contours of the U.S. empire that began with the stealing of Mexican land. But little to no attention is paid to how, today, the domestic contours of empire – and the infrastructure that supports it – are also being reinforced by targeting Mexicans and other immigrants actually living inside this now very troubled land.

The ICE’s media and policy framing of the issue of immigration as a kind of “war” complete with “most wanted” lists7 of terrorists, drug traffickers, and immigrants like Elvira Arellano8, the undocumented immigrant leader deported after seeking and gaining sanctuary in a Chicago church, follows clearly the directives outlined in a couple of critical documents developed just after 9/11.

II A Key Moment After 9/11

In order to understand how and why ICE now constitutes an important part of the ascendant national security bureaucracy, we must first look at the intimate relationship between National Security policy and “Homeland Security” policy. One of the defining aspects of immigration policy and the current attacks on immigrants is the fact that they are being shaped by elite priorities of the post-9/11 climate.

Shortly after 9/11, the Bush Administration had, in July 2002, introduced its “National Strategy for Homeland Security,” a document that outlines how to “mobilize and organize our Nation to secure the U.S. homeland from terrorist attacks.”9 Two months later, the Bush Administration released the more geopolitically focused “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” whose purpose is to “help make the world not just safer but better.”10 9/11 provided the impetus to create a bureaucratic and policy environment dominated by security imperatives laid out in two of the most definitive documents of our time, documents which outline strategies that, we are told, “together take precedence over all other national strategies, programs, and plans,”11 including immigration policy. Immigration policy nonetheless receives considerable attention, especially in the Homeland Security Strategy. The role of the private sector is also made explicit on the DHS website, which says, “The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for assessing the nation’s vulnerabilities” and that “the private sector is central to this task.”12

By placing other government functions under the purview of the national security imperatives laid out in the two documents, the Bush Administration enabled and deepened the militarization of government bureaucracies like the ICE. At the same time, immigrants provided the Bush Administration a way to facilitate the transference of public wealth to military industrial interests like those of Halliburton, Boeing and others through government contracts in a kind of Homeland Security Keynesianism.

For example the two documents called for DHS to “Establish a national laboratory for homeland security” that solicits “independent and private analysis for science.”13 This materialized through the budget of ICE, which has resources for research and development of technologies for surveilling, capturing, detaining, and generally combating what politicos and Minutemen alike paint as the Malthusian monster of immigration. Again, immigrants help the state justify massive expenditures like those for the creation and maintenance of ICE, which, in turn, have led to a major reconfiguration and expansion of the state itself.

Perennial complaints of the former INS’s infamous inefficiency in both its border enforcement and citizenship processing functions, and the 9/11 catastrophe, combined to create the perfect political storm that swept in another historic bureaucratic shift. Hidden behind what some call the “anti-immigrant hysteria” characterizing periods like ours are the political crises, economic earthquakes and geopolitical crises that drive history.

III The Lessons of History

History provides several precedents that illustrate how immigrants have consistently provided elite political and corporate interests the rationale for major government restructuring that often has little to do with migration and much to do with other things, things like: bureaucratic patronage (think big government contracts for military industrial firms); deploying and displaying power; controlling the populace and rallying different sectors of society round the idea of the nation (nationalism).

Long before the Patriot Act, DHS and ICE, policies linking immigrants to the security of the country have formed an important part of U.S. statecraft. The period before and after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 179814, which gave then-president John Adams the authority to remove any immigrant he deemed a threat to national security, is one example. During this time, the Bush-like enumeration of “Seditious Acts” was linked to the elite need to control the populace, and militarize the society in times of profound instability. Another example is the period of the Red Scare of 1919, when millions of mostly-immigrant-led strikers provided the political impetus leading to the creation of the domestic policing bureaucracy known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).15

History has shown that, in times of extraordinary instability, governments go to extraordinary lengths and spend extraordinary amounts of money to create and reinforce the ramparts of their policing apparatus and of nationhood itself. Current efforts by the U.S. government to instrumentalize immigrants as a means of buttressing itself in times of domestic and geopolitical crisis follows a logic tried and true since the establishment of the country amidst the global and internal turbulence around the turn of the 18th century.

IV Immigrants and the Establishment of the National Security State

Like many of the newly established countries suffering some of the political and economic shocks of economic and political modernization in the late eighteenth century, the fledgling United States and its leaders needed to simultaneously consolidate the nation state established constitutionally in 1787 while also maneuvering for a position on a global map dominated by the warring powers of France and England. Central to accomplishing this were immigrants who provided both a means of rallying and aligning segments of the populace while also legitimating massive expenditures towards the construction of the militarized bureaucracies meant to defend against domestic threats to “national” security which linked external enemies real and perceived.

At the turn of the 18th century, the United States was much weaker than and still very vulnerable to the power of Britain and France, which were engaged in a war that defined political positions inside and outside the new country. Like many of their elite and more imperially inclined Federalist peers, Alexander Hamilton and President John Adams were fearful of the French revolution. Developments in the revolutionary republic pushed people and states around the Atlantic world to take positions for and against the revolution at that time. In addition, some Federalists like Hamilton also wanted to push out the French and conquer Florida, Louisiana, and South America.16

Immigrants and immigration policy of the post-revolutionary period became ensnared in the battle for power between Federalists, who advocated a more urban and mercantile route to nationhood, and the anti-Federalist Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson, whose romantic proto-capitalist path to consolidation of the nation was paved by agrarian expansion. The battles between the Federalists and anti-Federalists played themselves out in relation to France and the ideals of the French revolution, as elites tried to cope with the instability wrought by capitalist expansion on the rural majority.

The political, economic and geopolitical crises inherent in the modernization process had a profound impact on how elites and the state viewed the large immigrant population in the United States. In response to the devastating effects of economic transformation, thousands of French, German, Irish and other immigrants led uprisings like the Whiskey Rebellion and Shay’s Rebellion, which were viewed as threats by elites, especially the Federalists.
In the face of both popular unrest and Republican competition for political power, and in their efforts to consolidate the state and the globally oriented mercantile and pre-industrial capitalist economy, Hamilton and then-President Adams did what has, since their time, become a standard operating procedure in the art of U.S. statecraft: build the state and insert its control apparatus in the larger populace by scapegoating immigrants as threats to national security.

