McCain: A Chip off of the Bush Republican Block

John McCain likes to tout his independence from the nutwings that make up the Republican Party base. However, neither his voting record nor his recent statements indicate that he will be anything other than a third term Bush administration. McCain has virtually always voted in lock-step with his Republican colleagues. As well, his advisors are almost all industry hacks and lobbyists. The one issue that could have put McCain in good stead with Hispanic voters was his support of a comprehensive immigration reform bill that he co-sponsored with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. He has now repudiated that position and is in lock-step with the Bush administration’s radical immigration enforcement tactics.

The conventional wisdom put forth by the mainstream media is that McCain is a “maverick” amongst Republicans. But McCain’s right wing position was recently highlighted in a report by the media watchdog, Media Matters. The Media Matters report notes that the media continues to push this maverick narrative against all facts to the contrary. Of special significance is his repudiation of comprehensive immigration reform.

In a March 31 article, the Los Angeles Times claimed that Sen. John McCain's "biography tour" may "soften conservative discomfort with the maverick senator, who has strayed from Republican orthodoxy on immigration and campaign reform." In fact, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented, McCain has abandoned his previous support for comprehensive immigration legislation to more closely align himself with the base of the Republican Party. McCain asserted on January 30 that he "would not" support his original comprehensive immigration proposal if it came to a vote on the Senate floor, now saying that "we've got to secure the borders first" -- a position at odds with his prior assertion that border security could not be disaggregated from other aspects of comprehensive immigration reform without being rendered ineffective.

Media Matters also notes another L.A. Times article which hues to the maverick narrative.

In a June 5 Los Angeles Times article, staff writer Michael Finnegan wrote that in the Southwest, where there is an "influx of Latinos," Sen. John McCain "hopes that his support for legalizing many undocumented immigrants, and the political price he paid for it within his party, will keep him competitive with Latinos." Yet Finnegan did not note that during the race for the Republican nomination, McCain reversed himself on the issue of border security, saying that "we've got to secure the borders first" -- a position at odds with his prior assertion that border security could not be disaggregated from other aspects of comprehensive immigration reform without being rendered ineffective. Indeed, McCain said in January that he "would not" support the comprehensive immigration reform legislation he once sponsored with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA).

Latinos never had much reason to support the Senator from Arizona. Arizona has put in place some of the harshest anti-immigrant measures in the country. Neo-Nazi Sheriff, Joe Arpaio has used these measures to harass Latinos. McCain has not uttered a peep of protest against these highly punitive and discriminatory measures. Whatever hopes the Republicans had of splitting the Latino vote in key swing states are quickly dissipating.

Links:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200804010006?f=s_search

http://mediamatters.org/items/200806040010?f=h_latest

http://mediamatters.org/items/200805220003?f=s_search

If you liked this post, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can
get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email.

O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs' Speaking Point Written in the 19th Century

For some time I have been wanting to write a post that exposes the fact that the present day nativist diatribes are in fact the tired diatribes of earlier generations.of haters.

Here’s an excerpt from the book titled “Un-American Immigration: It’s Present Effects and Future Perils” published in 1894. I believe you’ll notice a striking familiarity with it’s tone. Thanks to Google for scanning this book in so we can easily access it for study.

This is just a small portion of this text, as you can see.

Here’s the link on Google: Un-American Immigration: Its Present Effects and Future Perils : a Study.

(Thank you to John Lamb for this lead.)

Discrimination against other immigrants, especially Catholics was especially virulent during the Nineteenth Century. Nineteenth century Protestant American "Nativist" prejudice against Irish Catholics reached a peak in the mid-1850s with the Know Nothing Movement, which tried to oust Catholics from public office. Much of the opposition came from Irish Protestants, as in the 1831 riots in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In rural areas in the 1830s riots broke out among rival labor teams from different parts of Ireland, and between Irish and "native" American work teams competing for construction jobs.

