In response to Jerry Remmers article by same name…
He recommends, in a comment, another perspective besides instant condemnation of unknown people on this ‘list’ of alleged ‘violators on immigration laws.’ Remmers recommends that others ought consider walking in the shoes of those on “the list”:
In response to commenters supporting the publishing of a private list, really across the blogosphere, “Fine.” says Remmers, [then] Give us your full name, address, telephone number, email address… and Social Security numbers to the local media outlet and others will follow.
Wont happen of course. Those who condemn others will not be willing to have their private data published in a list of alleged offenders. Remmer’s point being, it is easy to condemn others if it’s not you yourself on the black list.
Personally, my will is that we never, ever again have mob justice wherein some think the degree of their personal aggravation is license ‘to break the law in order to possibly snare others who are allegedly breaking the law.’
There are hundreds of former police officers, detectives and private citizens serving long prison sentences for just this kind of misguided tampering with records; for thinking ‘the law’ needed a little help to go forward, and so they fraudulently ‘helped’ thereby skewing justice.
In the psychology of groups, when some people take law into their own hands, they most often appear to believe that because others more powerful than they– will not take care of them in the ways they want– that they have to act on their own, and so act by often attaching to a group of the like-minded, and then follow ‘the law’ concocted in their own minds, instead of living by the letter of the laws of the land.
This act by “concerned citizens” in Utah, of hacking into and publishing confidential records of those they deem wholesale unworthy and criminal regarding state’s services is first and foremost, against the rule of law. It is also kangaroo court– which for decades in the South and North has been at the heart of those who often want to name themselves ‘posses’ and ‘vigilantes’ and through faux deputization, feel they have a right to decide who will live on undisturbed, and who will not.
There may be people on Utah’s list who are here without papers, but there are likely many on the list who are here with papers, with green cards, in the process of citizenship, serving in the armed forces, and naturalized citizens, and people born in the US. But matters of fact dont occur to some who like to think of themselves as rebel upholders of a Constitution, breaking laws of the land, in order to make claims on a set of laws that only exists in the ‘constitutional law degree’ section of their own minds.
Just as counterpoint, I hear through the bible grapevine that if Utah (and Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, parts of California, Washington State, Idaho and parts of Canada,) wanted to reduce their welfare and foodstamp rolls significantly, that they take a good hard look at men in their domicile with dozens of wives, who claim hundreds of children to each patron, and who have taken from state and federal systems for decades …on the dole to support their gargantuan families that the men themselves just somehow cant figure out how to support. The guileless children should not suffer for whatever wiliness of the fathers and mothers, should they?
Or should they?
For routing so-called ‘undocumented residents’ from their homes because they are on ‘a list’ will disrupt all families should they even be harrassed, let alone arrested and jailed. Their children will suffer mightily.
Please tell us the difference between polygamists’ children and children of Latinos who may or may not have papers yet. It is really alright with us that children be torn from school, from often the only home place they have ever known, and to arrest their parents? Do we also propose as Than Shwe the dictator of Burma did, to then create a children’s jail, as he did when he arrested thousands of Buddhist parents without due process of law, leaving their babies and children alone without care. Would we propose too that we have to have a prison to incarcerate the children of those we decided, without due process, to be unworthy of food or care?
As a Latina, who comes from an immigrant refugee family, directly, not one, two or ten generations ago, I can only sorrow for the just. Whomsoever has decided to carry around “A List of the Unworthy” has hacked Lady Justice to pieces.
We’ve seen this and seen this and seen this ‘list making’ for decades now. Whether it was
— Mao’s list of enemies of the state, persons who he thought were taking up too much room, taking up too much resource, so… forced them from their homes to far outlying provinces with many starved to death and injured and murdered…
— or Joe Stalin’s list of over 100 tribal groups like the Swabians and Masurians to deport and murder after WWII,
— or Mengeles’ list of Jewish children to separate from their parents, to pretend to care for them while experimenting on them and slaughtering their families
— Department of War’s list for scraping Japs from the landscape, that is, Japanes Amerrican families rounded up from their farms and homes and put in ‘internment camps’ in the middle of hell-nowhere
— or the Calvery’s list of which ‘savages,’ which ‘injuns’ should be forced onto the Trail of Tears held for Cherokees, Seminoles, Navajo, Apaches, and more
— or the KKK list of stores and homes to be firebombed, lists of men and women to be hung from bridges, lists of whole familiies to be rounded up and routed from their homes in ‘raids’
— or zoning code lists to keep the kikes out of the neighborhood,
— or red-lining lists to keep the nig-ras out
— or lists of suspicious looking dark-skinned men, the ragheads, who are Muslims, the ‘darkies’ who are East Indian and Hindu, the other ‘nig-ras’ who are Ethopian or Egyptian and Coptic; they must be watched; they must be detained; we can tell just by looking, they are ‘not our kind.’