In the words of historian John Morton Smith, “The internal security program adopted by the Federalists during the Administration of John Adams was designed not only to deal with potential dangers from foreign invasion growing out of the “Half War” with France, but also to repress domestic political opposition.”17 In this context, immigrants became the domestic expression of the threat represented by the French Jacobins, the proto-communist and al Qaeda-like subversive threat of the early nineteenth century. Commenting on this threat, Samuel Sitgreaves, a Federalist Congressman from Pennsylvania, made the connection between internal immigrant threats and external big power threats when he said in May 1798 “….the business of defence would be very imperfectly done, if Congress confined their operations of defence to land and naval forces, and neglected to destroy the cankerworm which is corroding the heart of the country…there are a great number of aliens in this country from that nation [France] with whom we have at present alarming differences….there are emissaries amongst us, who have not only fomented our differences with that country, but who have also endeavored to create divisions amongst our own citizens.”18

Also considered a threat were the free and unfree blacks who elites feared might form a “domestic army of ten thousand blacks.” Other fears of subversion by domestic interests linked to external enemies were stoked by rampant rumors of a French-influenced “Illuminati” conspiracy, an “internal invasion” to create a godless, global “new world order” allegedly led by emigrants from France and St. Domingue. The modern use of the word “terror” first enters the language when Sir Edmund Burke gazed across the English Channel and applied it to the actions of the Jacobin state in France. Burke’s conservative American cousins then adopted the term and applied it to French-influenced immigrants and others considered subversive.19

Such a climate aided Federalists in their efforts to centralize and consolidate both power and nationhood. Hamilton and then-President John Adams undertook several legal and other institutional initiatives designed to enhance their and the state’s power while also putting their Republican critics and other opposition in check. Laws facilitating press censorship were coupled with calls to unify the nation in preparation for war with France.After Hamilton and the Federalists raised taxes to pay for their expansionist expenditures to consolidate their version of the new country, a group of people who refused to pay taxes unleashed Fries’ Rebellion. In response, Adams, Hamilton and the Federalists seized on the unrest to unleash heretofore unrealized state powers and nation-reinforcing state bureaucracy.20 At the core of the moves was the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts proposed by Adams and passed in 1798. The law targeted the immigrant threat by making it easier to put them in jail for subverting the government.

At the same time that they passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, Adams, Hamilton and the Federalists also implemented the first major reorganization of government bureaucracy. Central to this reorganization was the establishment of the Department of the Navy, a revived U.S. Marine Corps and a “New Army” in the 1798. In the same session in which it passed the Alien and Sedition acts, the Federalist-dominated fifth congress passed in its first session a bill authorizing $454,000 on defense, which, at that time represented a large expenditure. During its second session it authorized $3,887,971.81, an amount equal to “more than the entire 1rst congress had appropriated for all government expenditures”. During its third session it authorized $6 million for a total of over $10 million.21

The end result of the anti-immigrant expenditures Federalists created what some call the first national security state.

V Immigrants, the Red Scare, and the Birth of the FBI Bureaucracy

A similar situation in which a crisis sparking immigrant activism led to a major build-up of the government policing apparatus took place during the Red Scare of 1919. The U.S. government faced several economic and political pressures including the end of World War I, the demobilization of the Army, returning troops, joblessness, depression, unemployment and growing inflation.

The precarious situation gave rise to increased elite fear of Jewish, Italian and other immigrant workers in the era of the Bolshevik revolution and an increasingly powerful –and militant – labor movement. Socialists, Wobblies, and other activists like Emma Goldman, who were against the war and demonstrated high levels of labor militancy, staged historic labor actions in 1919. That year saw 3,600 labor strikes involving four million workers, many of whom were led by and were immigrants. Government and big business had to watch as a full one-fifth of the manufacturing workforce staged actions.22 Massive organizing by Jamaican immigrant Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association and race riots in northern cities further stoked elite fears and gave birth to the institutional response to what became known as the Red Scare.

Like other national governments of the period, the United States had begun intensifying the centralization of functions formerly carried out by the private sector, including keeping labor and other dissidents in check. In the words of Regin Schmidt, author of The FBI and the Origins of Anti-Communism in the United States, “In response to social problems caused by industrialization, urbanization and immigration and the potential political threats to the existing order posed by the Socialist Party, the IWW and, in 1919, the Communist parties, industrial and political leaders began to look to the federal government, with its growing and powerful bureaucratic organizations to monitor and control political opposition.”23

Major expansion of the state via the building of new bureaucracies (Bureau of Corporations, Department of Labor, Federal Trade Commission, etc.) and bureaucratic infighting for government resources and legal jurisdiction between the Bureau of Investigation, the precursor of the FBI, the Department of Labor and other agencies turned the largely immigrant-led unrest into an unprecedented opportunity for A. Mitchell Palmer and his lieutenant, J. Edgar Hoover. Both men saw in the domestic crisis an opportunity to build and expand personal fortunes and what would eventually become the Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI historian John A. Noakes concluded that “The domestic unrest during this period presented the Bureau of Investigation the opportunity to expand its domain and increase its power.”24

Illustrating the budgetary effects of the Bureau’s power grab, he continues, “Following the armistice, but before the Bureau’s decision to join the Red Scare hysteria, the Bureau had requested an appropriation of $1,500,000. When the Department of Justice declared the nation in imminent danger of a radical uprising, however, Congress immediately increased the appropriation by $500,000; by the end of the fiscal year the Bureau had a budget of $2,750,000.”25

Thousands of immigrants were surveilled, rounded up, and deported during the Red Scare. Just five years after the Scare, Hoover went on to found the FBI and became the most powerful non-elected official in U.S. history. In what sounds like a precursor to the current ICE raids, local police and federal agents collaborated around immigration. FBI historian Kenneth D. Ackerman states, “Backed by local police and volunteer vigilantes, federal agents hit in dozens of cities and arrested more than 10,000 suspected communists and fellow travelers. They burst into homes, classrooms and meeting halls, seizing everyone in sight, breaking doors and heads with abandon. The agents ignored legal niceties such as search warrants or arrest warrants. They questioned suspects in secret, imposed prohibitive bail and kept them locked up for months in foul, overcrowded, makeshift prisons.” Close to none of these immigrant prisoners had anything to do with radical violence. And, according to Ackerman, “Palmer’s grand crackdown was one big exercise in guilt by association, based primarily on bogus fears of immigrants being connected to vilified radical groups such as the recently formed American Communist Party.” Drawing parallels between the Red Scare and the current “War on Terror,” Ackerman concludes, “Almost 90 years later, today’s war on terror exists in an echo chamber of the 1919 Red scare.”26

VI Conclusion

As shown in the examples from U.S. history, immigrants provide the state with ample excuse to expand, especially in times of geopolitical and domestic crisis. During the post-revolutionary period, the pursuit of alleged immigrant subversives led to the massive funding of the Department of the Navy and to the expansion of state power through laws like the Alien and Seditions Acts. Similarly, the crisis following then end of World War I led to the creation of the FBI and to unprecedented government repression and expansion embodied by the Palmer Raids. “In eliminating the Wobblies, government officials passed legislation, evolved techniques, and learned lessons that shaped later course of conduct.”27 Viewed from a historical perspective, it is no surprise that the government should respond to the geopolitical and domestic crisis in the United States with expanded government power and bureaucracy. Rather than view the placement of ICE under DHS as solely about controlling immigrant labor or about political (and electoral) opportunism disguised as government policy (both are, in fact, part of the equation), it is important to connect the creation of ICE and its placement under DHS to the perpetual drive of government to expand its powers, especially its repressive apparatus and other mechanisms of social control.