(1854 NY Times Ad) It was common for Irish people to be discriminated against in social situations, and intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants was uncommon (and strongly discouraged by both ministers and priests). One response to this prejudice was the creation of a parochial school system, in addition to numerous colleges, that isolated about half the Irish youth from the public schools.^{[citation needed]} After 1860 many Irish sang songs about signs reading "HELP WANTED - NO IRISH NEED APPLY"; these signs came to be known as "NINA signs." (This is sometimes written as "IRISH NEED NOT APPLY" and referred to as "INNA signs"). These songs had a deep impact on the Irish sense of discrimination.

Posters compared the Irish to Blacks, who were considered an inferior race.



(Editorial Cartoon from mid-19th Century depicting "filthy Irish")

(Mid-19th Century Cartoon equating Irish and Blacks)


If you liked this post, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can
get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email.

The New York Times: “The Great Panic,” Excellent Editorial on the Current State of the Immigration Debate

(What follows is the New York Times editorial published on June 3, 2008.)

Someday, the country will recognize the true cost of its war on illegal immigration. We don’t mean dollars, though those are being squandered by the billions. The true cost is to the national identity: the sense of who we are and what we value. It will hit us once the enforcement fever breaks, when we look at what has been done and no longer recognize the country that did it.

A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.

The company that harnessed their desperation, like so many others, has faced no charges.

An escalating campaign of raids in homes and workplaces has spread indiscriminate terror among millions of people who pose no threat. After the largest raid ever last month — at a meatpacking plant in Iowa — hundreds were swiftly force-fed through the legal system and sent to prison. Civil-rights lawyers complained, futilely, that workers had been steamrolled into giving up their rights, treated more as a presumptive criminal gang than as potentially exploited workers who deserved a fair hearing. The company that harnessed their desperation, like so many others, has faced no charges.

Immigrants in detention languish without lawyers and decent medical care even when they are mortally ill. Lawmakers are struggling to impose standards and oversight on a system deficient in both. Counties and towns with spare jail cells are lining up for federal contracts as prosecutions fill the system to bursting. Unbothered by the sight of blameless children in prison scrubs, the government plans to build up to three new family detention centers. Police all over are checking papers, empowered by politicians itching to enlist in the federal crusade.

This is not about forcing people to go home and come back the right way. Ellis Island is closed. Legal paths are clogged or do not exist. Some backlogs are so long that they are measured in decades or generations. A bill to fix the system died a year ago this month. The current strategy, dreamed up by restrictionists and embraced by Republicans and some Democrats, is to force millions into fear and poverty.

The American public’s moderation on immigration reform, confirmed in poll after poll, begs the candidates to confront the issue with courage and a plan.

There are few national figures standing firm against restrictionism. Senator Edward Kennedy has bravely done so for four decades, but his Senate colleagues who are running for president seem by comparison to be in hiding. John McCain supported sensible reform, but whenever he mentions it, his party starts braying and he leaves the room. Hillary Rodham Clinton has lost her voice on this issue more than once. Barack Obama, gliding above the ugliness, might someday test his vision of a new politics against restrictionist hatred, but he has not yet done so. The American public’s moderation on immigration reform, confirmed in poll after poll, begs the candidates to confront the issue with courage and a plan. But they have been vague and discreet when they should be forceful and unflinching.

The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise.

Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrived immigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history. Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japanese ancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of the early 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollars and mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.

If you liked this post, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can
get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email.

Retailing Hate: The Mis-informed Missives of Juanell Garrett

I admit that when I scan the newspapers for the latest news I don’t generally turn to the Kansas City Star for insight on current events. Not that I have a bias against non-national newspapers, after all, the Des Moines Register (a sister newspaper of the Star) and the Sacramento Bee manage to turn out very well-informed newspapers despite their location as second-tier cities. But the recent anti-immigrant screeds of Kansas City Star columnist, Juanell Garrett caught my attention. Ms. Garrett has clearly succumbed to Lou Dobbs disease. This malady is characterized by an irrational urge to spout outrageous claims against “illegal immigrants” and a desire to make league with neo-Nazis like Patrick Buchanan and Peter Brimelow (host the nativist VDare website). The prognosis for Lou Dobbs disease is usually grim: slow deterioration of rational faculties and a need to rant incoherently about “illegals.” Let’s examine the findings.