— or J. Edgar Hoover’s list of the unworthy commie rockin’ socialist blocking, clown clocking no goods… depriving people of right to work, due process, right of appeal and habeas corpus.
–or the list of those accused but not tried, literally for going on a decade now, held in out-of-country prisons, with no right to trial, no right for redress, no habeas corpus
Everyone of the above atrocities and egregious wholesaling of condemnations of large groups of people began with “A List”. Every single one.
Where is the List of Compassion for those caught in such dragnets, where is the List of Protectiveness for the innocent, and for the children? We cant say we care about children if we drag their parents to the police station without just cause other than we dislike them taking up room and we are suspicious of them. That too ‘easy dislike without understanding’, that ‘suspicion without inquiry’… without actually knowing and caring about the person’ …all these have been the oddly predictible and unimaginative modus operandi toward ‘the stranger’ for eons.
Surely we’ve evolved to finer ways of being humane with one another now. And if not, then some are way behind in the race to the place of peace, prosperity and unity.
How even easier it is nowadays to condemn others without face to face contact. At least when I was a child, you could see who purposely threw you to the street from the trolley car, you could see who spit on you on the street, kicked you at the bus-stop, slammed down the window shade of the shop snapping the Closed sign into place. You could see in a blur who drove by your house late at night screaming obscenties and that we all should go back where we came from. You could see the the face of the man who wouldnt give your uncle the job, but who wanted you to go in the back room for a minute, to ‘show you something…’ because he knew immigrant girls will be afraid to resist or to tell.
I personally decry the fact that a news story like this “list hacking against the law” and those it affects deeply… is not discussed, but rather given an armchair vote of uninformed “I’m agin the immigrants/ undocumented” …almost always nay, and often nasty… and without inquiry, without questioning, without wanting to know more.
Dont send me links; that’s not discussion. Dont tell me we have to ‘debate’ this. How about a discussion, for a change how about basic grassroots inquiry, how about learning and teaching one another with civility and without condemnation, how about actual problem solving… far more powerful often than a two sided debate. This issue has hundreds of ways to understand and plan.
Tell me instead you know about the Bracero program and its ugliness firsthand. Tell me you lost a child in the desert who’d fallen in with dishonest coyotes. Tell me you know about the 3 great deportations of Mexicans from the US in febrile government sponsored work programs of the past, –when this good nation felt like it, uprooting and deporting tens of thousands of families ‘because they were not needed anymore, many of their children US citizens, and scarring those families for generations now and yet to come.
And dont tell me the Mexicans wave US and Mexican flags at their parades. Wake up, so do the Polish-Americans, the Italian-Americans, the Irish-Americans, the German-Americans, the Chinese-Americans and every other group, including Native Americans, who are sovereign nations, give their own and the US stars and stripes prominence, always.
And dont tell me 10,000 pregnant women in labor have climbed the fence just to give birth 20 minutes later in a US hospital, and dont be calling children who happened to come to earth on US soil, ‘anchor babies: They are children, just like yours. Period. And dont tell me all the unfactual rumors, lies and ‘conventional wisdom’ about immigrants that is anything but wise. And especially dont tell me only highly educated immigrants are wanted, not the ignorant…
for I have worse news yet, the day we all can breed horses and range ride for weeks, or shear sheep, spin thread, dye wool and make our own clothes, or build a house from scratch that is grace and beauty, or dig an acequia, a water ditch for miles without fainting, complaining, or giving up… then the idea that some version of ‘ignorant people are a drag on the society,’ wont be laughed at.
