Define American: "It's time to have a real conversation about immigration in our country" (Jose Antonio Vargas)

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

-- from Emma Lazrus's "The New Colossus,"
the inscription on the Statue of Liberty

by Ken

A lot of people I know online are talking about the piece by former Washington Post and Huffington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas in last Sunday's NYT Magazine in which he "came out" -- after living a life of terror of discovery of his secret -- as an undocumented immigrant from the Philippines. (The piece is now also posted on Antonio's Define American website.)

"I'm done running," Jose explains toward the end of the piece. "I'm exhausted. I don't want that life anymore."

So I've decided to come forward, own up to what I've done, and tell my story to the best of my recollection. I've reached out to former bosses­ and employers and apologized for misleading them -- a mix of humiliation and liberation coming with each disclosure. All the people mentioned in this article gave me permission to use their names. I've also talked to family and friends about my situation and am working with legal counsel to review my options. I don't know what the consequences will be of telling my story.

Antonio was sent to the U.S. 18 years ago, at age 12, by his mother, and had no idea that his green card was fake until he tried to apply for a learner's permit at a California DMV office. He discovered that the phony papers had been arranged by his grandparents, who had emigrated legally, once it became clear that Antonio's mother wouldn't be able to do so because she was married.

Without proper paperwork he couldn't leave the country if he had hope of returning, and so he hasn't seen his mother since. The half-sister he last saw when she was two is now 20. He has a 14-year-old half-brother he's never seen. In his 18 years in this country, he has worked hard to master the language and train himself as a journalist, winning the respect of a series of influential people who did what they could to help him personally and professionally when he finally took the huge risk of letting them in on his secret.

The viral xenophobia now raging on the hard-core Hoodlum Right is likely to produce a common reaction that whatever happens to the sonofabitch is only what he deserves, and it won't matter to them that he had nothing to do with the fraud that brought him to this country. After all, there came a time, once he found out about his true status, when he became an active participant in his own immigration fraud.

Do I have to spell out that this is not the reaction of all those people I know who've been mesmerized by Antonio's story, not to mention his courage in finally coming clean? Like them, I'm filled with admiration for the life and career he has made for himself under these unrelentingly terrifying conditions? As if his immigration status wasn't enough to cause him to live in constant fear of discovery and deportation, he had to cope with his realization that he's gay.

The crux of the story for the kind of readers I know is the exemplary "American dream" life Antonio has led these last 18 years. Everywhere he's worked, he seems to have worked his way to outstanding success. His personal life has necessarily been restricted by the danger of allowing himself to become too close to someone he may not have been able to trust with his story.

IMMIGRATION SPLITS THE "GREED & SELFISHNESS"
RIGHT AND THE "TERROR & HATRED" RIGHT

As we know, immigration is not only an especially toxic political issue at the moment but an unusual one in that it divides the traditional Greed and Selfishness Right from the now-dominant Terror and Hatred Right. The Old Guard understands quite well how dependent Americans are in every facet of our way of life on undocumented immigrants. The idea that they're "taking away jobs" from hard-working Americans is foolishness; by and large they're doing jobs that Americans can't or won't do at the price the greedy and selfish economic elites -- and by extension those of us who take advantage of their labor "bargains" -- are willing to pay. Unfortunately thee Terror and Hatred right-wingers, who live in a world of paranoid delusion in which the only measure of reality is the ignorance and hatred that has rotted their decimated brains, are incapable of grasping this.

And so we begin to get stories like this, as reported last week by Jay Bookman on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution blog:

Ga.’s farm-labor crisis going exactly as planned

Gov. Nathan Deal signs a tough illegal-immigration bill on May 13, with House Speaker David Ralston, left, and bill sponsor Rep. Matt Ramsey, right, looking on.


After enactment of House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.

It might almost be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

The resulting manpower shortage has forced state farmers to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.

Barely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the TV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two weeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal was forced to order a hasty investigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all this had come as quite a surprise to him.

The results of that investigation have now been released. According to survey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point over the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the real need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.

“The agriculture industry is the number one economic engine in Georgia and it is my sincere hope to find viable and law-abiding solutions to the current problem our farmers face,” Deal said in announcing the findings. In the meantime, Deal proposes that farmers try to hire the 2,000 unemployed criminal probationers estimated to live in southwest Georgia.

Somehow, I suspect that would not be a partnership made in heaven for either party. . . .

"It might almost be funny if it wasn’t so sad." Yes.