In a post on June 2, 2008, entitled, “Illegal Immigration Notes,” Garrett begins her posting, as most Nativists do, by claiming entitlement based on ancestral lineage as an immigrant of long-standing. This, of course, has nothing to do with a rational discussion of immigration, but everything to do with her bona-fides as a “true native American.” Unlike, second-generation nativists, Michelle Malkin and Tom Tancredo, Garrett’s ancestors, she alleges, go back to the American Revolution and are the product of “legal immigration,” the latter claim being hard to verify given that pretty much any bumpkin from Europe could hop a vessel to the former English colony and set up a land claim. (Let us note that Garrett would never accord the same level of legitimacy to the Spanish and Mexicans who were inhabiting the better part of what is now the Western United States long before the Mayflower set sail.) Having established that he is not illegal, Garret proceeds to rant on, what is to any astute observer, the tired claims of the nativist crowd. Maybe these stale claims are new to Mr. Garrett, but they have been floating around the web and cable “news shows” for years and have been repeatedly debunked. Were it not for the nutwing network on the web and cable “news,” these nativist canards would have died on the vine of the poison plant that generated them.

Among the familiar, and discredited canards, advanced by Garrett, are: 1) this generation of immigrants are different than previous immigrants; 2) “alien blood” is threating “our vitality”; 3) immigrants are taxing our “welfare system”; 4) Mexican immigrants refuse to assimilate (presumably unlike previous immigrants); 5) “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants only invites more immigrants. Finally, Garret posts a great deal of nonsense by such well known nativists such as Tom Tancredo and Patrick Buchanan.

All of these claims have been discredited and discussed on Eristic Ragemail (http://eristic-ragemail.blogspot.com). I invite readers to peruse the relevant postings and the supporting documentation. Unlike Garrett, the posts reference neutral and or primary sources. Garrett’s column relies entirely on anti-immigrant advocates. Worse, most of his sources are certified nutwings which have been identified as hate groups by such venerable institutions as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s, Hatewatch and the Anti-Defamation League. The sources cited by Garrett would not pass muster on a high school freshman’s report, much less in any credible newspaper.

To cite just a couple of examples, Garrett cites Jim Corsi, who according to SPLC’s Hate Watch Intelligence report:

Insult-mongerer Jerome Corsi has made a career of peddling conspiracy theories in far-right publications and his own books, variously attacking 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry, undocumented immigrants, and alleged secret plans to merge Mexico, the United States and Canada into a so-called "North American Union."

Corsi also is a bigot. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Media Matters for America compiled comments Corsi made on the far-right Free Republic website. There, Corsi described Islam as "a worthless, dangerous, Satanic religion," described Muslims as "boy bumpers" and "women haters," and suggested that "boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press." And he mocked Kerry's supposed Jewish ancestry. The comments set off an uproar, with Unfit for Command co-author O'Neill falsely claiming to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough that Corsi was merely "an editor" of the book, not the co-author, in an attempt to put distance between himself and Corsi.

Garrett relies entirely on extreme Nativists who have been discredited as proponents of a hate agenda. Other extremist nutwings cited by Garrett are Tom Tancredo, Patrick Buchanan and Jim Gilchrist. The VDare website, referenced by Garrett, is very forthright in its racist and anti-Semitic agenda and has been identified as a hate group by both the SPLC and the ADL. The ADL has stated that “VDare, [is] a Website that publishes racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant articles authored by extremists…” In fact, not a singe source cited by Garrett could be described as informed, mainstream or neutral. Without exception all of the sources relied upon by Garrett to make her anti-immigrant arguments come from Nativists, hate-groups or extremists.

I invite readers to analyse the network of hate-groups that make up the Nativist fringe on Eristic ragemail. (http://eristic-ragemail.blogspot.com) It is quite unfortunate that a legitimate newspaper like the Kansas City Star should give a forum for the rantings of these hate groups under the guise of discussing illegal immigration.

