The Arizona Immigration Law and the National Tumult: Stereotypes and Bi-Partisan Silliness

Both sides of the political spectrum are mired in rigid stereotypes about immigration. Stereotypes impede clear thinking. They undermine reason. I have messages for Right and Left on immigration. Pay attention; you might feel better and you won’t act or react stupidly.

First, some disclosures:

1 I am an immigrant married to an immigrant (a so-called “woman of color” in the stupid parlance of political correctness). We are both American patriots. We believe in “American exceptionalism” although we are both well educated. (If you don’t believe it, check out my vita – linked to this blog – and die a little inside. Also, ask to view my wife’s paintings. They cry out” cultured person.”) We are both political conservatives, leaning strongly libertarian (small “l”).

2 I believe that recruiting immigrants de facto on the basis of their willingness to violate our laws, first thing, is a stupid policy. Immigration policy discussions have not even begun, not under this Democratic President with his Democratic majorities in both houses. They did not take place under a Republican President either. This absence suggests to me that illegal immigration is not high on this country’s political agenda, at least, not sustainably high. And I agree with this assessment.

3 As I write, crossing the US border illegally is a misdemeanor from a Federal standpoint. It’s like a traffic violation, or possession of a joint in most states. This tells me that there is no national political will to act resolutely on immigration, illegal or legal.

Conservative dufuses (dufi?): Immigrants do not come to the US to use welfare nor to rape and kill those you love. Those who cross the border illegally come here to work, to mow your lawns and clean your dishes. They want to improve their lives and especially those of their children. That’s the American way. The fact that they break the law to pursue the American dream does not make it any the less the American dream.

This may be hard to believe but the last time I looked, immigrants in general were slightly less likely than the native-born to use welfare or to be in jail for serious offenses. I don’t know of much credible info about illegal immigrants specifically. I am open-minded. Show me good data, collected and analyzed according to scientific methods and I will turn on a dime. I will do it publicly and loudly, on this blog, in my radio program ( “Fact Matter,” on KSCO 1080 AM Santa Cruz, Sundays 11am-1pm), and in the coffee shop. The fact that I have issued this challenge before and that the data keep not coming makes me suspicious that they don’t exist.

Stop paying attention to La Raza‘s insane harangues. (“La Raza”= “The Race.”) It’s an extremist, racist organization that represents no one. If its membership had blue eyes, they would be called a dangerous armed “militia.” Instead, if you know someone who knows Spanish, have him help you ask Luis why he is here. (Luis is the quiet, polite guy who buses tables at your local restaurant.)

If you want to know more, read my co-authored article linked to this blog: If Mexicans and Americans Could Cross the Border Freely

Lefty mush-heads, here is for you: Stop thinking immigrants are “exploited.” First, the word has no objective meaning: I felt “exploited” when I was teaching university. Yet, you would scream in anguished envy if you knew how much I was earning per hour.

What kind of exploitation is it that large numbers of people seek at great risk to their safety and at great expenses, both monetary and emotional? Once more, your leaders are using words to confuse you

Immigrants, legal and illegal, come to this country because it’s a better country in some important respects than where they come from. For many, it’s just the opportunity to earn more money. This immigrant thinks, speculates, that the underlying reason why immigrants from everywhere come here goes like this: Until now, this is the country where a person’s success depends most on his efforts, his talents, his balls (women too, of course). This may soon change and the flow of immigrants will decrease.

Get used to it: There are scores of shitty countries in the world and only a handful that are better than this one, usually in some fairly narrow respect. (Yes, it’s true, French trains are faster!) Millions do come here from those shitty countries and many would like to come from the good countries. There has to be a reason.

As for American racism, again, don’t be absurd; face the facts instead. There is always discrimination from some quarter or other against those who appear different. It often takes unexpected forms. Excuse the recourse to personal experience: I had a neighbor who hated me first time she heard me, because of my French accent. It turned out she had known another, one, French immigrant who was an unpleasant person. Many, many more, all liberals, envy me because of the same accent. Envy makes them hostile. (You would not believe the numbers of upper-middle class liberals who hate themselves for not being French! But, I digress, as usual.) Below is a fact you have to deal with if you want to say anything about the relationship between immigration and American racism.

