Another comment worth repeating

On July 23, the estimable Erin Reed posted a piece about a recent column by NYT columnist David Leonhardt in which he proposed that Kamala Harris should be a trimmer on gender rights in order to appear more "moderate."

I replied in a comment which I thought was worth repeating; this is (a very slightly edited and expanded version of) it:

Two points need to be noted about Leonhardt's political, uh, "advice."

One is that it is not driven by either real conviction or the merits of the case but by an underlying attitude of "Well, this doesn't matter to ME, therefore it shouldn't matter to anyone else other than a few flakes who don't count."

Perhaps more to the point, though, is that it presents a line of argument that's been used at some point or another against every liberal, every Democrat, every progressive, every radical, every individual anywhere on the entire left half of the US political spectrum, one that says your arguments must not be couched in the words of conviction or conscience, the words of justice or moral necessity, but rather must be framed by fear, fear of what "they" might say about it, what nasty name "they" might call you.

In fact, unless what you propose is overwhelmingly popular (and even if it is), if "they" can say something nasty, it's likely best not only to not mention it at all, but to openly attack it.

It's a far too common practice that at times has been called "duck and cover" (and if you know what that means without checking, you are older than you look), of politically curling into a defensive position. But I prefer my own name for it: "preemptive capitulation," surrendering before the battle has even been joined.

That is exactly what Leonhardt has proposed Harris do on gender rights: don't mention it and when asked, hold it as far away from you as you can get away with. And I guarantee you there will be a good number of "old hands" among the political jibber-jabberers and the consultant coterie who will regard that as wise counsel.

At moments like this I can't help but draw a comparison to the right-wingers, who, when they are called on their latest lizard-brain inanity will double- and triple-down and after a round or three the media gets bored with asking and the issue fades from the headlines and then from memory. It's sitzfleisch as political strategy¹ while we, when pressed, usually act like we're playing rapid transit², rushing from one mumbled evasion and backtrack to another. I still have memories from a few decades ago of pollsters telling people that their problem with Democrats was less what they stood for than that they didn't seem to stand for anything.

Personally, I'm tired of it. This doesn't mean we don't pay attention to how we say things; in fact, one of my all-time favorite compliments was when after a debate I learned that someone in the audience said I had the ability "to make the most radical positions sound like a voice of sweet moderation." So yeah, I paid attention to how I said things, but there was never any doubt about what it was I was saying. What it does mean is that we should speak the truth as we understand it and when challenged on what we have said, Don't. Back. Down.

That's the message for Kamala Harris and for all of us: If you've changed your mind about something, say so, say "I was wrong about that." Own it. But if you haven't, own that, too. Don't. Back. Down.

¹"Sitzfleisch" is German for "sitting flesh." See my "Rules for Right-wingers," specifically #20.
²Rapid transit is a form of chess where each player has five seconds per move.

A comment I thought deserved repeating

Chris Geidner at Law Dork, whose writings at Substack and his own site I heartily recommend, just wrote about two recent Circuit Court decisions.

One was out of the 6th Circuit that dismissed a challenge to a Tennessee anti-drag law; in the other the 5th Circuit upheld Mississippi’s lifetime ban on voting imposed on people with felony convictions for any of a variety of crimes.

I was moved to make a comment that I thought worthy of repeating here. To fully get the first couple of paragraphs you should read the relevant piece since they refer to the decisions he was analyzing, but I don’t think that’s truly necessary to grasp the point I was really trying to get to.

Any way, this is what I wrote:

"Mathis’s dissenting opinion ... made a strong argument on the merits."

Unfortunately, that's just not good enough these days, not when we have fanatic judges ruling in effect that you can't challenge a law unless you prove you are breaking it and if you do, that just proves you're guilty because the law is valid - a ruling better expressed as "heads I win, tails you lose."

Not when we have judges with hang-ups about sex and sexuality deep enough to rule that, among other things, even drag shows and go-go dancers ("Go-go dancers?" Really??) are inherently "harmful to minors."

Not when we have judges finding the phrase "could be" seen by a minor - not "would be" or "would likely be" or "could reasonably be expected to be," but merely "could be"- is NOT unconstitutionally vague and does NOT positively invite discriminatory enforcement.

Not when we have judges who employ the sneering, condescending dismissal of (paraphrasing slightly) "go and do the hard work of convincing state legislatures" literally at the same time as you tell them that the main method of bringing political pressure - the vote - is denied them.