Sources:

List of groups identified by the Anti-Defamation League and Hatewatch as hate groups, Wikipeadia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purported_hate_groups. List of Nativist groups identified as hate groups:

• American Immigration Control Foundation (Hatewatch)
• American Patrol (Hatewatch)
• California Coalition for Immigration Reform (Hatewatch)
• Save Our State (Hatewatch)
• VDARE (Hatewatch)
• American Renaissance (ADL)
• Federation for American Immigration Reform (Hatewatch)

“The Nativists,” Southern Policy Law Center, Intelligence Report, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=1518.

Where Anti-Immigrant Zealots Like Lou Dobbs Get Their 'Facts'

By Heidi Beirich, Intelligence Report. Posted December 17, 2007, http://www.alternet.org/story/70489/.

The Paranoid Style: Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Explored

By Heidi Beirich, Intelligence Report. Posted July 19, 2007, http://www.alternet.org/story/57156/.

“Immigrants Targeted: Extremist Rhetoric Moves into the Mainstream Groups: The Dustin Inman Society - Georgia” Anti-Defamation League, http://www.adl.org/Civil_Rights/anti_immigrant/da_king.asp

If you liked this post, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can
get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email.

Washington Post Provides Excellent Reporting On Immigration Issue

The Washington Post has been doing an excellent job covering immigration-related issues. Eristic Ragemail has been lax in putting hyperlinks to their articles but we will attempt to rectify that oversight in this posting. Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein stand out for their tenacious reporting. We encourage our good readers to check out the Post’s website and catch up on some really insightful reading.

Immigration raid spurs calls for action vs. owners

By DAVID PITT

The Associated Press
Sunday, June 1, 2008; 1:48 PM

DES MOINES, Iowa -- After the biggest immigration raid in U.S. history, hundreds of workers have been sentenced but not one company official as yet faces any charges _ something critics say is typical of a federal government that is tough on employees but easy on owners.

Worker advocates and lawmakers say the fact that nearly 400 workers were arrested in the May 12 raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville _ or more than one-third of the total number of employees _ proves that company officials must have known they were hiring illegal immigrants….

"I'll be interested to see if federal authorities will be bringing any charges against the employer," Braley said in a telephone interview.

Braley has questioned the cost of the Postville raid as well as an operation at Swift & Co. plants in Marshalltown and five other Midwest cities in 2006. Although federal agents arrested about 1,300 workers in raids at the Swift plants, Braley noted that no top company officials were charged. [Full Story contained at link below]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/01/AR2008060101059.html

Arizona's Immigration Two-Step

By Lee Hockstader

Monday, April 21, 2008; Page A15

PHOENIX -- Traumatized by a tidal wave of illegal immigrants, Arizona last year enacted the nation's most pitiless law to punish employers who hire undocumented workers. Now state lawmakers, having proved that they mean business -- even if it means killing off businesses -- are reconnecting with reality: They want to import Mexican workers….

But they kept some provisions businesses hated, including one allowing prosecutors to act on anonymous tips about undocumented workers.

The law had the desired effect. Immigrant neighborhoods in Phoenix started emptying out. Some employers called in suspect workers and fired those who admitted lacking proper documents. In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has cultivated an image as a Bull Connor for the nativist crowd, took the law as a green light to round up and harass Hispanics. … having done its utmost to have undocumented Hispanics fired and driven from the state, Arizona has now decided it badly needs low-skilled labor after all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/20/AR2008042001755.html

Careless Detention: Medical Care in Immigration Prisons

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/index.html

System of Neglect

As Tighter Immigration Policies Strain Federal Agencies, The Detainees in Their Care Often Pay a Heavy Cost

by Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein | Washington Post Staff Writers

May 11, 2008

Near midnight on a California spring night, armed guards escorted Yusif Osman into an immigration prison ringed by concertina wire at the end of a winding, isolated road.

During the intake screening, a part-time nurse began a computerized medical file on Osman, a routine procedure for any person entering the vast prison network the government has built for foreign detainees across the country. But the nurse pushed a button and mistakenly closed file #077-987-986 and marked it "completed" -- even though it had no medical information in it.

Three months later, at 2 in the morning on June 27, 2006, the native of Ghana collapsed in Cell 206 at the Otay Mesa immigrant detention center outside San Diego. His cellmate hit the intercom button, yelling to guards that Osman was on the floor suffering from chest pains. A guard peered through the window into the dim cell and saw the detainee on the ground, but did not go in. Instead, he called a clinic nurse to find out whether Osman had any medical problems.

