Rootsie

A Nation of Colonists ... and Race Laws

The Politics of Immigration

By JUAN SANTOS

You hear it everywhere. Even from Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, author of the vicious anti-migrant legislation that has polarized the US.

"We are a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws," he says.

And like almost everyone else, he's got it wrong.

The original Europeans in what is now the US were not immigrants, but colonists. And the US is not a nation of immigrants - it is a white colonial settler state, like South Africa under Apartheid, the former Rhodesia, Australia and Israel.

And like those states the US has always operated on a sometimes hidden, sometimes overt system of Apartheid.

Like those places, the US is a nation of colonists ­ and race laws.

It is a place where white colonists arrived, seized the land, and dispossessed, exterminated or attempted to exclude the original "non-white" peoples ­ all of them.

They did so at the point of a gun - by open terror and genocide, which was the precursor and the necessary pre-condition of European "immigration." And, of course, they didn't only use guns and overt terror. Where "necessary," they operated by "law."

Let me prove the point. It's simple. We all know the facts.

In the US, Native Americans were dispossessed, subjected to mass murder, and locked on separate, Apartheid-style "reservations." So it stands today.

Africans were enslaved, and once "freed," they were subjected first to Jim Crow, then, when that proved no longer advisable, Jim Crow was transformed into the mass terror of mass incarceration and permanent Apartheid-style ghetto-ization. So it stands today.

The Indian nation of Mexico was conquered in a racist war of aggression by the US in 1848. The only debate in the days of "Manifest Destiny" was not whether to seize Mexican / Indian land, only how much of it to seize, and what to do to keep the Mexicans out of what had been stolen.

Two choices were before them. These were the terms of the debate: take the whole nation and lock the people on reservations, or take as much land ­ with as few Mexicans ­ as possible. Thus the border was established through a race war, through brute and overtly racist violence. The border is an Apartheid Wall. So it stands today.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States.

The Act claimed that "the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory" of the US ­ the same racist rhetoric used today against other Brown people. Like HR4377, the current notorious immigration bill, the Chinese Exclusion Act made it illegal for "any Chinese laborer to come, or to remain within the United States." So it stands today. Only the immediate target of the law has changed.

Every group the US has sought to eliminate or exclude has been a people of color.

The logic is simple. Allow entry or citizenship for those who can be "assimilated" into the colonists' culture ­ those who can become loyal colonists themselves ­ and exclude the "Other" - those who are the targets of colonialism ­ those whose land, cultures, bodies and souls must be sacrificed for the colonists to remain dominant and for their system to function.

Immigration law has always been race law in the US.

As far back as 1790 the Federal government ruled that the right to become a naturalized citizen was reserved to "free white persons."

So it remained until 1952. Until then the Supreme Court repeatedly determined exactly which migrants might be considered "free" and "white," as applicants of various ethnic backgrounds sought to become citizens.

Today, "The Nation of Immigrants" theme is struck to avoid the historical and cultural truth. Europeans ­ who could be assimilated to colonial culture ­ were allowed entrance en masse.

But there was a "stark division," as Haney Lopez reminds us, based on skin color.

"This stark division necessarily also carried important connotations regarding, for example, agency, moral authority, intelligence, and belonging," he writes. "To be unfit for naturalization--that is, to be non-White--implied a certain degeneracy of intellect, morals, self-restraint, and political values; to be suited for citizenship--to be White--suggested moral maturity, self assurance, personal independence, and political sophistication."

In other words, those "unfit" for citizenship were the colonized. The description Lopez offers for the "unfit" matches precisely the characteristics ascribed to colonized peoples by European imperialists and settlers for hundreds of years.

It also matches the racist stereotypes offered today of immigrants from areas south of the US border with Mexico, who Congressman Sensenbrenner has referred to as degenerate "alien gang members terrorizing communities."

But the racial subtext around immigration is not a subtext. It is the text itself.

Before Europe could "immigrate," someone else had to be removed. Before there was land to settle it must be stolen. Before anyone could be "free and white" someone else had to be "non-white" ­ and enslaved. Before "Americans" could become "Americans," "Latin Americans" ­ who are overwhelmingly Original Americans ­ had to become something else ­ "Latinos," "Hispanic," the not-Native ­ the Alien.

The Illegal Alien.