What we are seeing, especially in that last example, is the emergence of what Viktor Orban dubbed "illiberal democracy," otherwise known as "the tyranny of the majority" - meaning "We are the majority so we'll do whatever we flipping well want. You don't like it? TS. You may think you have rights, but remember that we interpret what they mean."

They are not, in fact, the majority, but enough of us are sufficiently disengaged or discouraged or disinformed that they have positions of power that enable them to act as if they are and use those positions to further entrench themselves and their warped ideology.

We face hard times and I confess I have a combination of short-term despair and long-term hope. But I also think we have to be prepared to be aggressive with more than words and frankly with more than voting. I don't mean violence, I don't mean rioting, acting like we were a bunch of right-wingers - but I do mean being in the streets, being visible, including mass civil disobedience.

But I'll end this screed on a moment of hope. The reason the right wing is trying so hard, pulling every trick, grabbing and pulling on every lever of power they can find, is because they know that in the long run of history they are going to lose and like King Canute in the popular version of the story, they are trying to hold back the tide. Like him, they will fail. It's up to us to determine how long that will take.

Reactions, as always, are welcome.

Consider it just a question

Consider this to be just a question, one directed toward every red-cap-wearing MAGA muppet out there. No, seriously.

In the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Republicans and right-wingers of various sorts immediately blamed the shooting on Joe Biden, Democrats in general, DEI programs, and - of course - the "liberal" media.

Oh, and they're immediately starting to fundraise off it.

So here's the question:

What the hell happened to "not politicizing a tragedy?"

What happened to "thoughts and prayers" for the family of Corey Compreatore or the others still in the hospital? What happened to the "lone wacko" talk or any of the rest of the vapid homilies you always spew to evade your own moral responsibility for a climate of threat and violence?

You generation of vipers! You liars! You hypocrites! You are like whited sepulchers, prettified outwardly but inside you are corruption and death.

And no, I will not moderate my tone in pursuit of "unity." Paraphrasing William Lloyd Garrison, I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this topic, the topic of your denial of democracy, your rejection of reason, your jettisoning of justice, your dismissal of decency and all in service of protecting your power by projecting your packaged paranoia - on this topic I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation, nor will I.

One truth I will speak now is that I confess that I'm not sure that in the short run we can stop you. But ultimately we will and at some point your descendants will be ashamed to admit to being related to someone who thought as you do. We will because, one last paraphrased quote, the arc of the moral universe is long and my eye reaches only a little ways. But I do know that moral arc bends towards justice - and so away from you.

Remember this - always!

I wrote about this more than a year ago. In fact, I first wrote about it more than 29 years ago. But events of late have pushed this back to the forefront of my political thoughts, pushing hard enough to get through a wall of struggles with burnout and depression to get me to write this, even if it's the only thing I manage to get out this summer.

Because I want the following quote burned into the consciousness of every single leftist, every single progressive, every single liberal, every single person on the entire left half of the American political spectrum and even those to the right of that line who are not yet beyond the reach of reality. And it is this: and yes it is deliberately in a great big bold font to emphasize its importance:

“‘Back to 1900’ is a serviceable summation of the conservatives’ goal."
- George Will, syndicated column, January 2, 1995

Yes. That's what he wrote. "Back to 1900." And every single thing conservatives say and do, every single thing they promote, every single proposal they make, every single emotional button they go to push, should be seen through that lens. They want to reproduce the social and economic relations that existed 125 years ago. They want to, in their own words, go "Back to 1900." And that is exactly what they have been trying, are trying, and will continue to try to do. Go back.

Back, that is, to a time before legal labor unions or effective anti-monopoly laws, a time of widespread child labor and twelve- or fifteen-hour work days and six- or even seven-day work weeks. Before regulations requiring safe working conditions, a time when being killed at work was a major cause of death.

Back to a time before environmental protection laws or consumer protection laws, a time when patent "medicines" were common and government "regulation" was more about promoting corporate interests than regulating them because caveat emptor was the rule of the day.

Back to before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment or disability insurance, before any kid of public insurance, including for health, was even under discussion and decades before it was taken seriously..

“Back to 1900.” Back to when poor people were considered genetic defectives who deserved their condition and the way to deal with poverty was to shove it out of sight.

Back to a time when education was largely a perk of privilege, only half of children went to school, only 6.4 percent graduated high school, and the majority of adults had no more than eight years of schooling.