And don’t tell me you’re a rich immigrant, and gosh, it just isnt hard for you at all, and that since ‘you got yours’ you now turn on other immigrants who have come behind you. And dont tell me everyone can come to America, just get in line like everyone else: Those who say this have NO idea what a non-even-handed mess our immigration system is unless you’ve tried family reunification, a law on our USA law books for decades now, and impossible for most to get. It is a legal pathway, yet it is impossible to accomplish unless you’re ‘connected,’ and have endless time and money for lawyers and travel. What poor people do you know who are ‘connected?’ The answer is close to none.
And if you’re still with me, and smoke isnt pouring out of your ears, then please, I ask you… tell us ways to take ALL the criminals out of the government welfare systems, no matter what ethnic heritage. The scamming for foodstamps as I mentioned earlier is huge. It is done by Muslims, by so-called Mormons, by Christians, by Asians, by all manner of ethnic, racial and religious peoples, both immigrant and non-immigrant. Give us some solutions that are precise, humane and just, to cull the scammers.
Propose to us clear and humanly decent ways to identify and deport the criminal population in any ethnic group, whether it be a gang/drug gang/ people who truly believe in honor killing (dishonorable murders), or other. But, please include all murderous gangs, all people who believe in murder, no matter where they came from, and no matter how far back.
Please suggest to us clear and decent ways to treat human beings from foreign countries as human beings, rather than as a slave labor force— to import and use when wanted, and to dump and deport when no longer wanted. Tell us ways to keep their children’s educations in our country uninterrupted. Tell us, but tell all of us who are below poverty level incomes, and often x4, that you’ve found a way to not make US citizens into slave laborers, too.
Give us the way to see our way clear to a better day for all, regardless of race, heritage, ethnicity, country of origin, and you will be a hero, a heroine to the soul and spirit of the Americas. Some may think this dream is pie in the sky, and ooo such a nice fluffy thought, but it’s never going to happen. Some might add a bitter ha ha to that trope.
I’d just mention that many of us have lived long enough to have heard some people declaim over and over in our lifetimes, that:
–No nigger’s ever going to drink out of that park water fountain,
–No Spic is going to live next door to me,
–No Jap is ever going to be shaking my hand,
–No wet-back is ever gonna sit anywhere other than on my lawnmower.
–No sand-ass is ever going to come into my house with his screeching from that minaret thing.
–No Korean’s ever gonna go to school with my kid.
— No faggot is ever going to be welcome at our social club/ our military/ our church.
–No c– is ever going to sit in this boardroom/ be my boss/ go to college.
–No jackinapes is ever going to drive in my neighborhood without being arrested
–No half breed injun/white/nigger/viet-gook/krauthead-blackie kid is ever going to make it in my world
–No kike is every going to stand at the bar in my country club
–No hippie with long hair is ever going to work here
–no goddam crip in a wheelchair is ever gonna have ‘special needs’; just let ’em make do like the rest of us.
— No babykilling, yellow buck toothed, slanty eyed devil is ever going to climb to the top
–No good will ever come from a drunken Mick or Portuguese nigger.
–No one with one drop of nigger will ever marry into this family
Are you laughing sadly yet with joy yet? If so, laughter echoing from far far out in the Unverse is sadly-joyeously laughing with us.
And with love,
dr.e
Daughter of immigrants and refugees/ considered too slow to go to college/ former welfare mother/ Doctorate in ethnic-clinical psychology/ in clinical practice as post-trauma specialist/ Diplomate psychoanalyst for 40 years/ best selling author, 144 weeks on NY Times Bestseller list and translated into 38 foreign languages/ testified before Federal Ways and Means Committee on Welfare Reform/ Chair of Colorado State Grievance Board, appointed by a Democratic Governor, then next a Republican Governor/ inducted into Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame/ Awardee of the first Joseph Campbell Keeper of the Lore award/ recipient of Las Primeras Award from Mexican-American Women’s Foundation, Washington DC. Et al. I don’t normally put a page from my c.v. after an article I write here on TMV. It is just to make the point, that my being ‘too slow’ long ago by some sights, was actually likely an ok speed to move at.
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CODA
Painting is of the Russian Firebird, the phoenix, who no matter how often burned down will rise to life again. This painting is the cover for my next book La Tinaja, The Hidden Spring: On Belonging To One Another.
Also, I apologize in advance for any who might be offended by use of terms that have been darkly alive in our culture for decades. I use them here as echos of those realities, not in any way as calling others down. I will most often call others by whatever name-designation they wish to be called.