From this perspective, the current framing of the issue of immigration as a “national security” concern – one requiring the bureaucratic shift towards “Homeland Security” – fits well within historical practices that extend government power to control not just immigrants, but those born here, most of whom don’t see immigration policy affecting them.

One of the things that makes the current politico-bureaucratic moment different, however, is the fluidity and increasing precariousness of the state itself. Like other nation states, the United States suffers from strains wrought by the free hand of global corporations that have abandoned large segments of its workforce. Such a situation necessitates the institutionalization of the war on immigrants in order to get as many armed government agents into a society that may be teetering on even more serious collapse as seen in the recession and economic crisis devastating core components of the American Dream such as education, healthcare and home ownership. Unlike the previous periods, the creation of massive bureaucracies superseded the need to surveil, arrest and deport migrants. Today, there appears to be a move to make permanent the capacity of the state to pursue, jail and deport migrants in order to sustain what some call a kind of migration-military-industrial complex.28

Several indicators make clear that we are well on our way to making the war on immigrants a permanent feature of a government in crisis. In addition to being the largest, most-militarized component of DHS, ICE, spends more than one fifth of the multibillion dollar DHS budget and is also its largest investigative arm. As mentioned previously, multibillion dollar contracts for border security from DHS have become an important new market to aerospace companies like General Electric, Lockheed and Boeing, which secured a $2.5 billion contract for the Secure Borders Initiative, a DHS program to build surveillance and other technological capabilities.29 That some saw in 9/11 an opportunity to expand and grow government technological capabilities - and private sector patronage – through such contracts, can bee seen in the fact that DHS was created with what the national security documents say is a priority to “Establish a national laboratory for homeland security” that would “solicit independent and private analysis for science and technology research.”30

Like its predecessor, the “military-industrial complex”, the migrant-military industrial complex tries to integrate federal and state economic interests through a kind of Homeland Security Keynesianism in which increasing numbers of companies are bidding for, and dependent on, big contracts like the Boeing contract or the $385 million DHS contract for the construction of immigrant prisons.31 Also like its military-industrial cousin, the migrant military industrial complex has its own web of relationships between corporations, government contracts and elected officials. Nowhere is this connection clearer than in the case of James Sensenbrenner, the anti-immigrant godfather who sponsored HR 4437 which criminalized immigrants and those who would help them.32 According to his 2005 financial disclosure statement, Sensenbrenner held $86,500 in Halliburton stocks, $563,536 in General Electric and Boeing is among the top contributors to the Congressman’s PAC (Sensenbrenner also owns stocks in companies like Olive Garden restaurants, which hire undocumented workers.)33

In conclusion, the current war on immigrants is grounded in the history of statecraft and big government bureaucracy. While critical, the almost exclusive focus of the immigrant rights movement on the laws and employment of workers fails to take into consideration the need for a war on immigrants to build and maintain massive policing bureaucracies like ICE and DHS. In their search for solutions to the continuing crisis of immigration policy, activists might consider focusing at least some energy on the reasons of the federal state rather than solely on state legislatures, white voters, elections and the immigrants.

1. Alec MacGillis, “Minutemen Assail Amnesty Idea,” Washington Post, May 13, 2006
2. “SPECIAL REPORT: Homeland Security Appropriations for FY 2005 (House & Senate) and California Implications,” The California Institute for Federal Policy Research, September 16, 2004
3. “DHS Announces $12.14 Billion for Border Security & Immigration Enforcement Efforts,” Department for Homeland Security, January 31, 2008
4. “Militarizing the Border: Bush Calls for 6,000 National Guard Troops to Deploy to U.S. – Mexican Border,” Democracy Now, May 16, 2006
5. Wikipedia profile of Military Commissions Act of 2006
6. “The American Dream Survey 2006,” Lake Partners Research, August 28, 2006
7. “ICE Most Wanted Fugitives,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Accessed March 19, 2008
8. N.C. Aizenman and Spencer S. Hsu, “Activist’s Arrest Highlights Key Immigrant Issue,” Washington Post, August 21, 2007
9. “National Strategy for Homeland Security,” Office of Homeland Security, July, 2002
10. “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” The White House, September, 2002
11. “National Strategy for Homeland Security”
12. “Information Sharing and Analysis” The Department of Homeland Security, Accessed March 19, 2008
13. “National Strategy for Homeland Security”
14. Wikipedia profile of Alien and Sedition Acts
15. Regin Schmidt, Red Scare: FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United States, (Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000).
16. Walter R. Borneman, 1812: The War That Forged a Nation, (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2004), 13.
17. John Morton Smith, “President John Adams, Thomas Cooper, and Sedition: A Case Study in Suppression”, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 42.3 (December, 1955): 438-465
18. Samuel Sitgreaves, Speech Can be found in Abridgement of the Debates of Congress From 1789 to 1856, (New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company), 253-260
19. Edmund Burke,Thoughts On The Prospect Of A Regicide Peace: In A Series Of Letters, (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, LLC, October 2, 2007,)
20. Stephen Hartnett, Jennifer Rose Mercieca, “Has Your Courage Rusted? National Security and the Contested Rhetorical Norms of Republicanism in Post-Revolutionary America, 1798-1801,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9.1, (Spring 2006), 79-112.
21. Paul Douglas Newman, Fries’ Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle For The American Revolution, (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
22. Todd J. Pfannestiel, Rethinking the Red Scare: The Lusk Committee and New York’s Crusade against Radicalism, 1919–1923, (New York: Routledge, 2003).
23. Schmidt, Red Scare: FBI and the Origins of Anticommunism in the United States.
24. John A. Noakes, “Enforcing Domestic Tranquility: State Building and the Origin of the FBI”, Qualitative Sociology, 18.2, (June, 1995), 271-86.
25. Noakes, “Enforcing Domestic Tranquility: State Building and the Origin of the FBI”
26. Kenneth D. Ackerman,Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties, (New York, NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2007).
27. William Preston Jr. Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903-1933, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
28. Deepa Fernandes, Targeted, National Security and the Business of Immigration, (New York, NY: Seven Stories Press, 2007).
29. Martie Cenkci, “At Technology’s Front Line,” Airforce Outreach Program Office Outreach Prospective, 5.4, (Fall-Winter 2006), 10-11
30. “National Strategy for Homeland Security”
31. Alexandra Walker, “Sensenbrenner: Immigration Profiteer,” The Real Costs of Prison Weblog, October 5, 2006
32. Text of H.R. 4437 at The Library of Congress
33. Roberto Lovato, “Sensenbrenner Under Fire – Does Congressman Profit From Undocumented Labor?,” New America Media, October 6, 2006

U.S. Media Wrong Again: OAS Condemns Colombia’s Military Incursion Into Ecuador

Denouncing Colombia’s recent military incursion into Ecuador as a violation of its charter, the Organization of American States (OAS) passed a resolution rejecting these actions by the government of Alvaro Uribe.