Only about half of the people living in the US who have any African blood also have a slave ancestor. All the others are immigrants and children of immigrants. (Tech note: I don’t have the reference at hand so, feel free to believe it’s 20% rather than 50%; it does not affect my point much.) Think about the implication: A country that had almost two hundred years of African slavery; a country where racial segregation was enforced in may parts until forty years ago, such a country attracts immigrants of African appearance by the millions. As is true for other immigrants, their move is costly in every way possible. How much vestigial racism can they possibly confront if they keep coming? Think! Force yourself to answer this simple question.

Yes, people vote with their feet whenever they can.

Ruben, Mike, any Hispanic who is reading this: Pay attention. I am speaking to you.

Yes, as I said recently, the new Arizona law will lead to racial profiling. It’s not motivated by racism though. It turns out, apparent manifestations of racism increases in periods of high unemployment and they wane with full employment. Do you really believe that Americans are “racist” one day and not racist one year later?

The liberal media’s accusations of racism against the state of Arizona are both disgusting and pathetic. They are are the death-cry of institutions that realize they are losing their ability to manipulate the befuddled and the compliant. Of course, no surprise, many immigrants are befuddled and compliant.

Here is my prediction: The new Arizona law will be destroyed by court action or it will be enforced only for a brief period and in desultory manner. I am glad it exists though. It’s a warning to the Federal Government to get its act together on illegal immigration. I am glad it’s there for this reason alone.

And yes, what little enforcement will take place will irritate and inconvenience some people. Those will include Hispanics in Arizona for 300 years, Navajos there for 5,000, and even a few “Indians” from Mumbai because not every cop has a doctorate in Anthropology! Their prospective suffering does not move me all that much. Thousands want to murder my daughter, and their daughters, because they sometimes show their belly-button, and a determined group is taking apart the economic foundations of this great country. “Suck it up,” I say.

Next: Why immigrants are superior.

Race, Racism and the Law in America

HERE IS SOMETHING I FIRST POSTED FIVE MONTHS AGO. I AM RE-POSTING IT THIS END OF SEPTEMBER FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON. I JUST LIKE IT.

Rush Limbaugh called the President’s appointee for Supreme Court Justice a “reverse racist.” He is wrong; she is simply a racist. If you discriminate against anyone because he belongs to a racial group (whatever that means, see below), you are a racist. There is no definitional exception depending on the race of the discriminator. Got it?

Judge Sotomayor is an overt racist. Read the papers and think about the decisions she made on affirmative action and the reasons she gave. She is also on record as stating that she would “hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experience, would more often than not reach a better decision than….” (quoted from WSJ editorial of 5/27/09). Hemming and hawing aside, that is a straightforward declaration of the judicial superiority of having been born a member of a particular group. The qualifier “wise” does not count. Of course, she is not stupid and she would not say that an unwise Latina has superior judgment.

That declaration was published in something called “La Raza Law Journal.” Yes, you guessed right, “raza” means “race” in Spanish. It’s a law school publication for Latinos, “our race.” Academic ideologues will try to tell you with a straight face that “raza” does not really mean “race.” Just ask them how to say “race,” in Spanish then and watch them stutter and possibly cry.

Mrs Sotomayor is also a bad judge whose decisions are overturned 60 % of the time. No matter, she will be confirmed because she has been paying her taxes, unlike other Obama appointees.

That Sotomayor is a woman is going to please women who think only occasionally, because it feels right. There is no reason in the world to believe that female judges render decisions that are different from those of male judges. You can’t have it both ways, girl! Women don’t have different brains or they do; it’s one or the other. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said it best: “Those who think the world would be better if it were run by women just don’t remember high-school.” I wouldn’t be surprised though if Justice Sotomayor’s robe turned out neater than the robes of the male Justices.