In a stunning bit of triple think the Natives, who knew no borders, became "Aliens," while Europeans became "Americans," and "Americans" became "Natives," while the Original Americans became "foreign" infiltrators and lawbreakers bent on who-knows-what brand of "terrorism" against "innocent" colonists, or if you prefer, "Americans." Or "Settlers."

Or is it "Afrikaners."

Take your pick.

The Six Nations Confederation - the Iroquois, or Hau De No Sau Nee - wrote in their classic Basic Call to Consciousness that colonialism means "to be controlled from afar," that "colonialism is the process by which we are systematically confused," and that confusion is "an agent of control."

Like this.

"We are a nation of immigrants, and laws."

But sometimes someone slips, forgets the double talk, and makes the agenda clear. They don't mean for us to overhear, but they can't help themselves.

In his mercilessly racist article Are We Really a Nation of Immigrants?, Lawrence Auster slips. He writes, "throughout its history the United States has been a member of Western civilization-in religion overwhelmingly Christian in race overwhelmingly white, in language English. Why shouldn't those little historical facts be at least as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact that we're all 'descended from immigrants?'" (FrontPagemagazine.com).

Auster, and David Horowitz' Front Page Magazine, want one thing; they know what it is, and they're willing to tell you. They want a white nation. They slipped.

The many who write diatribes and hate mail on the theme of "What part of ILLEGAL don't you UNDERSTAND?!" also slip.

We understand "illegal" perfectly well.

Conquest of territory in wars of aggression is illegal under international law. The US occupation of most Native land and all of the occupied sections of Mexico is illegal. The presence of the conquering people, the usurpation of the land itself is illegal. The colonists themselves are illegal aliens.

But, for the Right, it's not really about some imaginary adherence to a just, neutral system of "law."

It's about race law and white privilege.

And race law, codified on paper or not, is deeply codified in white people's expectations about their place in society, and some of them are getting dangerously edgy about having "their" land ­ their turf ­ stepped on by Brown people.

On the web site of the anti-Mexican hate group Save Our State, a correspondent calling themselves "USA Today" writes:

"To be honest we are heading for a Balkinization and a racial cleansing

"I know its not politicly correct to say so but I think lots of folks see it coming and I'll bet the vast majority of Americans would have no problem with genocide as a last resort to save this country , Usually when you back somebody into a corner they will defend themselves by any means ........get it ?

"Does this sound like something you would hear the nazis say? sure it is but I spend lots of time scanning the forums and blogs and its coming from normal , everyday people that are just about fed up with the whole mess.

"I know a large number of Germans didn't agree with hitler but they didn't exactly act against him either.

"Just keep pushing and pretty soon you'll find the American people in a corner.

"On that day, Beware."

People who think like this are the social, cultural and political base of politicians like Jim Sensenbrenner.

They are classic colonists, with the colonizer's outlook. For them, mere "immigration" is impossible. Their "forefathers" conquered the land, so those coming here must be out to "re-conquer" the land ­ to take it back from them.

These are the true inheritors of the American Dream, a dream which, for the colonized, has been nothing but a nightmare.

They intend to defend that nightmare ­ no matter what it takes.

That's what "immigration reform" and "immigration control" are really all about.

Colonialism.

And the race laws that defend it.

Juan Santos is editor of Mexica Tlahtolli, a Chicana/o - Native American newspaper in Los Angeles. He can be reached at JuanSantos@Mexica.com

i am posting this as another perspective on immigration for comment and analysis.

source: http://www.batr.org/reactionary/040306.html (http://www.batr.org/reactionary/040306.html)

Outsourcing, Nation Building and Open Borders


Three pillars weaken a collapsing foundation for a viable self-sufficient society.  Each targets the destruction of self-rule and sovereignty.  Each amplifies on the disintegration of the other.  And each is interconnected in a much broader strategy to destroy self-determination, freedom and national security.

 
How do you outsource the empire?


Outsourcing has been part of the globalist scheme for decades.  Sold under the misnomer of Free Trade the real intent is to drain a domestic self-sustaining economy from internal independence.  The stark reality of exporting living wage jobs and laying waste to crucial industrialized segments of an effective economy benefits only the transnational corporatoracy.  The lust for cheap labor drives every possible job overseas.  Real wage purchasing power sinks with each decade.  Replacement employment in new-fangled ventures and fields seldom provide a compatible level of inflationary adjusted remuneration. 