On rare occasions when far-right-wingers are forced to confront the gap between their delusional version of reality and the actual thing, they normally respond by flat-out lying -- to themselves as well as anyone who is so tactless as to point out the "discrepancy" to them. So it's hardly surprising to learn that Georgia's agriculture commissioner has spread tales of $12, $13, $14, $16, $18-an-hour jobs,” in reality 6300 of the more than 11,000 unfillable jobs pay on average $8 an hour, and another 3200 pay $9-11 an hour, and naturally hardly any of these jobs include benefits.

Jay Bookman writes:

Given all that, Deal’s pledge to find “viable and law-abiding solutions” to the problem that he helped create seems naively far-fetched. Again, if such solutions existed, they should have been put in place before the bill ever became law, because this impact was entirely predictable and in fact intended.

It’s hard to envision a way out of this. Georgia farmers could try to solve the manpower shortage by offering higher wages, but that would create an entirely different set of problems. If they raise wages by a third to a half, which is probably what it would take, they would drive up their operating costs and put themselves at a severe price disadvantage against competitors in states without such tough immigration laws. That’s one of the major disadvantages of trying to implement immigration reform state by state, rather than all at once.

The pain this is causing is real. People are going to lose their crops, and in some cases their farms. The small-town businesses that supply those farms with goods and services are going to suffer as well. For economically embattled rural Georgia, this could be a major blow.

In fact, with a federal court challenge filed last week, you have to wonder whether state officials aren’t secretly hoping to be rescued from this mess by the intervention of a judge. But given how the Georgia law is drafted and how the Supreme Court ruled in a recent case out of Arizona, I don’t think that’s likely.

We’re going to reap what we have sown, even if the farmers can’t.

SO WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS?

The answer appears to be that we just don't know. Remember, according to the law, in order to apply for any kind of legal immigration status that might be open to him, he's supposed to have to leave the country and not be able to apply for that status for ten years.

One school of thought says that Jose's visibility makes him an unlikely candidate for deportation. But that may be misjudging the tenor of the Obama administration, which seems to get much the same kind of sexual (or perhaps instead-of-sexual) pleasure out of deportations that our previous chief executive got from executions. And as much as one may be moved by Jose's personal situation, he is the first to stress on the "Define American" website that the issue isn't his personal status.

The split on the Right, with the ascendancy of the Hating Crazies, which as in so many areas of our political life has been shadowed by a corresponding split in the political Center, with scared-doodyless Democrats doing a pretty decent impression of Hating Crazies, has made rational discussion of immigration impossible for the foreseeable future.

Surely other people see the irony of a nation of immigrants, the "wretched refuse" of other lands' "teeming shores," slamming the golden door shut on other "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

EDUCATION, NOT DEPORTATION

#

Right-Wing Immigration Policy: Quick Pull Up The Ladder!

Yesterday's Guardian reported that Alabama Republicans, in control of the state legislature and governorship for the first time in 136 years, passed the toughest illegal immigration law in the U.S., tougher than the law everyone was so appalled by that Arizona passed. Republicans in right-wing bastions like Utah, Indiana and Georgia have passed similar laws. (Georgia's agricultural sector, heavily dependent on migrant farm workers, is already in turmoil.)

The crackdown will require public schools to determine the immigration status of students – an aspect not covered in an Arizona law that has been at the forefront of attempts by several US states to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Under the Alabama law, police must detain someone they suspect of being in the country illegally if the person cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason.

It also will be a crime to knowingly transport or harbour someone who is in the country illegally. The law imposes penalties on businesses that knowingly employ someone without legal resident status, and business licences could be suspended or revoked.

Backward, reactionary parts of the country, like Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Utah and Arizona have always feared change and always been virulently anti-immigrant-- no matter what group the immigrant was from. The Know Nothing mentality has been, historically, anti-Irish, anti-German, anti-Catholic, anti-Slav, anti-Italian, anti-Asian, anti-Jewish. In 1924 Republicans passed a bigoted immigration law, gleefully signed by racist Calvin Coolidge, targeting "inferior groups." A quota for Italians, for example, was reduced from 42,000 a year to 4,000. One has to wonder how prominent Italian-American Republican immigrant haters like Tom Tancredo (CO), Lou Barletta (PA), Rick Santorum (PA), Steve Palazzo (MS), John Barrasso (WY), and John Mica (FL) deal with the collective memory.

As we've been seeing in The Nazi Hydra in America, the Republican Party, conniving with Hitler's government in Germany, played up this fear and hatred of foreigners-- especially Jews-- in the 1930s to sow discord in America.