Race is a puzzling topic under American law. Conservatives have been silent too long about the intellectual incoherence of our Federal Government’s racial policies.

Racial thinking in America begun with definitions used to narrow down the judicial idea of who was a slave. Race then played a part, but a small one. The Federal legal reach on race expanded greatly in the nineteen-sixties for the purpose of defining which kind of person deserved to be compensated for (real) past injustices. At the beginning, it was easy: There was a fairly well defined category of Americans whose ancestors had been brought to this country in chains. Mot of the same also had ancestors who had been kept in chains for several generations. Most also had ancestors whom the law failed to protects equally for several more generations. The law was dealing with tangible historical injustices committed against a tangible group of people. Then, quickly, legal matters got conceptually complicated.

Under our political system, any category of people can group together to lobby for anything. Observing the advantages African- Americans were getting through affirmative action as a result of these legal definitions, other members of other categories , and potential categories, starting thinking, “Me, too. Give me a piece of that pie.” They lobbied to become legally protected minorities under the law.

The first imitators were “Hispanics” or “Latinos,” no one knows exactly what the politically correct designation is, not even the Federal Government. Their success in achieving protected status is doubly perplexing. First, the category of reference was created purely for the purpose of lobbying. It did not and does not exist in Nature. Having ancestors born in a country where the main language is Spanish creates limited linguistic and cultural commonalities, that’s all. If you told a Cuban-American former heart surgeon (in Cuba) that he was in some way related to a poor, illiterate, illegal immigrant from a rural area of Mexico, he would be perplexed. There is no commonality of condition between these two men although they use the same word to say, “horse,” for example.

Even this minimal linguistic definition does not hold for most Latinos (or “Hispanics”). Like all other immigrant groups, people from Spanish-speaking countries normally lose the language of origin by the third generation, more rarely, by the fourth generation. Thus, most American Latinos probably do not know the language that defines them, for some legal purposes. The logic of this is as if here were special duties imposed on blonds that applied also to their dark-haired and red-headed grandchildren!

Since obtaining a protected status from the Federal Government is mostly a matter of successful lobbying, there is no objective limit to who or what a protected category will include. So, for some purposes, Spaniards, people born in Spain, enjoy the same protected status as other “Latinos.” But, wait a minute, Spaniards are citizens of the greatest oppressor nation in the history of the world, members of the society that enslaved more millions than anyone else, for four hundred years! (Spanish colonial slavery started early and ended late.) Those people enjoy protected legal status here because of something Americans did to the same people they, the Spaniards oppressed so successfully. Read this again. I know it’s complicated; not my fault, I did not make this up. Here it is again:

Spaniards oppressed Mexicans. Americans oppressed Mexicans. Therefore, Americans owe Spaniards!

Even more puzzling is the fact that, for practical purposes, almost all Latinos (“Hispanics”) currently living in the US are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. (Not all, I know; see below.) So, if I understand well the compensatory logic of federal law regarding protected categories: People come here from another country, of their own accord, and they get mistreated. They keep coming nevertheless, generation after generation. They keep being mistreated. So, other Americans whose ancestors came from other countries, such as Sweden, or Italy, or India, or Iraq, owe them special consideration. This debt is even embedded in federal law.

Note that there is no more convincing proof of the voluntary nature of any action than having to incur considerable risk to undertake it. The greater the risks, the higher the degree of voluntariness. The current flood of illegal Mexican immigrants, forced to risk death crossing deserts, pillaged, robbed, raped and beaten by human smugglers, living if they succeed under precarious conditions in this country, underscores the fact that such immigrants are not similar to the African-Americans whose ancestors were brought here by force. In fact, they are exactly the converse of African-Americans.

Here is another way to put it: If your ancestors made the wrong choice by coming to this country (uninvited, even if legally), don’t ask me for compensation. I had nothing to do with it, nor did the Republic that articulates my will, for better or for worse. And, by the way, your ancestors probably did not in fact make the wrong choice. Find your cousins in the old country and see how they are living right now.