Back before civil or voting rights laws, back when women couldn’t vote, wives were chattel, blacks were either “good n*****s” who got called “boy” or “uppity n*****s” who got lynched, racism (against Irish, Italians, Chinese, and others as well as blacks) was institutionalized, sexism the norm, and gays and lesbians were sick or perverted while as far as “polite society” was concerned, bi, trans, or other flavors of the queer community simply didn’t exist.

Back to a time when valuing Protestant Christians over other religions and other people's rights was unremarkably ordinary and some, including atheists, were subject not only to social discrimination but also legal barriers to participation in society.

Back, in short, to a time when the elite and powerful were in their mansions and the rest of us were expected to know our places, live lives of servitude without complaint, and then die without making a fuss.

“Back to 1900” is indeed “a serviceable summation” of the right wing’s goal, which is to undo a century of progress toward economic and social justice in order to benefit their selfish, warped, morally warped lives.

Maya Angelou wisely said "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

We should have been paying attention when the fanatics were openly declaring what they wanted, who they were and are, and we either ignored it or dismissed it as hyperbole.

We shouldn’t have. Because they showed us, they told us directly - and we didn’t listen.

We can at least listen now. And then do more.

And we, each of us, can start by burning that quote into our minds.

Footnotes: For those who may not know, George Will is what passes for an intellectual among the right. And if anyone doubts the quote, I still have the column that I clipped out of my local paper. And it is a quote, not a paraphrase.
 

A three-fer on immigration, part three

Immigration is going to be an issue in the presidential election, so I am re-posting three posts from 2019 that I think are relevant.

Fair warning: Because these are old, I can't guarantee - and have not checked - that all of the data is current and all of the links are live. That does not affect the arguments.

The Erickson Report, Page 4: A Longer Look at open borders

I promised last week to follow up on the idea of open borders as being worth a look. But what happened is that it wound up turning into A Longer Look - a longer look at open borders.

Open borders, in case the concept is not clear from the name, refers to a policy of unrestricted immigration, of free travel into and out of a nation with little more fuss than crossing the border between two US states. There can be trivial variations on that, such as requiring you to have either money for a few days' expenses or a place to stay, but we're not going to bother with those.

Okay. There are generally two types of argument, which sometimes overlap, raised in support of open borders: an economic one and a moral one.

At the top, one thing that can't be denied is that it would save money on enforcement. Open borders means no walls, no fences, no screening at airports, no ICE, no deportations, no detention centers, no immigration courts. The US spends in the neighborhood of $20 billion annually in immigration enforcement. Meanwhile, one study pegs the economic cost of wait times at the US-Mexico border alone to be more than $12 billion a year. Add the economic costs of wait times at other ports of entry and we could easily be talking about $40 billion a year on border security.

That's a lot of money but still it's small change in the larger, particularly the world, economy, so there's got be more to the economic argument, and there is. The real economic argument is based on hypothetical notions of economic efficiency.

The idea is that just as open borders in goods - "free trade" - supposedly allows physical resources to flow where they can be deployed most productively for their best use, so open borders for workers allows human resources to flow where they can be deployed most productively - and yes, workers do become more productive as they move from a poor country to a rich one because they join a labor market with ample capital and a predictable legal system.

The result of all this increased productivity, it's claimed, is that the world gets richer.

According to Fortune.com, four different studies have shown that, depending on the level of movement in the global labor market, the estimated growth in “gross world product” - the worldwide equivalent of GDP - would be in the range of 67% to 147%. Effectively, open borders would double the world's economic activity.

But here is the first rub and part of why I find the argument for open borders interesting enough to consider but not really persuasive. Let's suppose that's true, that open borders  produce a major increase in gross world product - GWP if you prefer. The world as a whole is richer but are the people richer? Or have we just created, as the very argument itself suggests, an even and ever greater divide between the rich nations and the poor ones, between the increasingly rich few and the increasingly desperate many? Even if we are to say that those coming in improve their own lot, what does that mean for those left behind?

It's argued that migrant workers often send money back home through remittances, which again could benefit a select few in those home countries, but how much of an impact could that have on the scale of a national economy, even for a poor nation?

And yes, what about those already here? Would the new arrivals drive down wages? Do they improve their own lot at the cost of driving down the ability of those already here to maintain theirs?