To understand how the Republican Party could run election campaigns based on intense and vicious racist platforms; one needs to understand the attitude of the country towards Jews at the time. A few days after Kristallnacht, Roosevelt spoke out publicly expressing his anger and horror. A Gallup poll that month revealed that 94% of the people disapproved of the Nazi treatment of Jews, but 97% of the people also disapproved of the way Nazis treated Catholics. A Roper poll that same month revealed the deep anti-Semitic views in America. The poll found that only 39% of the people believed that Jews should be treated as everyone else, 53% believed that Jews were different and should be restricted, and 10% believed Jews should be deported. In the winter of 1938-1939, many had denounced helping "refu-Jews." Polls revealed 71-85% opposed increasing immigration quotes; 67% opposed admitting any refugees and 67% opposed a one-time admission of 10,000 refugee children.

Turning away the refugees aboard the St. Louis was a low point in the Roosevelt administration and perhaps indefensible in light of the Holocaust, but Roosevelt hardly acted in a vacuum. The public opinion was decidedly against admitting Jews. One can only guess at how much of the anti-Semitism prevalent at the time, was the direct result of the various anti-Semitic campaigns conducted by the Republican Party. It could not be a minor factor, as many of these anti-Semitic campaigns ran by Republicans equated Judaism with communism, as in the example of the 1938 Minnesota election.

Today Know Nothing Republicans like Sarah Palin can wear a Star of David while visiting New York City or a deranged bigot like Michele Bachmann can campaign against Barack Obama based on supposed love and devotion to a right-wing vision of a militaristic Jewish state. It may take some time, but in just a few generations, right-wing Republican hatred for Latinos will go from a high boil to a low simmer. Yesterday Congresswoman Yvette Clarke of Brooklyn released the following statement: "I am deeply saddened and disappointed that the Governor of Alabama has decided to enact such egregious anti-immigrant provisions in order to address our broken immigration system. Using our nation’s education system as a conduit to enforce immigration laws is highly inappropriate. It is my concern, that this will spread fear among students, hindering them from pursuing an education. Ever since the state of Arizona has enacted its harsh immigration laws, many states have followed suit, enacting provisions that often time over step their jurisdiction. This is a clear indication that our nation needs to address Comprehensive Immigration Reform at the federal level. Our national security is at stake; our moral standing in the world depends on it; and the American people, many of whom are first and second generation immigrants, demand it.” I'm sure you can guess why I want you to listen to Pete Seeger... keep listening:

Despite The Star Of David, Palin's In The Mainstream Of Republican Party Thought On Immigrants

Palin's no bumpkin. So what if she thinks it's the "Statute of Liberty?" She eats pizza with a knife and fork (and Trump) and removes the usual Christian iconography and dons a Jewish star necklace when in NYC.

On Ellis Island, gateway to America for so many millions of immigrants from Europe who had to contend with the fear-mongers and Know Nothings (teabaggers of their day) who prophesied the end of America because of them, Palin recited her line: “It’s one of the symbols of course of our country, and it’s a reminder too that immigrants built this country." She then proceeded, predictably, to tear down the DREAM Act.

"The immigrants of the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line to become U.S. citizens. I'd like to see that continue," Palin said. "And unfortunately, the DREAM Act kind of usurps that-- the system that is a legal system to make sure that immigrants who want to be here legally, working hard, producing and supplying revenue and resources for their families, that they're able to do that right and legally. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act doesn't accomplish that."

The Palin wing of the Republican Party has always hated immigrants and has hysterically, and often violently, protested the entry of successive waves that have helped build America. Right-wingers were enthusiastic about embracing Nazi war criminals after the war and welcomed them with open arms-- Nixon even hoping they would balance out his "Jewish problem" in key states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where tens of thousands of Eastern European Nazi collaborators were encouraged to settle. But regular immigrants looking for a better life in America? Palin-like Republicans have always objected. Back in the '20s the GOP turned to Washington Congressman Albert Johnson, chairman of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, who was responsible for the Republican anti-immigrant legislation of the 1920s. Johnson, a vehement racist and nativist, was the chief author of the Immigration Act of 1924, which he justified as a bulwark against "a stream of alien blood, with all its inherited misconceptions respecting the relationships of the governing power to the governed." Apparently he was as muddleheaded then as like-thinking Republicans like Palin and Bachmann are today. He was also head of the Eugenics Research Association which campaigned for forced sterilization. Back in those days Republicans didn't see Jews the way they do today-- as necessary for Armageddon-- so Johnson didn't wear Jewish stars but referred to Jews as "filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits." He did his best to refuse Jews entry into this country... Italians too.