This article from the BBC reproduced the OAS declaration that Colombia’s military action was undertaken “without the knowledge or approval of the Ecuadorean government, which constitutes a clear violation of articles 19 and 21 of the OAS charter”. The OAS also mentioned Colombia’s “clear apology” for its incursion.

What’s galling about this is not so much the condemnation of Colombia (anyone reading Latin American media could’ve predicted that). No. What should concern is the near uniformity about the border incursion on the part of the U.S. media -N.Y. Times, CNN, Fox, etc.- , the overwhelmingly majority of whom towed the Bush Administrations’s defense of “our ally” line. Like much of the mush on Venezuela, the MSM’s reporting on border incident focused on the human rights violation of the FARC guerillas and on the “aggression” of the Chavez government.

Lost in the inanity of U.S. reporting is this fact: neither FARC nor the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador COMBINED (and throw in Cuba if you wish) have a total number and kinds of human rights violations on this magnitude:

- The U.S. has, since 2000, sent more than $4 billion in military aid to Colombia

- 3.855 million internally displaced Colombians because of the war

- 10,000 victims in 3000 common graves killed by paramilitary death squads over course of Colombia’s long war (fact verifiable by reading history)

- 1,771 unionists have been assassinated in the last decade

- 955 Colombians have been in extra-judicial executions and 7,500 people are being held in arbitrary detention since Uribe assumed the presidency

-486 Colombians have been killed by the state in 2007

Such radical distortion and cover-up makes obvious how we live in a society in which government propaganda has given way to the private sector propaganda. Today, public opinion is aligned by the consensus between news organizations and government around issues elites deem as strategic. All of this should serve as a reminder for us to be vigilant about the Bush Administration’s attempts to trip Venezuela and Bolivia into a war by using the U.S.’s Latin lapdog, the Uribe government. Cuidadito con esto. Really.

Big Latino Story in Texas: 1 of Every 5 Voters was Latina

The most interesting development coming out of Texas yesterday was this fact: 1 of every 5 voters was a Latina. “Latina”, not “Latino”. A stunning development that previews the future in other U.S. states whose demographics will start resembling those of Tejas and California. This piece from New America Media goes into greater depth.

Hispanic Women Outvote Men in Texas

New America Media, News Report, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Mar 05, 2008

Editor’s Note: One of every five votes in Texas was cast by a Latina, helping to sway the state toward Clinton, writes NAM contributor Roberto Lovato.

In one of the tightest races in memory, the Texas primary brought Latinos to the polls in record numbers – and many of these were women. One of every five votes in Texas was cast by a Latina; Latino men constituted only 14 percent of those who voted.

The feminization of the Latino vote in Texas benefited Clinton. As in other segments of the electorate, Clinton’s pull among women earned her 66 percent of
Latina votes, compared to the 58 percent she received among Latino men.

The surge in Latina voter participation in Texas was due to several factors, including the on-the-ground efforts of groups like the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SVREP), which launched a major nonpartisan campaign to reach thousands of Latina voters though traditional and non-traditional methods including barbecues, church meetings, phone banking, text-messaging and emails.

“It’s clear that (Latina) women voters were a key base vote in the election,” says Lydia Camarillo, SVREP’s vice president who spearheaded their work in Texas. Asked why most Latinas voted for Clinton, El Paso native Camarillo points to the long history of the Clinton family in Texas as well as the possibility of making history by electing the country’s first female president.

“They were voting for a woman,” says Camarillo. “They felt a sense of history with her. The under-30 voters were going for Obama. I saw a lot of people with conflicts up until the very last minute. But, in the end, they seemed to be voting for the person that they knew the best.”

Camarillo credits the Clinton and Obama campaigns with the increase in Latino voter participation. “It’s exciting that Latinos were being targeted so heavily by both campaigns,” she says. “Both understood and invested in the Latino electorate in ways we’ve never seen.”

Close to a million Latinos voted, according to Camarillo, making the Texas primary historic.

Obama, Clinton Dump Border Wall in Debate

Most interesting thing in tonight’s debate?

I thought that the most interesting development was the discussion around the border fence, better known as “El Muro de La Muerte” (The Wall of Death).

Asked about their previous votes for the infamous wall, both Obama and Clinton backed away from their votes.

For her part, Clinton was the most creative in terms of the grace and intelligence with which she danced the Border Wall Flip-Flop; She used a recent border visit to launch her epiphany,

CLINTON: And having been along the border for the last week or so — in fact, last night I was at the University of Texas at Brownsville — and this is how absurd this has become under the Bush administration. Because, you know, there is a smart way to protect our borders, and there is a dumb way to protect our borders.

(APPLAUSE)

And what I learned last night when I was there with Congressman Ortiz is that the University of Texas at Brownsville would have part of its campus cut off.

This is the kind of absurdity that we’re getting from this administration. I know it because I’ve been fighting with them about the northern border. Their imposition of passports and other kinds of burdens are separating people from families, interfering with business and commerce, the movement of goods and people.

So what I’ve said is that I would say, wait a minute, we need to review this. There may be places where a physical barrier is appropriate.

I think when both of us voted for this, we were voting for the possibility that where it was appropriate and made sense, it would be considered. But as with so much, the Bush administration has gone off the deep end, and they are unfortunately coming up with a plan that I think is counterproductive.

So, when all else fails, blame Bush was Clinton’s approach as well as Obama’s:

OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator Clinton and I almost entirely agree. I think that the key is to consult with local communities, whether it’s on the commercial interests or the environmental stakes of creating any kind of barrier.

And the Bush administration is not real good at listening. That’s not what they do well.

(LAUGHTER)

And so I will reverse that policy. As Senator Clinton indicated, there may be areas where it makes sense to have some fencing. But for the most part, having border patrolled, surveillance, deploying effective technology, that’s going to be the better approach.

Their change of vote and mind says much about the rapid rise of Latino electoral power this year. No one, not even most Latino pundits, had any idea of the force with which Latinos entered this election. And, unless he wants to further push the Republican party into the desert of Latino voter backlash, John McCain will not be able to exploit the Democrat’s Border Flip-Flop. The Arizona Senator who supported and then rejected legalization already has some immigration flip-flopping of his own to deal with.

“Post-Racial” Society? Report Says U.S.Treatment of African Americans, Immigrants “Abysmal”

A new report to the to a United Nations human rights committee criticizes the U.S. government for its “abysmal” treatment of African Americans, immigrants and other racial and ethnic groups.

The report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was delivered to the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in response to a ” flawed U.S. government report that underreported the state of racial discrimination in the United States.” CERD is a U.N.-sanctioned group of internationally recognized human rights experts that oversees compliance with a 2004 treaty on the elimination of racial discrimination. Since the Clinton Administration ratified the treaty in 1994, the U.S. government has used CERD to denounce racism and other discrimination in other countries.