The New Internationalist, hardly a right-wing source, says that multiple studies say wages are only minimally affected, if at all, by immigration, citing in particular one from Denmark which followed the wages and employment of every worker in the country between 1991 and 2008 and found that low-skilled wages and employment actually rose in response to the influx of refugees during that time.

Okay but even so, that is about low-skilled workers, not the economy as a whole and it's hard to accept that there is no impact when in the US corporations are increasingly using temporary visas known as H-1Bs to replace American high-skilled, particularly technology, workers with foreign workers because they will work for 25 to even 50 percent less than Americans.

More to the point, all of these cases - from the H-1B program to Denmark's dealing with a flood of refugees and all points in between - are still situations of controlled immigration, even if in the case of Denmark temporarily dramatically increased immigration. They are not open borders and it's reasonable to wonder how far those results can be extrapolated.

Meanwhile, the huge and widening wealth gap we are already seeing here at home is well-known enough to require no further reference; so even if we're to say that with open borders, low-skilled workers would be a little better off, the question remains of if open borders are a pathway, even a tool, for making that wealth gap, that gulf, even wider, that chasm even deeper, that barrier even harder to breach, a way to, if you will, give the poor an extra dime so the rich can have an extra dollar. Or ten. Or a hundred. Or a thousand.

Still still still, even if we ignore that, even if we say that well, we are one of those industrialized nations that will economically benefit, so we'll be better off even if it's a pittance so who cares, that only serves to raise a different issue: The fact remains that by some estimates, more than two-thirds of a person’s overall wealth is determined by where they live and work, that accident of place of birth is a major determinant of your wealth.

Which is where the economic and the moral cases come to overlap: Since where someone is born is entirely a matter of chance, the argument goes, there is no moral justification for compelling people to stay in a poor country. By the same token, those lucky enough to have been born in rich countries have no right to exclude others from their good fortune.

But they do: It's estimated that three-quarters of all border walls and fences in the world have been erected since 2000. Approaching 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, everywhere you look the world has more barriers than ever.

Which just puts an exclamation point on the moral argument, since the main intention of most of these barriers is to preserve the privilege of the wealthy at the expense of the poor by restricting their access to the resources and opportunities available in wealthy countries - while the ability of the rich and even more of capital to move when and where they like is barely touched.

And by the way, not just move for the sake of mere residency. In 21 nations, mostly in Europe and the Caribbean but also Canada, the United States, Australia, and other places, the rich essentially - not literally but essentially - can buy citizenship by investing in the domestic economy.

By what right, by what moral standard, do we allow the perpetuation of that self-reinforcing cycle that increasingly secures and protects the rich against the world's poor, against the world's desperate, against the world's refugees, against those whose moral and ethical claim to a share of the world's resources is as great as their own?

I think the moral case for open borders is clear and correct. But I'm still divided because I have said many times about open borders that my heart says yes but my head says no.

Because what of the practical issues? We are assuming that open borders will lead to a large influx of new residents into the US, considerably more than are coming now - otherwise there isn't an issue. So what are the practical issues of dealing with that rapidly swelling population?

What are the implications, for example, for public education? For increasing the number of schools and classrooms and the supply of teachers rapidly enough? For the availability of health care facilities and the number of doctors, nurses, and all the other sorts of health care personnel? For the provision of social services, which we have to assume will need to be greatly expanded?

What are the implications for the housing stock? The people have to go somewhere. Do we wind up with shanty towns or overflowing cities packed with 21st century versions of the darkest days of Hell's Kitchen or the increasingly rapid replacement of farmland with pavement and buildings?

What about the increased demands for energy? What about utilities such as the electric grid? What would be the impacts on air and water pollution?

Speaking of energy, since as Americans our carbon footprint is so large, what would be the impact of the increased demands for power arising from an expanding industrialized population on global warming?

There are also social questions. Even advocates of open borders acknowledge that in the short term unchecked migration could certainly corrode social cohesion due to cultural conflicts between natives and immigrants. Although in the longer run it likely would make little difference - recall Peter Andreas, who I quoted last time about the historically insecure nature of our borders, noting once "undesirable" sorts of immigrants being, a few generations later, "unremarkably American" - it is still a concern that would require attention.

And yet - yes, another but - it could just as easily develop that none of that would be a problem, at least not big ones.

Why?

Because open borders not only promote immigration, they promote emigration, they promote immigrants’ return to their original homes. If immigrants know they can go home and then maybe come back again in the future, they are less likely to put down roots. Many will come for a few years, to work or study or save some money, and then go home. This happens routinely in the European Union, which has largely open borders among member states.