In Glen Yeadon's Nazi Hydra In America there was a description of Johnson that sounds like something Steve King, Tom Tancredo and Elton Gallegly modeled themselves after.

A key figure in the success of the eugenicists in changing immigration policy was Albert Johnson. Johnson had been raised at the northern edge of the Mason Dixon line in Illinois during the turbulent Reconstruction period. He later became a big city newspaperman before moving to the small town of Hoquiam, Washington. It was from here that Johnson ran for congress and was elected to the House in 1912. Johnson was a fanatic racist and eugenicist. In 1919, he began a twelve-year tenure as chairman of the Immigration and Naturalization subcommittee in the House.

While there had been restrictions in immigration prior to Johnson’s chairmanship, the restrictions were reactionary in nature and not eugenically motivated. Johnson viewed any immigration as a negative factor. One of his first actions was to appoint [deranged Missouri fascist and racist Harry] Laughlin as his eugenic expert before his committee. Laughlin and other eugenicists had long urged the classification of immigrants along strict biological and racial lines, as well as advocating intelligence testing of immigrants before they left Europe. Their goal was to restrict immigration based on quotas before the mass arrivals started in 1890. ... [Laughlin's] American Breeders and the Eugenic Society were not content with just sterilization and segregation methods as a means to eliminate the defective. By 1910, they were also proposing euthanasia using a lethal chamber... the forerunner of the modern gas chamber.

Much of the money that funded all the eugenics "research" in the U.S. and Germany-- including the Mengele "experiments" in Auschwitz-- came from the Rockefeller family, as well as from other prominent Republican Party fascists. So, Star of David or not, eating pizza with a knife and fork not withstanding, Palin comes from a long line of right-wing Know Nothings and ideologues in the mainstream of deeply ingrained Republican Party traditions.

Why I Might Cheer And Eat Popcorn For Buffalo Democrat Kathy Hochul But Not Contribute A Dime

There are two special elections for open House seats coming up, one in the L.A. area and one in the Buffalo area. Blue America has endorsed California Secretary of State Debra Bowen in the former and hasn't taken a position in the latter. But as the race in NY-26 tightens up-- in part because the Republican is battling a deranged, multimillionaire teabagger, Jack Davis, on the one hand, and the taint of being associated with Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing agenda on the other hand-- many Blue America supporters have asked us why we haven't been raising money for the Democrat in the race, Kathy Hochul. Yesterday, in fact, Daily Kos and PPP reported that Hochul has pulled ahead in the polling. There's no doubt in our minds that she would be a better congressmember than either Jane Corwin, the rubber stamp Republican, or Jack Davis, the dangerous fascist. That brings us back to the idea than a D or a C- is always better than an F. But... watch this Hochul ad:



The very first plea she makes to voters is bragging that she has adopted a divisive, reactionary Republican frame as her own: "I led the fight against giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses..." Blue America doesn't endorse triangulators who get bad advise from Inside-the-Beltway hacks and we don't endorse candidates who apologize for being Democrats; it sets them on a bad path if they get into Congress. She can go raise money from that set, while we raise money for real progressives who want to use progressive values to solve America's problems for working families, like Ilya Sheyman (IL), Nick Ruiz (FL), Norman Solomon (CA) and Debra Bowen (CA). Saturday we'll be introducing you to a new candidate as well, Eric Griego (NM).

Yesterday's National Journal covered the battle in upstate NY horserace style:

With a second poll this week confirming that we really have a three-way race in New York's 26th District, Republicans have the most to lose if things don't go Jane Corwin's way in three weeks - and their nervousness is starting to show. Both Corwin and the state GOP have gone after independent Jack Davis, hoping that if they can remind people of his Democratic past, he'll stop pulling votes away from them. But they have two fronts to watch now, with both Democrat Kathy Hochul and Davis hammering Corwin on Medicare.

It's clear now that the Medicare issue will be the defining issue in the race, and so far Corwin has tried to turn the message back to jobs and the deficit. This is an early test for how the Democratic message will play, but the DCCC still isn't in; though with Corwin forced to go on the attack, it could be better if they wait it out and force her hand. On the flip side, the NRCC has already begun phone-banking for Corwin, but especially if they're forced to send resources and go up on air for her, it's an even surer sign that they're worried about how a loss could play into their 2012 plans.