Among the many”shortcomings” in the Bush Adminstration’s more positive report to CERD are the ACLU says, “the minor mention of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the outright omission of issues including the dramatic increase in anti-immigrant acts and practices, exploitation of migrant workers, the escalating problem of police brutality and racial profiling, and the “school to prison pipeline,” whereby the criminal justice system overzealously funnels students of color out of classrooms and on a path toward prison.”

Witnesses joining the ACLU for testimony before CERD in Geneva will include Akif Rahman, a native-born United States citizen who was detained, questioned and abused by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on five separate occasions as he re-entered the country after business or personal trips abroad.

The importance of such reports cannot be underestimated. One of the largely unwritten chapters of civil rights history is about how more internationalist and left-leaning African Americans like WEB Dubois and Paul Robeson used international forums to shame the U.S. government before its peers about Jim Crow. Declassified documents from numerous national security archives reveal that officials at the highest levels of government were, in fact, concerned about the international embarrassment brought on them by such acts of outing.

The ACLU report also provides a healthy antidote to the dangerous absurdity of the “post-racial” talk on the left and right side the Obamamania wave. For these and other reasons, it’s important for social movements to pressure Obama to use his abundant rhetorical gifts to speak about things in the report.

Fetishizing for Fun and Profit: Kayak.com Promotes Racist, Anti-immigrant Blogging

The screenshot above documents another example of how immigration “humor” gets used to sell things. The Kayak.com post promotes what it calls a “semi-illegal vacation” designed to “push travel boundaries just enough to cause a little commotion” by having travelers pose as undocumented immigrants.

Well, they appear to have succeeded. Not long after this post went up, groups like the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (BAIRC), the Center for American Progress (CAP) and other groups and individuals gave Kayak several gigs and earfuls of complaints, forcing them to remove the post because of what representatives called “complaints”, according to folks at CAP.

This type of exoticism marks but another in the long line of insipid and goofy gimmicks that fetishize non-white Others for fun and profit, as mentioned here & here previously.

My advice to the racial thrillride seekers? Go ride the empty kayak of your suburban self.

Thanks to folks at BAIRC & CAP for bringing this to our attention.

President Calderon’s Message of Unity Brings Together Minutemen and Mexican Opposition

This story in La Opinion is bizarre in a uniquely L.A. way.

It describes how, “for a moment” anti-immigrant Minutemen joined pro-immigrant Mexican opposition groups (as in opposed to Calderon and Minutemen they consider racist) to loudly protest the visit of Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

According to the story written (translated por mi) by La Opinion’s Isaías Alvarado,

“The Los Angeles visit of Mexican President Felipe Calderon has, paradoxically, united groups traditionally antagonistic to each other.
As if in unison, protesters marching in front of the Omni Hotel shouted slogans like “¡Sin maíz, no hay país!” (”Without corn, there
is no country”) slogan of the sympathizers of the Party of the Democratic Revolution and ” ¡Pre-si-den-t Cal-de-rón go fix
.Mé-xi-co!” slogan of members of the Minuteman project. There were no violent incidents, including between people who engaged in previous disputes.”

In light of this bilingually bi-national bizarre moment, let me say that I actually believe that, at some point (not yet), those of us defending immigrants ravaged by globalization must make at least some peace with those other victims of globalization, white racists. Yes, I do believe that we need to build a big, unprecedented tent that allows us all to burn down the bigger tent of the corporate interests that unite Calderon, Bush and most other heads of state. Of course, we have to find a way to delete the racism before that happens and that’s a lot of work.

Or are we supposed to support that other election-stealer, Calderon, because he’s Mexican?

Para Nada. Despite his flowery calls to defend Mexican and other immigrants, he, his devastating policies are what turns a Mexicana(o) into an “inmigrante”.

Beware of the nation-state and the false consciousness of nationalism.

Speech: National Security and the Birth of the Anti-Immigrant State or Immigrants and the Birth of the National Security State?

And now for something that deviates from but is directly related to the election mania gripping the country.

This speech given at the Brecht Forum captures well some recent thoughts about the relationship between immigrants and the national security state. Basic idea is that immigrants provide the state with another excuse to put more people with guns in our midst, especially in times of crisis.

The speech goes against the traditional logic around immigration, which tells us that raids, repressive laws, etc. are solely about elections or about controlling low wage undocumented workers needed for corporate and private profits.

While winning elections and keeping a surplus of low wage labor are a part of the immigration equation, these explanations hardly capture the cavernous motives beneath the current immigrant zeitgeist. Stuff in the speech also runs contrary to the rather tired argument that what’s happening around immigration is just about immigrants. It’s also about controlling people like many of you and me, citizens.

To vary on a theme that defined the Clinton era, “It’s the national security state, stupid.”

Lurking beneath the stale arguments of pro and anti-immigrant forces is a nation state, an elite that’s preparing for the social unrest due to the death of the American Dream (if it ever actually existed).

I shared a 2 minute clip of the speech previously, but this link features the speech in its entirety (14 minutes).Hope you like it. I actually think it’s one of the better talks I’ve given in some time. Please do email me or comment if you listen to this as these ideas are a work in progress and I value your thoughts and opinions about it.

And thanks to the Brecht Forum and the folks at Law and Disorder Radio for the opportunity to share these thoughts.

Everyone’s an Expert on the Latino Vote, Except Latinos

Everyone’s an Expert on the Latino Vote, Except Latinos

New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Jan 22, 2008

Editor’s Note: The newly minted experts on the Latino vote are using the old paradigms to explain the Nevada vote results says NAM writer Roberto Lovato.

NEW YORK – The most interesting development out of this weekend’s Nevada caucus votes had little to do with Hillary Clinton winning a large percentage of the Latino vote – that was predictable. More fascinating was the sudden and exponential surge in the number of experts in Latino politics.

It was tragicomic to watch non-Spanish speaking pundits explain the ‘reality’ of the Nevada vote while standing in the artificial light of the casinos during one of the first caucus meetings held entirely in Spanish. Reporters had to wait for translators to tell them what campaign workers were saying before they could report it to us. Understanding the electoral needs of casino, hotel, restaurant and other workers who labor in a new economy – and require new hours for voting – proved very difficult for many in the media to understand.

It was no less difficult having to watch the white, and some African American, political commentators on MSNBC, CNN and other networks tell us that the Latino vote for Clinton reflected “Black-Latino tensions.” The New York Times newspaper had earlier echoed these observations in a story that caused frustration in the Latino blogosphere. In a recent issue of The New Yorker, a publication that has no Latino editorial staff and publishes very few stories a year about the country’s 46 million Latinos, the magazine showed off its newfound expertise in a story which detailed how Latinos are Clinton’s electoral “firewall,” thanks to the “lingering tensions between the Hispanic and black communities.” It’s hard to know how they know this when only one serious polling organization in the country conducts polls in a language other than English.

Yet everybody, it seems, has something to say about Latino politics. Everybody that is, except Latinos.