Consider that even without open borders, in the 1960s, 70 million Mexicans crossed into the USA - and 85 per cent of them later returned to Mexico. But the more militarized our borders become, the more restrictive our policies become, the more those already here don't leave for fear they would never be able to come back because of the restrictions and the dangers associated with the trip.

And those dangers are very real and extend beyond concerns like arrest, incarceration, and even the tearing apart of families. The number of people dying while crossing borders has reached unprecedented levels.

The group Border Angels estimates that since 1994, about 10,000 people have died in their attempt to cross from Mexico into the US. According to the Customs and Border Protection, over 7,000 people died crossing that border between 1998 and 2017.

Meanwhile, more than a thousand die every year trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe, a number that threatens to increase as intensified border enforcement forces people into the hands of smugglers for more perilous journeys while governments, as I noted last time, criminalize programs to save refugees from drowning. Six hundred have already died in 2019.

And the people will keep coming and they will keep dying because on one point history has produced undeniable evidence: No matter how harsh we make their journey, no matter how perilous we make their passage, no matter how dehumanizing we make their detention, no matter how many walls and fences we build, no matter how many guards and guns, dogs and drones we deploy, the conditions of poverty, of hunger, of oppression, of violence, of crime that these human beings experience is bad enough to make the risks worth taking.

Ultimately, it's clear that existing migration policies do not work. The fact is that for all the debates raging in Europe and America, rich countries still take in only a small fraction of the world’s most vulnerable migrants. Indeed, so-called Third World nations take in more refugees than industrialized nations do. Those rich countries - including the US - can and must do more.

I don't know if open borders is a good answer, I truly don't. I believe in it but I have my doubts about its practicality. Maybe I shouldn't worry about practicality in the face of a requirement of morality, but I do. What I can say and do say is that open borders is clearly worth considering and that at the very least we should stop being so afraid to do that.

A three-fer on immigration, part two

 Immigration is going to be an issue in the presidential election, so I am re-posting three posts from 2019 that I think are relevant.

Fair warning: Because these are old, I can't guarantee - and have not checked - that all of the data is current and all of the links are live. That does not affect the arguments.

 

Following Up: US borders have never been "secure"

Finally for today, we’re Following Up on something.

Last time in taking a longer look at immigration, I said I intended to expand on two points: one, that our borders have always been porous; two, that there is a case to be made for open borders.

As it turns out, I don't have enough time for both, so I'm going to have to put the second point off until our next show. But I will get to it because even while I am not at all convinced that open borders are workable, it is an interesting and definitely arguable notion that deserves to be part of the debate.

Okay. I want to note at the top that in discussing how we have never had "secure control" of our borders, I am relying heavily on some work done by Peter Andreas, a professor of political science at Brown University, who says "The unauthorized movement of people is an American tradition."

In fact, it started even before there was a US: In 1763, King George III prohibited colonists from moving west of the Appalachian Mountains to settle. The colonists simply ignored him.

In the 1780s, Congress passed ordinances with the idea of raising revenue, deterring squatters, and promoting orderly westward migration. But a flood of unlawful settlers undermined the plans to the point where in 1807 Congress passed The Intrusion Act, which criminalized illegal settlement and authorized fines and imprisonment. It didn't work. It didn't work so much what became Vermont and Maine were born of squatters.

That pattern repeated itself for decades: illegal settlement, intense (and sometimes violent) resistance to government authority, and finally official resignation to the facts on the ground. For example, the westward migration included European immigrants who entered the country legally but then settled illegally. Unable to deter or remove those settlers, Congress passed “preemption” acts in 1830 and 1841. These were essentially pardons for illegal settlement, providing legitimate land deeds at discounted prices.

I had previously mentioned the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred the entry into the US of Chinese laborers. Turned away at ports of entry, Chinese immigrants simply went to Canada and came in through our northern border.

After the US successfully pressured Canada to deny entry to Chinese, the people-smuggling business moved south - to Mexico. The US-Mexico border already had a history as a route for smuggling goods in both directions; now, it became a gateway for smuggling people as well.

Significantly, Chinese immigrants were not the only “undesirables” coming in through Mexico. By the last decades of the 19th century, Lebanese, Greeks, Italians, Slavs, and Jews, all turned away at official ports of entry, slipped  in from Mexican. Worries over these immigrants was so acute that when the US Border Patrol was created in 1924, its main target was Europeans.