Meanwhile Boehner, who isn't exactly Mr. Popularity among voters, was bragging on Twitter yesterday that he was in Buffalo raising money for Corwin. I bet he didn't bring Paul Ryan along! Meanwhile, in the first big race since he was named DCCC chair, Steve Israel seems to be sitting this one out, even though Hochul is just his kind of centrist Republican-light candidate.


Yesterday Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) released this slam against contemptible immigrant-basher John Boehner. I wonder if he and other Beltway Democrats who are pushing it realize it could be applied to Hochul as well.

"Speaker Boehner should focus on controlling the level of violence in his own state before tarnishing the image of border communities that remain among the safest places to live in America. As his office asserts that Congress cannot consider reforming our broken immigration system until border violence is under control, the fact remains that the six largest cities in Ohio all have higher rates of violence and crime than every major city along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, the Speaker's own district in Dayton, Ohio saw more homicides in 2010 than Texas' four largest border cities combined, despite the fact that Dayton's population of 141,500 is only about one-tenth of the size by comparison. According to the most recent City Crime Rankings Survey by CQ Press, Ohio's cities have higher rates of violence and crime in every category, including murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft than border communities.

"Tomorrow, President Obama will visit the border region when he speaks in El Paso, the largest border city in Texas and the safest large city in America. As Republicans continue to distort the facts and use border violence as an excuse to delay immigration reform and disparage the outstanding work of our local, state, and federal law enforcement professionals, I hope the President's visit will help expose Republicans' distorted rhetoric on border violence, and renew the push for much-needed reforms to our immigration system that are long overdue."

President Obama will make the point that his aggressive border, far more aggressive than Bush's ever was, is actually working. It's time for a politically mature look at immigration policy and at the undocumented Americans already here, not the divisiveness of political hacks and demagogues like Boehner and his caucus and Democrats like Hochul.

Any reasonable look at the data from the past several years makes clear that the new joint Mexican-US strategy towards the common border region is working. Deportations of criminal immigrants, southbound seizures of bulk cash and illegal guns are way up. The number of illegal migrants crossing the border, the number of undocumented immigrants in the US, crime rates all along the US side of the border are all down. By some measures cities like El Paso and San Diego are some of the safest big cities in America today. While the violence on the Mexican side of the border is still at unacceptable levels, there has been no measurable spillover of the cartel violence into the United States.  So while the things we don't want happening along the US side of the border are decreasing, the things we do want-- trade and legal traffic of people-- are increasing. The 2,000 mile border between our countries sees hundreds of millions of legal crossings each year, and is now has the single busiest border crossing in the world.  Increased trade with Mexico has made our southern neighbor the 3rd largest trading partner with the US of any country in the world, and annual trade with Mexico now equals that of our trade with China, and is about the same as our trade annually with the Germany, Japan and the UK combined.  While much more must be done, it is clear that significant advances have been made along the border region in recent years.

When Democrats start off by using GOP framing, the way Hochul is doing in her campaign, what do you think happens when they get into power? That's how we wind up with the likes of Blanche Lincoln, Dan Boren, Ben Nelson, Claire McCaskill, Joe Lieberman muddying the waters for voters and making it impossible for the Democratic caucuses in the Senate and House to ever enact any progressive legislation. That's why we don't have single-payer or even a public option now instead of the crappy healthcare reform that the Democrats, in control of both Houses of Congress and the White House, managed to pass (and even then, just barely). And that's why we had millions of Democratic voters staying away from the polls last November, sickened by the inability of Democrats to enact progressive reforms. Yesterday 75 prominent economists sent a letter to Congress imploring them to oppose plans such as GOP-framed legislation by Hochul-like Democrat Claire McCaskill, paired with reactionary Republican Bob Corker and by tepid centrist Democrat Mark Udall, paired by reactionary Dick Shelby that would endanger the social safety net and amount to nothing more than a Medicare kill switch, something very much like the Paul Ryan "cause" the public is so repulsed by and most Democrats would like to use as a campaign issue to show how the two parties diverge. But how can anyone show the two parties diverging with Democrats like McCaskill, Udall (Mark, not Tom) and Hochul?

And with Rove's thuggish PAC flooding the airwaves with anti-Hochul propaganda (a staggering $650,000 worth), she could use some help. But the people who she's trying to appeal to with her anti-immigrant framing are the ones financing her political demise and why should any progressive want to help elect a worthless, triangulating, cowardly shill that she promises to be?