The point I am making is that voluntary immigrants and their descendants have no moral claim on this society and that they merit no special judicial treatment irrespective of how unfairly they are treated. Here is the common-sense principle that applies here:

If you crash the party, even if you crash it only in the sense that the host did not care whether you came in or not, you may not complain about your seating. You may also not allow others, greedy or vainglorious lawyers for example, to make claims on your behalf based on what a bad table you ended up sitting at.

By the way, for those of you who don’t know, I am an immigrant. So is my wife and so are our two children.

Also by the way, I like Mexicans and I don’t think illegal Mexican immigrants should be deported. I consider other radical options in an article forthcoming soon in The Independent Review (co-authored with Sergey Nikoforov, another immigrant).

Historical note: I am well aware of the fact that there was a Mexican, Spanish-speaking population there when the US stole half of Mexico in the 19^th century. Those people’s descendants are not immigrants at all. They just stayed home. By my count, assuming a rate of reproduction normal for their place and time, if the only Latinos in the US today were the descendants of those people, the total Latino population would be about one tenth what it is.

Other protected groups except one received their special treatment the same way as Latinos, by arguing successfully that they were especially ill-treated, sometimes in the past. The reasoning invoked always ends up absurd. Thus, Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans received their special protection because their ancestors were undoubtedly discriminated against in the 19^th century, including with respect to admission to the US. My reaction is: So, double what? First, they were all volunteers. (See above.) Second, the US did not owe then, and does not owed now, an equal right to be admitted to all kinds of people regardless of their provenance and of the cultural baggage they carry. Right now, there are countries whose citizens I would accept only with an eye-drop because I think they present a serious danger to the values I love as an American. (What countries is a topic for another posting. I am trying to avoid distraction here.)

The judicial protection extended to descendants of Chinese and of Japanese was gradually extended to some other Asians but not to all Asians. Thus, people of Filipino origin, and of Korean origin, and of Vietnamese origin all share in this special status. Asians from the Indian subcontinent, Iranians, Turks, and Arabs do not. If you ask yourself why the ones but not the others, the obvious answer is that Koreans and Vietnamese and, with a stretch, Filipinos, all look like Chinese and Japanese to the untutored Western eye. If this classification does not proceed from a racist mentality, nothing does!

The Federal Government is racist at the behest of liberal opinion!

Or maybe, it’s a matter of how much rice they each eat. It would make as much sense as the current system of classification.

One federally protected category did not obtain its special status through lobbying and absolutely deserves it. I am referring to the congeries of groups and their descendants known as “Native Americans,” American Indians. Today’s Indians are descendants of people who were lied to, killed, imprisoned, deliberately deprived of their cultures, and who had their treaties violated by the United States of America. There is no doubt in my mind that they merit reparation at the hands of the same United States because they were actively prevented from enjoying the rewards of our society repeatedly, and from day one. A special, protective legal status is very small compensation for what was done to them by our polity acting in its official capacity, this very same United States of ours.

Incidentally, I am also in favor of reparation for the descendants of African slaves but I am too tired to write about it today.

I could not resist the temptation of delivering myself of a lecture on race on the occasion of Judge Sotomayor’s nomination. In fact, Judge Sotomayor’s racism is largely a red herring, I think. It distracts us from the main fact about her: She is a bad jurist and she is on record stating that the courts make policy. These two facts together turn her into an asset for our messianic President. He and his entourage are betting that she will do as she is told on the Supreme Court. A Justice intellectually out of her depth is less likely to become independent than one fully at ease on the Bench.

PS A few days ago, I heard the White House Press Secretary warn everyone to refrain from saying anything disparaging about Judge Sotomayor, in line with the monarchical style of the Obama Administration. I have a response:

Mr Press Secretary: I invite you to commit an anatomically challenging lewd act on your own person.