So now we have the descendants of those "undesirables" being, in Andreas' phrase, "unremarkably American" while the Mexicans and Central Americans who were once encouraged as a source of cheap labor have become the undesirables du jour.

US borders today are more heavily policed, closely monitored, and difficult to cross than ever. And officials continue to dream of "secure borders" that never existed even as they are occasionally forced to face reality, as they did most recently in 1986 with, as I mentioned last time, a measure that enabled 2.6 million undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status.

Expecting people to stop coming is insane.

Expecting them to stop finding ways to get in is insane.

Expecting those already here to leave is insane.

Any sane immigration policy must start from those three undeniable facts.

A three-fer on immiagration, part one

Immigration is going to be an issue in the presidential election, so I am re-posting three posts from 2019 that I think are relevant.

Fair warning: Because these are old, I can't guarantee - and have not checked - that all of the data is current and all of the links are live. That does not affect the arguments.

 A Longer Look at Immigration

Now we move to what I hope will be a regular feature of the show. It’s called “A Longer Look” and it’s where we examine a topic in somewhat more depth that we usually have time for.

This time, the topic is immigration.

We have been exposed to, have suffered through, been heartbroken by, the string of stories, extending over the past few years, of the cruelty, the bigotry, the casual indifference to the welfare of human beings, up to and including charging a man named Scott Warren with felonies for, in essence, refusing to allow immigrants to die in the desert, that is the reality of the policies of the Tweetie-Pie administration regarding immigrants and immigration.

We have seen the families torn apart, the children in cages, the dismantling of lives of people who have been in the US in some cases for decades, who have roots here, lives here, families here, some who came as children young enough that they have known no other home, we have seen increasingly furious attempts to deny legal rights to asylum seekers, all these people denied, degraded, dismissed because they are "illegal," more truly because they are "other," they are "not us."

Which at the end of the day should be no surprise since that's what it has always been about.

The very first US law touching on immigration, the Naturalization Act of 1790, limited naturalization - that is, the ability an immigrant to become a citizen - to "free white persons of good character," thus by definition excluding Native Americans, indentured servants, slaves, free blacks - and later Asians.

Starting in the 1850s, tens of thousands of Chinese laborers had been welcomed to the American West as a source of cheap labor, in particular to help build the railroads. When the demand for Chinese labor dried up, a racist anti-Chinese backlash quickly followed. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred the entry of Chinese laborers for 10 years and declared that Chinese could not become citizens. The act was renewed in 1892 for another ten years, and in 1902 Chinese immigration was made permanently illegal until the law was revoked decades later. Chinese remained ineligible for citizenship until 1943.

Our experience with Chinese exclusion provided a basis for later movements to restrict immigration by other "undesirable" groups such as Middle Easterners, Hindu and East Indians, and the Japanese - and, more recently, Muslims and people from, in the words of our president, "shithole" countries.

For example, the Immigration Act of 1924 barred immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere - that is, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The quotas for specific countries were based on 2% of the US population from that country as recorded in the 1890 census. So populations poorly represented in 1890 were heavily restricted, blocked from legal entry, which especially affected Poles and other Slavs along with Jews, Italians, and Greeks, the latter two groups also affected by the notion dating from the 1890s that "Mediterranean" people were inferior to northern, that is, whiter, Europeans. The purpose of the bill? According to the US Department of State Office of the Historian, it was "to preserve the ideal of US homogeneity."

Or, as one writer at the website OpenBorders.info noted, white supremacy has always been a central feature of US immigration policy.

There were some advances during the 60s and 70s, such as a 1968 act that eliminated immigration discrimination based on race, place of birth, sex, and residence along with abolished restrictions on immigration from Asia.

A 1976 law eliminated preferential treatment for residents of the Western Hemisphere, and a 1986 law included provisions through which over 2.6 million undocumented immigrants obtained legal status.

So let's be clear: While what we have seen these past couple of years may be something of a change from the most recent prior decades, it is not a real change, merely a reversion to the way we had always done things. It has always been about "preserving our homogeneity" in the face of "the other," the "not us."

By the way, know full well that I am not letting Barack Obama, the Amazing Mr. O, off the hook here: He deported more people than any previous president. But I also have to acknowledge that in the latter years of his presidency, it really does appear that efforts were focused on deporting people with actual criminal records, not just who they happened to come across.