The awkwardness and simplicity seen and heard in the coverage of the Latino electorate illustrates how ill-equipped the news organizations, the political parties and the society as a whole are to understand and deal with the historic political shift previewed in Nevada: the death of the black-white electorate. Simplistic talk about the Latino vote provides another example of how we live when the ‘experts’ and their organizations are increasingly out of touch with the dynamism and complexity of the electorate and the general populace.

As a result, the growth of the very diverse Latino electorate will likely force the revelation of more inconvenient truths. Principle among them is the media’s conclusion that anti-black racism among Latinos explains why they voted Clinton and not Obama in Nevada. Story after story tries to fit the Latino vote into the procrustean bed of old-school, black v. white politics.

Typical of these conclusions are statements by the liberal New Republic’s John Judis. He explained Latino support for Clinton this way: “Latino immigrants hold negative stereotypical views of blacks and feel that they have more in common with whites than with blacks.” Judis backed his claims with a modicum of academic seriousness as he quoted “experts” like Duke University political scientist Paula D. McClain. McClain told me in an interview that she neither speaks Spanish nor watches the primary source of Latino news and political information, saying: “I don’t watch Univision.” Quoting her makes little practical sense.

It only makes sense when we consider how ever-expanding Latino power in Nevada and across the country is pushing up against people’s fraying sense of nationhood and citizenship. Latino citizens and voters, not undocumented immigrants, are the targets of many liberals. These liberals long for the simpler days of a black-white electorate, a less-globalized country. Like Clinton, Obama and all Republican candidates, they support the political and racial equivalents of the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino border wall.

So instead of considering that Latinos reflect the new complexities of our political age, we should, experts tell us, simply swallow the black-white political logic of the previous era, like the half-moon cookies our grandmothers made. Ignore whatever you think of the Clintons - they have more than 15 years of relationships, name-recognition and history in the Latino electorate. Outside of Chicago, Obama has less than two years. Never mind that Latinos may still be wondering about why Obama did not, until recently, secure the support of most black voters. Never mind about the political amnesia about how the country’s last black candidate of national stature – Jesse Jackson- defied the prevailing racial logic during the Presidential primaries of 1988, when his Rainbow Coalition secured almost 50 percent of the Latino vote in Latino-heavy New Mexico counties like Santa Fe and San Miguel and 36 percent of the Latino vote in the largest Latino state in the country: California.

The Latino experience of the right-of-center Clintons and the left-of-center Jackson, who the Illinois senator did not ask to campaign for him, raises questions about Mr. Obama’s political operation and his political agenda. Time will tell us what was behind the Latino support for Clinton in Nevada. And who knows, maybe the experts telling us about Obama, Clinton and other candidates’ fortunes in upcoming primaries will do so without the black and white lens that has proven obsolete in the face of a new country.

No Hablo Odio y Migracion (I Don’t Speak Hate and Migration): Romney, Giuliani Release Spanish Language TV Ads

As they prepare for what will surely be a highly contested primary in Florida, some Republican GOP candidates have produced and released Spanish language TV ads that should raise more than a few eyebrows and questions.

For example, how is it that the Mitt Romney whose English language ads are chock-full of immigration agents and tough talk against “illegal aliens” in this ad:

is the same Mitt Romney who approved this ad featuring his Spanish-speaking lauding his father as someone who shares the values held by Latinos:

Watching both ads makes one want to bilingually barf because the high dosage of hypocrisy contained in the ads far surpasses the tolerance levels suggested by the Surgeon General’s office.

And, for those of you adventurous types - the ones who like to flirt with deadly levels of toxicity and other dangers-, check out this Florida ad (think Cubano vote) by Rudolfo Giuliani, who invokes none other than the ever-cheery Gipper, Ronald Reagan, the genial President recently lauded by Barack Obama and who is responsible for more death, destruction and suffering in Latin America than any U.S. president in recent memory,

Missing from any of these bizarre commercials is any understanding that most Latinos watch television in both English and Spanish. This means that, unless the GOP-influencing, racist hate groups like FAIR are right about how Latinos are genetically predisposed to crime, illiteracy and parisitism, then these same Latino voters will likely see and hear the different messages coming out of the English and Spanish language sides of the candidate’s mouths.

Soy Roberto Lovato y yo apruebo este anuncio: Coman mucha mierda hipocritas, racistas hijos de su p……… (ad infinitum)

Touted As “First” Focused on Latinos and Race, Nevada Dem Debate Delivers Nada

Tonight’s Democratic debate on MSNBC was sold by organizers as the “first” debate focused on Latinos and issues of race (actually, it was the Univision debate that did so). Though we heard many a promise to end the war, strengthen the “middle class” and so on, by the end of the 2 hours it was clear that Clinton, Obama and Edwards have little more than the waste at Yucca Mountain to offer voters out West

Debate questions and responses centered on the economy and the war - both top issues for Latinos - the substance was, as expected lacking, severely so.

Most despicable to me were responses to Tim Russert’s question about the Solomon Amendment, a Federal statute requiring univiersities to provide military recruiters access to detailed personal information - telephone, address, grades, etc- of students. Universities not implementing this politically parasitic law get their federal funds cut. ALL 3 candidates said they’d “vigorously enforce” a law many of us have seen keep poor, unknowing students and their families vulnerable to the biggest predators on earth-the Pentagon.Brian Williams did his part to slant the debate towards non-Latino interests by asking why English “should not” be adopted as the official U.S. language. Russert then quoted an uinformed, stupid and article in the New Yorker, which repeated unproven statements that Latinos would be unwilling to support a black candidate. To his credit, Obama dispelled it by talking about his huge support among Latinos in Illinois, a seriously Latino state.

And nuclear bomb-maker General Electric’s MSNBC network denied succeeded in denying serious and fiery anti-war candidate Dennis Kucinich.

A BIG BRONX CHEER AND BOOOOOO TO MSNBC FOR FAILING LATINOS AND ALL OF US.

Immigration in the Age of Neoliberalism

This article from Canada’s Rabble Magazine raises many questions, not least of which is: “Why can’t we talk about immigration like this in the U.S.?”

Just check out some of these quotes:

These people migrate out of necessity, even when they know that doing so may be expensive and even dangerous. They also migrate because it is possible to do so: contemporary capitalism, in its neoliberal form, relies on the concept of “workforce mobility”, as various powerful groups like to point out.

We are concerned with an enormous conflict, which ties together a vast range of crises that span Indonesia, Central Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa. The American Empire needs to exert control in these parts of the world over enormous energy resources. This new conquest of the region requires a re-engineering, and the subjugation of the people who live there.

Jeeez, just imagine, imagine what it’d be like to simply live in a country where these kinds of opinions are considered part of the legitimate and rational debate around immigration. Imagine. Instead, we live in a country where most of the key players in the current immigration debate: many national “immigrant rights” groups, their philanthropic patrons, the political-bureaucratic class, the media and the racist right- have an unspoken pact to limit discussion of immigration within the very limited psychic and physical borders of an empire in rapid decline.

That what is considered in this country “rational”, “civilized” and “newsworthy” bears absolutely zero resemblance to what articles like this one say speaks directly of the ‘why’ of this blog.