When the nurse opened the file and found it blank, she decided there was no emergency and said Osman needed to fill out a sick call request. The guard went on a lunch break.

The cellmate yelled again. Another guard came by, looked in and called the nurse. This time she wanted Osman brought to the clinic. Forty minutes passed before guards brought a wheelchair to his cell. By then it was too late: Osman was barely alive when paramedics reached him. He soon died. …

The detainees have less access to lawyers than convicted murderers in maximum-security prisons and some have fewer comforts than al-Qaeda terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But they are not terrorists. Most are working-class men and women or indigent laborers who made mistakes that seem to pose no threat to national security: a Salvadoran who bought drugs in his 20th year of poverty in Los Angeles; a U.S. legal U.S. resident from Mexico who took $50 for driving two undocumented day laborers into a border city. Or they are waiting for political asylum from danger in their own countries: a Somali without a valid visa trying to prove she would be killed had she remained in her village; a journalist who fled Congo out of fear for his life, worked as a limousine driver and fathered six American children, but never was able to get the asylum he sought.

The most vulnerable detainees, the physically sick and the mentally ill, are sometimes denied the proper treatment to which they are entitled by law and regulation. They are locked in a world of slow care, poor care and no care, with panic and coverups among employees watching it happen, according to a Post investigation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/cwc_d1p1.html

Original Government Documents, RE Medical Care

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/documents.html

DHS Will Face Questions on Care of Detained Immigrants

By Spencer S. Hsu

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 22, 2008

Top lawmakers in Congress criticized the Department of Homeland Security yesterday for failing to provide adequate medical care to detained immigrants, and said they plan to demand explanations today from Secretary Michael Chertoff and Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) announced that Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and others will question Chertoff and Myers in a meeting today about reports of medical negligence and deaths of immigrants in ICE detention, as well as improper detentions of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/21/AR2008052101962.html

Immigrants Can Linger In Detention for Months

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Foreigners detained by immigration officials spent an average of 37 days in custody during fiscal 2007, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Detainees, though, can be held for a much longer or much shorter time, depending on their circumstances. Under a practice that was expanded during the summer of 2006, undocumented immigrants caught within 100 miles of the Mexican border -- and within 14 days of their entry into the United States -- are deported swiftly under an "expedited removal" program. These immigrants usually do not have a hearing before a judge. On the other hand, some immigrants are detained for months or even years if they challenge their deportation in federal courts.

Here is a breakdown of time in custody for fiscal 2006, the most recent information ICE could provide. The figures exclude nearly 5,800 detainees who are seeking asylum.

Less than three months 206,325

Three to six months 10,828

Six to nine months 2,644

Nine months to one year 1,269

More than one year 1,809

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051303112.html

In Custody, In Pain

Beset by Medical Problems as She Fights Deportation, A U.S. Resident Struggles to Get the Treatment She Needs

by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest | Washington Post Staff Writers

Page A1; May 12, 2008

FLORENCE, Ariz. -- Underneath her baggy jail-issue pants, Yong Sun Harvill feels the soft lump just below her left knee. Sometimes it tingles. Sometimes it is numb. Like her cancer felt when it arrived behind the knee a few years ago.

She noticed the lump under the thin, blue cotton in August, five months after federal immigration officers, to her amazement, took her into custody to try to deport her for buying stolen jewelry more than a decade ago. The lump grows slowly. It is now three inches across. And though she keeps asking, no one has done a test to see whether her sarcoma has come back. …

Harvill is one of 33,000 immigration detainees in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, on any given day. They are locked up in a patchwork of out-of-the-way federal detention compounds, private prisons and local jails. This unnoticed prison system was built for a quick revolving door of detainees -- into custody, out of the country. But often, people linger in detention for months or years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/cwc_d2p1.html

Some Detainees Are Drugged For Deportation

Immigrants Sedated Without Medical Reason

by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest | Washington Post Staff Writers

May 14, 2008

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

"Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards "taking down" a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/cwc_d4p1.html


If you liked this post, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can
get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email.