But amidst all the news, I recall one case from two years ago that to me encapsulated all that is wrong with our national policies on immigration.

His name is Andres Magana Ortiz and he was an undocumented immigrant who had lived in the US for nearly thirty years. He has an American wife and three US-born children. During his time here he worked his way from migrant coffee farmer to owning his own land and being prominent in Hawaii's coffee industry, even to helping to run 15 other small farms and helping the US Department of Agriculture conduct a five-year study into a destructive insect species harming coffee crops.

He lost his fight to not be deported US despite letters of support from Hawaii's entire congressional delegation and the judge in his case, who, while legally unable to stop Ortiz's deportation, wrote a scathing opinion saying that that “the government decision shows that even the 'good hombres' are not safe,” that remark directed at Tweetie-pie, who had insisted that ICE would only go after the "bad hombres." On July 7, 2017, Ortiz "voluntarily" left for Mexico, just days before he was to be deported.

Here's the question that still haunts me: What was the point of this? What was gained by making him leave? What would have been lost by allowing him to stay? What was accomplished by this beyond satisfying the white-supremacist desires of the bigoted xenophobes occupying the upper reaches of Tweetie-Pie's administration? Just how sick are our national policies?

And consider this: Ignore for the moment that by the usual way such stories were told to us as we grew up, Ortiz is a classical, almost cliche, American success story, rising from migrant laborer to land owner, businessperson, and upstanding figure in the community. Ignore all that and for the moment just focus on the fact that he had been here for nearly thirty years. And it didn't matter.

Because there is no sort of statute of limitations on being an "illegal" immigrant. No matter how long you have been here, no matter how many and how thick are the roots you have set down, no matter how stable is the life you have established, no matter how much you have contributed to your community, it doesn't matter.

Think about that. There is no statute of limitations. Except for murder, terrorism, and sexual crimes against children, federal law has statutes of limitations for all sorts of crimes and all kinds of civil offenses. We have federal statutes of limitation for kidnapping, for fraud, for racketeering, for embezzlement, for all sorts of the most serious crimes. But not for being an undocumented immigrant. Not for crossing a border without the expected official permission. You did it two years ago, ten years ago, thirty years, fifty years, it makes no difference.

This is insane.

Even the notoriously anti-immigration - and note well that I didn't say anti-undocumented immigration, I said anti-immigration - the notoriously anti-immigration Mark Krikorian, even he a few years ago allowed as how even as he disagreed with it as a matter of policy, the idea that an undocumented immigrant who has been in the US for three years - that was his time frame - and has put down roots here should not be deported, that idea "at least makes a certain kind of sense." Even he was prepared to say that even though he disagreed with the idea, it was an arguable point.

So yes, as a first small step to bringing sanity to our policies there should be a time limit. There should be some sort of statute of limitations. There should be a point beyond which being able to show roots in the community and an established life will free you from the daily fear of discovery and deportation, the daily fear of the ripping up of your life and the ripping apart of your family.

Another small step is realizing that our borders have always been porous, that those who rant about "regaining control of our borders" ignore the fact that we have never had such control. I intend to talk more about this next time, more about how we have often found it necessary to recognize that there is a real limit to what could be done and we had to adjust to the facts on the ground - as we did to some extent in the 1986 law I mentioned.

There is one more, very dramatic, even radical step we could take, which again I intend to address next time, a step pretty much everyone on all points of this topic insists they are against but which deserves a hearing, because there is a case to be made - I won't say a genuinely persuasive case because I'm not entirely convinced myself - but there is a case to be made for open borders.

But instead, what we have is a thoroughly-broken system enforced by the well-named ICE because it is cold-hearted to its core, now directed by an administration chock full of bigoted xenophobes who don't care who they deport as long as they can eject and reject "foreigners," "them," "the other."

They are without mercy. They are without compassion. They are without understanding. They are without humanity. They and the system they oversee are an Outrage that must not be allowed to continue.

Sometimes not losing is enough to celebrate

During his struggles for the rights of migrant farm workers, Cesar Chavez was quoted as explaining the celebratory nature of the union's gatherings by saying "We have so few victories we have to celebrate our losses." He was joking, but the truth of it remains: the importance of hope and even finding joy in the struggle.

Because sometimes, it's enough to not lose. The estimable Erin Reed, tireless tracker of LGBTQ+-related legislation, brings an example.

