The front pages of all the major newspapers have been ablaze with the politicians tirades against US Immigration policies.
Ever since the World Trade Center bombing, asylum seekers have been regarded as potential terrorists waiting for the opportunity to disembark and wreak havoc on unsuspecting U.S. citizens. The primary targets of that particular xenophobic madness are middle Easterners and recently Chinese. But, as most blacks and white Americans cannot discern between Indian, Arab, and Muslim, Sikh or other differently skin toned or religiously oriented all are lumped together under the “Radical Fundamentalist” label. By the same token, all Asian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Lao, Cambodian and Filipino suffer the same discrimination of being part of the “yellow menance” as Asians were characterized in the 40″s and 50’s.
The recent Mexican American war of words over where a boatload of Chinese who were smuggled into west coast waters should go is a dramatic reminder of the “Komagato Maru’ incident that faced Sikhs 80 years ago.
California’s governor, Pete Wilson ran full page ads in national newspapers imploring President Clinton and Congress to consider changing the U.S, Constitution to keep the “born here’s” from automatically becoming citizens.
California’s liberal Senator, Dianne Feinstein wants to charge a border toll and Rep. Barbara Boxer wants to deploy the National Guard. Alan Simpson the Rightwing, conservative Republican Congressman from Wyoming wants I.N.S. underlings to have immediate detention powers over new arrivals and Patrick Buchanan the arch right’s Presidential “Wanna Be” would build a giant ‘Electric Fence’ along our southern border. Meanwhile he is propounding the great deal that NAFTA would be for all our citizens. President Clinton wants national health care and a card that would identify those select few who could actually participate. _ seems as though it has taken 10 years for George Orwell’s Big Brother(s) to finally come to power in the U.S. while those fearsome communists are breaking down walls and the need for a Citizen to carry the appropriate “papers.” We’ve certainly came along way from Emma Lazarus’ poem at the front of Miss Liberty declaring, “Give us your poor… Your huddled masses longing to breathe free.” According to the politicians this should be amended to: “Give us your educated, your millionaires willing to invest.” For a country whose fortunes have been built on Immigrant’s labors and lives the politicians have taken a shameful position, but an easy one.
In California, Texas, Florida and New York the second and third generation White European American has been replaced by those from south of the border and the Pacific region.
But politicians know where their bread is buttered. Poor Hispanics don’t vote, Laotians, Hmongs and Cambodians don’t hold fundraisers, middle class White senior citizens are the ones who tum out big at the polls and these are the people that Pete Wilson and Patrick Buchanan are speaking to and speaking for.
The U.S. economy is in the toilet and immigrants are a convenient target, after all, they’ve taking “our” jobs, and they also come here for welfare, or so say the Politicians whose policies are based on polls not facts.
The truth is, most immigrants legal and illegal do work that most white or black American’s wouldn’t touch. You don’t sec white “neo-Nazi” boys in the lettuce fields or black “gang bangers” picking strawberries.
‘The scandals that will forever be known as the ‘Zoe Baird’ affair didn’t happen because Ms.Baird hired an elderly white woman to care for her children and home, but because she hired, for less than It is true that the Welfare system is out of hand, but this problem and the dollars spent on it pales beside the well-off senior citizens, who get social security benefits that they didn’t pay into and don’t need. The jobs problem is a fact also but blaming those who work for less than minimum wage misses the point. The massive military buildups during the 1980’s forced the USSR into bankruptcy. The “downsizing” as we euphemistically call massive layoffs is a way that corporations who haven’t moved off shore yet keep. Profits high and stock holders happy those same stockholders who are the voters and fundraisers that the politicians are playing to.
Reforms are called for, and there are asylum seekers who are frauds, welfare recipients and burdens to society.
But this group isn’t the source of all our evils. Taking a hard look at lenient laws that reward the well-off at the expense of the down trodden would bring in bigger bucks, but then again, who would vote for a politician who told the truth?
Article extracted from this publication >> August 20, 1993