The “Dreaming Beyond the Walls of Civilization” tag in the title of Of América comes from the perpetual need for ALL of us to interrogate notions of “nation”, “civilization”, “rationality” and other terms tossed around nonsensically -and dangerously, especially around issues like “national security” and immigration.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me in this rant and please do read this piece as it provides some semblance of what a truly rational discussion around immigration might look like in this country. I’ll start believing in, voting for Obama or Clinton when they can say anything in this article.

And don’t you just love how the “Rabble” moniker implicitly knocks “civilization” ? If this is “civilization”, then you need to embrace your inner barbarian, your membership as part of the rabble. I have.

Gracias & enjoy.

R

Immigration in the age of neoliberalism

by the Political Analysis Collective
January 9, 2008

Since the town of Hérouxville made headlines several months ago, a debate has been raging in Quebec regarding the impact of Muslim immigration on “the true values of Quebec.”

Through the media, this debate has sparked the collective imagination. “There are too many immigrants”. “Reasonable accommodations are becoming unreasonable”. An aggressive tone has emerged.

While its mandate is to examine inter-community relations, the Bouchard-Taylor Commission was set against this controversial background. The goal of the Commission is laudable, but one would hope that the debate would be return to questions of inclusion and respect. However, it should not come as a surprise that this polemic controversy should “blow up” in Quebec, as in any other capitalist society.

Immigration and capitalist development

According to the UN, there were roughly 200 million immigrants (3% of the world population) in 2005. Millions of people leave their homes and this constitutes the largest migration in history. These people migrate out of necessity, even when they know that doing so may be expensive and even dangerous. They also migrate because it is possible to do so: contemporary capitalism, in its neoliberal form, relies on the concept of “workforce mobility”, as various powerful groups like to point out.

Neoliberalism is proceeding with a profound restructuring of work which depends on an enormous influx of new “heads and hands”. On the one hand, this is in response to the new needs of capitalistic accumulation. On the other hand, it is in response to demographic changes in capitalist countries. The current cycle requires an abundant workforce with few qualifications to work in agriculture, construction, private and personal services – a workforce that can be found in the large population “surplus” of the Third World.

This workforce is usually destined for low-wage, not very gratifying, sometimes dangerous and non-unionized or hardly “unionizable” jobs. The workforce must be mobile and precarious, while workers’ and social rights are de-emphasized. At another level, capitalism needs to recuperate qualified workers from other countries. The brain-drain is hardly new, but it is accelerated, especially in the “knowledge” economy, where the concentration of capital is greatest. Industrial quantities of qualified workers are required by the information technology, biomedical and engineering fields.

This phenomenon is even greater in the U.S., where more than 30 million “legal” immigrants can be found, and quite possibly as many “illegal” immigrants. The border indeed has become quite porous, letting in “legals” and “illegals”, thanks to policies that favour both legalisation and criminalisation of immigration. This contradiction effectively forces immigrants to accept working conditions that are below the norm. According to various estimates, more than 60% of “unqualified” jobs in the USA will be filled by immigrants within the next 10 years.

The Canadian context

Capitalist restructuring in Canada also calls on larger numbers of immigrants. An estimated quarter of a million persons immigrate legally to this country every year. Though much lower, the number of illegal immigrants is on the rise (especially from Asia). It is estimated that 22% of Canadians will be immigrants by 2017 (the proportion is currently 18.3%), a number unseen since 1920.

As is the case in other countries, the immigrant population is segmented. Even though the percentage of university-educated is higher for new immigrants, their income is, in general, 10% lower than other segments of the Canadian population. Here is another revealing statistic: 15% of immigrants live below the poverty line, which is twice the national percentage. In fact, capitalist social structures reproduce inequality. Pitting workers of the world one against another is profitable. Immigrants against born citizens, men against women, white against black, everyone against everyone: it all maintains the dominant order in place.

Currently, the immigration influx is mainly coming from Third World countries. In Canada, 47% of the population now affirms being from an origin ethnic other than British or French. In most large cities, the skin colour of the population has changed. Along with these indicators, others make singling out – and therefore discriminating and disciplining – immigrant workers easier. Part of this new wave of immigration comes from regions inhabited by Muslims in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. According to certain projections, 10 years from now more than 1.8 million Muslims will live in Canada. These immigrants are often fleeing war and other atrocities in troubled regions such as Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As a rule, Muslim immigrants tend to live their daily lives much like the population at large. Religious identity is expressed through traditions, memories, important religious holidays, as well as food and clothing-related customs. Every now and then, these cultural differences, which count for very little in daily life, are manipulated by projects which seek to exaggerate these artefacts of identity, or they are used to control or manipulate other types of conflicts.

We must remember that similar policies have been used by those in power in the past. Under the rule of Duplessis, Quebec society in the 1950s was dominated by an anti-Semitic discourse. Repression was not limited to Jews only. Other religious minorities were also targeted, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, the true enemy of power was the union movement, with Jews and communists as scapegoats. Nowadays, this scapegoat is Muslim and is visible for other reasons.

War without end

We are concerned with an enormous conflict, which ties together a vast range of crises that span Indonesia, Central Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa. The American Empire needs to exert control in these parts of the world over enormous energy resources. This new conquest of the region requires a re-engineering, and the subjugation of the people who live there. Obviously, resistance is strong, as evidenced by the failures of NATO in Iraq and Afghanistan. The enemy is evil incarnate and dehumanised so that he may be eradicated with little regard for international law. It is us against them, a war of civilizations, as Samuel Huntingdon has stated.

This war is not only fought in Kandahar or Gaza: it is also fought in neighbourhoods where immigrants from those regions can be found. Though this tension existed before 2001, the events of that year have intensified police and security operations and tipped society into a “rights-free” zone. These operations include imprisonment without trial, black lists, so-called “security” certificates, intimidation or worse yet – as in Maher Arar’s case - the use of clandestine means to put “suspects” in life-threatening conditions.

This enemy must therefore “be constructed”. The demagogic media portrays the Muslim immigrant as “perverse, sly, and difficult to assimilate”. His customs are in direct contradiction with the modern world and human (especially, women’s) rights. From this perspective, the young girl wearing a veil is no more than a weapon in the hands of Islamic-terrorist groups. This Muslim menace must then be confined, monitored, controlled, even suppressed and deported, if the members of the community do not accept our “values”.

Responsibilities of civil society

Immigration as an “issue” is thus redefined in neoliberal “reasoning” and helps new, offensive, geopolitical measures that predispose opinion for war. It also justifies obvious regressions in civil rights by creating a feeling of insecurity all over the world. This strategy aims to divide society into numerous “ethnic”, religious and community groups, each one preoccupied in a struggle against the other.

It goes without saying that civil society must stand against this. It is incumbent upon us to rally the working class, immigrant or not, and fight against all these forms of discrimination that single out and marginalize immigrants, with regards to access to services, housing, employment and recognition of foreign credentials.