She reports that legislative sessions in Florida and West Virginia have adjourned sine die - that is, without setting a date to meet again. What that means is that any bills that have not passed are dead and must start from scratch when the legislatures get back together.

Which is good news for the human rights of LGBTQ+ people and their supporters and allies because the effect is that over 20 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in each state are now dead. At the same time, again in each state, only one such bill passed. This dramatic contrast to the results of the past few years not only represents a victory for the increasing pushback against such bills but also provides a respite from the assault and space to plan for the battles to come.

While the passage of any such legislation is yet another attack on basic rights of transgender folks, the failures here are nonetheless heartening. It had already seemed to me that the spread of the legislative bigotry was stalling, with most - not all, but most - of the action this year coming in states that had, as Erin put it, "historically targeted transgender individuals" rather than spreading to new ones.

Some have suggested that this has been a case of the bigots and fear-mongers engaging in some CYA in the run-up to the November elections: Anti-LGBTQ+ stands have not been a big winner for them this year, so they want to downplay the issue now, intending to get back to it once the threat of democracy is behind them.

Personally, I suspect that this is less related to the elections than to the right wing's practice of "slash, burn, move on," that is, of glomming onto some issue where they think they can get an inflamed, unthinking response, loudly and viciously defaming/decrying/denouncing their target, doing as much damage as they think they can before real resistance sets in, then moving on to the next boogeyman.

(After all, how much screeching have you heard about Critical Race Theory of late? Even the general all-purpose smear "woke" has become more of a vapid cliche used ritualistically than a verbal weapon.)

That of course doesn't mean those concerned about LGBTQ+ rights can relax; as Clarence Darrow said, "Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more." But it does mean that as part of strategizing we can include going on the offensive to secure rights in some areas rather then solely resisting their denial.

So hold to hope, embrace justice, and celebrate victories (even the small ones), because like the song says, "Every victory brings another" so long as we "carry it on."

Footnote: Another relevant quote from Cesar Chavez:  "Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore."

Letters, I send letters....

The American Friends Service Committee recently had an on-line letter to Congress. As I usually do in such cases, I re-wrote the text to"personalize" it. This is how it came out.

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I call on you to demand a cease-fire and humanitarian access in Gaza by endorsing H.Res. 786 “calling for an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine” or a Senate equivalent. 

As part of that, I want you to oppose new military assistance for Israel, including the supplemental funding request under consideration, until there is clear progress toward an ultimate resolution that respects the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.

According to data provided by the AFSC, since October 7, over 27,000 Palestinians have been killed, 40% of them children. Another 10,000 are estimated to be buried under the rubble. Over 2 million people have been displaced from their homes, and over 70% of homes and other structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. 

The on-going Israeli blockade of Gaza, described more than once as "the world's largest outdoor prison," worsened by the intensified lockdown and now compounded by the US ending aid for UNRWA, has lead to shortages of food, water, fuel, and medical supplies. It is estimated that 85% of the population in Gaza is on the verge of famine.

A cease-fire is needed NOW.

The vicious, bloody attack by Hamas on October 7 deserves no defense and will get none from me. But neither will I defend Israel’s actions in Gaza that so far have killed more than 20 times as many Palestinians and which have been found by the International Court of Justice to plausibly amount to genocide

The lesson of October 7 that should be learned is that further military attacks will bring neither peace nor security for Israel or Israelis. Historically, efforts to militarily "stamp out" a group such as Hamas almost invariably fail, leading instead to decades of suffering for both sides - as this one long since has - that only end when the causes of the conflict are meaningfully addressed.

With that in mind, I ask you this:

    - Given that our Declaration of Independence claims the right, even the duty, of an oppressed people to resistance, and
    - given the existence of Israel is based on the world's recognition of the right of a people to a homeland, and
    - given that you are not going to deny Palestinians both the right of resistance and the right to a homeland,

what is it that you propose Palestinians could and should now do to advance the cause of an independent Palestinian state, particularly now that the Israeli government has openly declared it will "never" agree to that?

Note carefully: You cannot say "No terrorism" because I did not ask what they should not do, but what they should. The lack of a practical answer to that question condemns Palestinians to on-going suffering and oppression and Israelis to continued incidents of terrorism

But for the moment, for this instant, here is what is most important: Please, please do what’s right. Call for a cease-fire and humanitarian access - NOW.

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Some of that, I know, repeats things I have said before. They bear repeating.