 

Security of employment is but a fond memory.  The rat race has been transformed into an accelerated spinning wheel for less cheese.  Families can only survive and raise offspring with two bread winners.  Cut-rate Wal-Mart pricing drives out small business merchants.  Prices on cars rise so dramatically that it takes a second mortgage to buy, so folks just lease.  And what do the politicians do, but pass every NAFTA, CAFTA and FTAA policy structured and drafted to dismantle the last remnants of a self-contained economic independency.

 

The promise of low costs really translates into a lower standard of living for the bulk of society.  As inflation explodes the imbalance accentuates.  Outsourcing is a designed policy it is not an inevitable eventuality.  The political mechanism of government is run by and for the interests of favored enterprises.  The notion that they are public companies has as much credibility as saying your Senator honestly represents your family.



 
The Reality of Open Borders


With this economic model in place the next step is to send abroad this marvel of democratic servitude.  Nation building is the implied pride of the political elite.  The vile career class of bipartisan politicians that swear to defend and protect, advance their benefactor bounty as a gift to the rest of the world.  George W. Bush’s endless apostatizing in the guise of a democratic protectorate preaches the heretical gospel of internationalism.  Rattling off a list of “so called” democracies around the globe hardly substantiates self-governance.  Self-determination can never be correctly defined by a “world community” cabal, which is based upon the economic structure of interdependency.   

 

The nature of sophisticated slavery is sold under the label of a calculated and contrived constitutional framework and validated under stage-managed elections.  If nation building was such a noble objective, explain such failed results to Haitians.  The marketing of carrot and stick diplomacy leaves a soiled record of corruption and cronyism.  The recipient of the fruits of all these taxpayer public expenditures that fund such ambitions stream directly into the bank accounts of the blessed transnational corporatoracy. 

 

Defending the record of nation creation in tribal societies is like forcing the Knights Templar Crusaders to dine with Saladin.  Saladin was of Kurdish heritage and one of very few personages of his times that has managed to be positively described in both Western and Eastern sources.  But the invading and crusading victorious occupiers did more than just liberate the Holy Land, they built permanent garrisons to secure their presence.  Sacred relics have now been converted into hallowed black gold.  By what stretch of rationality should the arrogance of this day be any more successful then the armies of the Pope? 

 

Today’s Hessian mercenaries from the “coalition of the willing” are not welcomed as liberators.  The rule they are ordered to enforce, imposes a plutocrat structure that is not natural to the indigenous region.  Native inhabitants remain loyal to their tribal heritage, not to a designated non-existent nation drawn on a colonial map.  Defining victory by banning news coverage of returning body bags is testimony to the surreal disconnect from reality that underpins U.S. foreign policy.   

 

In order to rationalize the absurdity of interventionism, the global emancipation must be extended to our own borders.  How could the mighty military be justified to save the world when the entire hemisphere wants to march into the promised land?  Open borders is not about allowing guest workers entry for tasks Americans won’t do, it is about reducing middle class citizens to comparable illegal immigrate subsistent levels.  As long as the average citizen is being financially bled to death the cure is not to lower wages even more with the influx of “coolie” hired help.

 

Accommodating inertia might seem benign but encouraging a wholesale invasion is certainly conscious neglect.  The reason the door is wide open instead of a gate locked shut is that the same faceless corporate entities prosper with the demise of independent small business.  As disposable income vanishes only necessities remain.  Monopoly money must buy from monopolistic nation wide franchises.

 

Hordes of Spanish use sign language to communicate, while their beneficial employers will be immune from prosecution as long as they withhold taxes.  True social security reform with a Latino beat!  What kind of a guest steals jobs when avaricious households utilize plebeian servants?  Is this the kind of nation building we want to export or is it just pure exploitation?  How long will America remain as a functioning society before tribal feuds emerge, as the normal course of social interaction turns habitually confrontational?

 

The connection is stark and the outcome bleak.  Open borders promote foreign enrollment in American universities at bargain basement tuition.  Nation building demands that aliens must be enlisted in the military to fight foreign adventures.  And outsourcing means that all those south of the border legionnaire GI’s will finish their term of duty and redirect their pension or those overseas students will take their degree and fly back to their country of origin so that they can get those grand paying jobs offered by the transnational corporatoracy. 