*Pierre Beaudet, Philippe Boudreau, Donald Cuccioletta, François Cyr, Thomas Chiasson-Lebel, Éric Martin, Michèle St Denis and André Vincent are members of the Political Analysis Collective (Collectif d’analyse politique). The original French version of this article was translated by Julie Daigneault.

Philanthropy Illustrates How Immigration Will Not Stop Without 2 Things: Latin Development & Latinos

This story from the San Francisco Chronicle illustrates nicely how communities in América Latina and the United States are and must be at the heart reducing migration from Latin America to the United States (if indeed that’s what corporations and consumers really want, that is). Though I don’t think the implicit analysis of immigration in the story runs much deeper than a dry creek near the border, I do appreciate the focus on the border-smashing work of Hispanics in Philanthropy (HIP), a group founded by Douglas Patino (a good and honored friend) and other, mostly Latino leaders from the growing universe of Latino philanthropy .

The story makes clear how, rather than adopt the tired and untrue (and largely ineffective) approach of traditional philanthropy, which limits itself to working within the confines of that deadly illusion known as “the border”, HIP adopts what wonks call a “transnational” approach to dealings within the hemisphere Of América.

HIP’s leader, Diana Campoamor, a Cubana immigrant of much consequence, has a choice quote in the story, one powered by her own personal and professional experience (as opposed to the political desperation mixed with a growing sense of decline that motivates politico and racist alike). The quote along with her example as a leader of Latino extraction makes the point solidly:

“People don’t leave their homes unless there’s a hardship, economic or political,” said Campoamor, the president of Hispanics in Philanthropy, who is herself a refugee from Cuba. “Everyone should have a choice. We want to help people have a job and a chance to stay where they are, and to have a voice in their communities and their countries.”

I really like this story because, too often, we forget the economic and material component of the migration equation and, instead, focus solely on the politics of immigration as if it were really defined by politicos, Lou Dobbs and aging (Minute)men in search of a new frontier, a less flaccid empire. Unless Obama (or whoever ends up inheriting the mantle of declining power) can reverse the decimation of the state undertaken by Reagan, his descendants and the corporations that support them, the solutions will have to come from the rest of us.

But before getting too gushy I should mention that, even with good work like that of HIP or the hometown associations (also mentioned in the story) that send billions to América Latina each year, migration to the U.S. will continue without 2 other essential things: stopping the addiction of U.S. corporation and consumers to imported cheap labor and dealing frontally, decisively with the failure of capitalism in the hemisphere. And Barack Obama will fix this in his first 100 days in the White House, right?

Economic aid to give Mexicans, Central Americans work at home

Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 6, 2008

From her office on the edge of San Francisco’s Financial District, Diana Campoamor was networking - meeting for drinks with a banker, compiling a briefing book for a foundation trustee, exchanging phone calls with colleagues in Mexico City.

She was putting all the pieces in place so her group, Hispanics in Philanthropy, could cut its first check this month for a three-year, $219,000 grant to expand a goat-cheese cooperative in Guanajuato, Mexico.

More goats, corrals, pasteurizing equipment and refrigerators should allow the operation to grow from one village to four, providing work for hundreds of peasant farmers who might otherwise join their siblings and cousins as illegal immigrants harvesting peaches, slaughtering chickens, driving nails and scrubbing dishes across the United States.

The group’s decision to fund economic development projects in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, after almost 25 years working in U.S. Latino communities, is part of a movement taking hold in Northern California to tackle the root causes of illegal immigration.

“People don’t leave their homes unless there’s a hardship, economic or political,” said Campoamor, the president of Hispanics in Philanthropy, who is herself a refugee from Cuba. “Everyone should have a choice. We want to help people have a job and a chance to stay where they are, and to have a voice in their communities and their countries.”

Immigration is again moving front and center on the U.S. political stage. On the presidential campaign trail, Republicans are vying to be the toughest on sealing the border and enforcing immigration law, while Democrats temper the bad-cop rhetoric with talk of guest worker programs and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here.

But if there is to be a lasting solution to illegal immigration, experts say, it will involve changes not just on this side of the border but in Mexico and Central America, which together account for three fourths of the estimated 12 million undocumented people in the United States.

“As far as what I’ve read about what the candidates are saying, I don’t see much discussion. It’s cheap rhetoric,” said Luis Guarnizo, a professor in the school of agriculture at UC Davis. “Everybody’s looking for a quick fix, the right slogan. … But we have to look at the larger picture. This is not just a law-and-order issue, it involves economic issues, social issues. Migration is a global process.”

In Northern California, some grassroots development and immigrant groups are trying a different approach. They reason that if people in Latin America had a way to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty, they wouldn’t need to leave home, risk their lives crossing the border and live on the margins of U.S. society to earn a living and support their relatives back home.

The projects range from small to large, and involve a variety of players - major foundations, socially conscious consumers and migrant workers themselves - in diverse approaches to improving life in some of the communities that are sending undocumented immigrants north. They’re helping build lagging village infrastructure, incubating productive rural projects and giving farmers fair access to global markets.

Part of the solution

Luis Alberto Rivera is president of an association of Californians originally from his hometown, Coalcomán, in the central Mexican state of Michoacán. Seeing thousands of Coalcomanenses migrate to the United States, Rivera and his compatriots were determined to do something to help improve life back home.

“We decided to push the authorities to clean the rivers, because they’re polluted,” said Rivera, a U.S. citizen, from his home near Modesto. “The whole ecosystem, the ability of people to get food from the river is destroyed. People are migrating because their life is over when the rivers are polluted. But if we go back and restore them, I think that’s part of the solution.”

Rivera and members of his hometown association offered to fund a sewage treatment plant and talked the town government into installing a system of sewers to collect the wastewater. They’ve set a fundraising goal of $100,000 and have already held a couple of benefit dinners in the Central Valley.

And the group plans to apply for matching funds under the Three for One program, whereby the Mexican federal, state and local governments each pitch in a dollar for every dollar contributed to a project by Mexican migrants outside the country.

Recognizing the billions of dollars that expatriate Mexicans send home each year to their families, the Mexican authorities created the matching fund arrangement in 2002 to channel some of that money to public works. In 2006, more than 1,000 Mexican migrant groups contributed close to $20 million to community improvement projects in 845 rural and urban locations, according to Martha Esquivel of Mexico’s Department of Social Development.

Rivera hopes his efforts will encourage more migrants to get involved with their hometowns in Mexico and work to fix the problems that forced them to leave home in the first place.

But some observers criticize the matching-fund program, saying it’s the responsibility of the Mexican government to build clean water systems and to provide schools, ambulances and other infrastructure, not the duty of Mexicans who left home due to a lack of opportunity.

After years of being all but ignored by their government, however, “the Three for One begins to signal to remittance senders that they’re going to get some respect,” said Campoamor.

She is an advocate of building links between immigrants in the United States and their home countries, in the way that hometown associations do. But her organization has opted to channel its funds specifically into initiatives that c