 

This is a world designed for inmates to occupy the plantation fields and work the chain gang.  An asylum of discriminatory proliferation where the masses of Breton work horses will do the bidding of the equestrians for selective breeding.  The triangle has sharp tips and acute angles.  These three interrelated components destroy any realistic chance for assimilation, integration or co-existence.  The solution is to abandon all damaging aspects of global outsourcing.  Domestic industry and commerce must be rebuilt to insure national survival.  All vestiges of international neo-imperialism need to cease as a true national defense resurrected to conduct its primary function – secure the borders.  And open border need to be slammed shut.  High fences and comprehensive deportation is the answer to any barbarian invasion.

 

Strong measures are necessary to save our country.  The treasonous political hierarchy has sold out America.  Only a broad based insurrection will forego an inevitable slave state.  Civil disobedience can be the alternative to revolution.  But if recent history is any indicator the sleepy activists that fear to conform the corporatoracy culture will just watch the nation sink into oblivion.  Just remember the role of the linkage in the three- edged triangle.  Looks a lot like the plans of the Trilateral Commission are well in place to realize their ultimate objective.  A world ruled by the few as the many scrap for their subsistence.   

 

SARTRE – April 3, 2006

“The connection is stark and the outcome bleak.  Open borders promote foreign enrollment in American universities at bargain basement tuition.  Nation building demands that aliens must be enlisted in the military to fight foreign adventures.  And outsourcing means that all those south of the border legionnaire GI’s will finish their term of duty and redirect their pension or those overseas students will take their degree and fly back to their country of origin so that they can get those grand paying jobs offered by the transnational corporatoracy.”

* Recruitment from the mass of newly arrived immigrants would be a top priority of a military having trouble filling its quotas. I would not be surprised if a fast track to citizenship is offered if ones are willing to join. The author’s racism is causing a blindspot to a truth that he is very close to. Calling ones with more indigenous ties to the Americas “aliens” and getting a “free ride” is absurd. It is about maximum exploitation as he has pointed out.

“This is a world designed for inmates to occupy the plantation fields and work the chain gang.  An asylum of discriminatory proliferation where the masses of Breton work horses will do the bidding of the equestrians for selective breeding.  The triangle has sharp tips and acute angles.  These three interrelated components destroy any realistic chance for assimilation, integration or co-existence.  The solution is to abandon all damaging aspects of global outsourcing.  Domestic industry and commerce must be rebuilt to insure national survival.  All vestiges of international neo-imperialism need to cease as a true national defense resurrected to conduct its primary function – secure the borders.  And open border need to be slammed shut.  High fences and comprehensive deportation is the answer to any barbarian invasion.”

* The author’s racism is glaringly apparent with use of such terms as “barbarian invasion.” If he were really concerned about exploitation, then discussion and priority would be given to the situation that the transnational corporatoracy has created in the “illegals” home nations and its relation to the immigration issue. Furthermore - who were the original barbarians 500 years ago? And what is the connection between that illegal immigrant barbarian invasion 500 years ago and the corporatoracy that would not exist to the current extent without that imperialistic impulse? What is really happening is that the benefits that working and middle class white people have enjoyed as crumbs from the spoils and feasts of imperialism from the masters table are being severed and there is a panic amongst the more astute. The author should know better that the masters will ALWAYS get their cheap labor, no matter what concessions they give to the reactionary racists. He should know that that wall and/or fence that he wants will also be used to keep his poor ass in/or out if he can’t afford to pay the piper.

“Strong measures are necessary to save our country.  The treasonous political hierarchy has sold out America.  Only a broad based insurrection will forego an inevitable slave state.  Civil disobedience can be the alternative to revolution.  But if recent history is any indicator the sleepy activists that fear to conform the corporatoracy culture will just watch the nation sink into oblivion.  Just remember the role of the linkage in the three- edged triangle.  Looks a lot like the plans of the Trilateral Commission are well in place to realize their ultimate objective.  A world ruled by the few as the many scrap for their subsistence.”

* so, which way working class white American? A solid NO! to exploitation across the board? or fight the people who you are in some ways now moreso in the same boat with?   

I am certain that this whole thing is being trumped-up to make Bush look like a good guy because his position is more 'moderate' than the wingnuts in Congress trying to make immigrants into felons. Especially since I heard Jeb Bush talk about how the intolerance against Mexicans 'pains' him. It's easy to employ a divide-and conquer strategy on a racist population such as the one here.

 Of course all the hypocrisy is stunning, given that the US has done everything in its power for the last 100 years to make sure that every country south of the border is an impoverished vassal to the US, run by the most anti-democratic regimes imaginable. Anyone working for economic self-sufficiency is the enemy.