"Well, you all are certainly entitled to your opinions, but I disagree 100%. It has everything to do with established immigration law in the United States and those who do not abide by it. I understand your mindset, but this is 2010, and legal immigration needs to be enforced. It's not just about Mexico, although they are the biggest offenders. I think the US should follow Canada's model considering immigration.
"I think we've allowed the Illegal Immigrants to take over our country and our system. Why the hell do I have to press 1 now for English? Consider how well you would fare if you decided to move to Mexico. Believe me, they sure as hell would not learn English for you. Or any other language aside from their own. That is, if you managed not to get shot, or kidnapped, tortured and then brutally executed and dumped in a mass grave in the desert. Sorry, but I do not agree with your words at all. I really don't want that element to continue encroaching on our homeland." [Reply on Native Truth Chat list serve]
My response:
I teach English to adults. About 75% of them are from the Americas. So, they do realize that English is essentially important in this country. This is in NYC where I NEVER have to press 1 for English. I have to wait less than one second while there's a message that says "para espanol marque el dos". Two myths busted.
My students who come from the Americas, especially North America, either speak indigenous languages or are among the first or second generation to speak Spanish as their first language. They definitely have conformed to a foreign influx of immigrants and learned their language. Third myth busted.
New York City has the second highest number of Nahuatl speakers of any city, after Mexico City. Their families, up until NAFTA, lived as corn growers. Now, with subsidized U.S. corn flooding the market, they're literally starving. So, they moved from the rural country-side to Mexico City then here to NYC. To keep from dying. Yes, without legal authorization because the *legal* influx of corn and other neo-capitalist/neo-colonial practices has left them without any other choice.
As for crime, let's be real- it's the U.S. hunger for narcotics that fuels the trade and US anti-drug laws that makes them lucrative to sell. The ancient use of coca and marihuana, btw, wasn't a problem until 1) exploited by the enslaving colonial/white elites to subdue Indians and 2) distilled, modified, and used out of its traditional context when it passed from being used for ceremonial or pragmatic reasons to recreational for non-Natives.
My Guatemalan students are here for much of the same reasons that the Mexican students are here plus attest to the continued genocide going on there perpetuated by U.S. interests. I don't have roots in this country or continent. I was brought here by the international adoption industry (trade). That industry had, until 2 years ago, also imported tens of thousands of indigenous Mayan children to feed the market for babies. Doesn't adopting out indigenous children to white families who would raise them as white sound familiar to US Indians? "Kill the Indian, Save the Man"?
I would have preferred to stay in my native Korea, speaking Korean, but US policies, all "legal", has forced English into my mouth and me to this country. I now use the privilege that this affords me to help others gain some of that privilege, too, but I know neither I, nor the vast majority of students that I teach will ever have the same level of white privilege because white supremacist attitudes and white-washed non-white people who align themselves with this ideology.
As for Canada, their policies regarding First Nations are hardly a model to be held up as one to emulate or applaud. Their immigration policies are much broader than the U.S.' as a result it has the highest immigration rate in the world, with many unauthorized immigrants there as well. Myth 4? (I never heard the "Canada policy" argument before) busted. (Source: Wikipedia)
Actually Canada brings up an interesting case in the discussion of Native people. The Eskimo/Inuit culture spans 4 countries: Russia, U.S., Canada, and Greenland (Denmark). These political boundaries imposed by Europeans clearly demonstrate the arbitrariness of them and the disregard they have for indigenous people. The same happened in the lands that are now divided by the US/Mexico border.
Let's not get caught up in what legal and what's illegal. Slavery was legal. Segregation was legal. Marriage between a white person and a non-white person was illegal. Laws are not always just. It's still legal to take people's land if the government decides it wants to. It's legal to dump toxic waste. We could go on.
These laws, borders, rhetoric, and attitudes hurt people. Immigrants coming to the US without authorization or staying here after being issued a visa (the vast majority or "illegal" immigrants, btw) actually contributes to the economy and culture. (Source: Migration Policy Institute) I hope for a reform of US immigration policy that allows the free flow of people and labor so we can live in peace and with dignity. Our history and our mythology demand it. It's the only just thing to do. Even if it does spit in the face of white supremacy and colonialism. I hope that all non-white people come to realize that it's in our best interests rather than align ourselves with people who continue to exploit our ethnic differences for their benefit. Let's not play into the ethnic antagonism that has only helped to divide and conquer us since Columbus left Italy and immigrated to Spain.
BTW, as an advocate for immigrant rights and comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) I never use the term "illegal immigrant". The community and movement uses undocumented or unauthorized. And even worse than illegal immigrant is the term illegals. That completely dehumanizes us.
The status of a person as legal or illegal is completely a matter of arbitrary chance and circumstance. Let no "American" forget that.
Every time we hear a white person say "Illegal immigrant" or "illegal alien" what they are actually doing is saying "NIGGER". The term nigger is a term created by white people to demean a person of color and to lower his/her natural and inherent status, so that certain rights can be stolen. The tactic of using false labels to demean, lower and steal rights from people of color is a tactic that has been used repeatedly by white people in America since 1492.
For example, once Native Americans were labeled as savages it justified stealing our land and murdering tens of millions of natives and enslaving the rest. Once Black people were labeled as niggers and savages they lost their rights as humans and could be owned as slaves.
Today the people being referred to today as Illegal immigrants are actually Native Americans. By branding our people as illegal immigrants, in our own land, our status is lowered and our rights can be legally are taken. We never agreed to any European borders on our land. Yet we can be dictated to by white people regarding where we can and cannot be on our own continent.
We can be jailed for being in a part of our own homeland where white people are the majority. Is it merely an accident or coincident that today nearly everybody sees the use of the term "Illegal immigrant", in referring to brown Native Americans from below the illegal border, as acceptable. No, this has been intentionally manipulated by white people. Liberals, conservatives, black people, racists, immigrant rights activists, Native Americans, news reporters, the President and even the "Illegal immigrants" themselves now think it is acceptable and proper to refer to brown NativeAmericans as "Illegal immigrants".
Let's be very clear. The people being targeted by the term "Illegal immigrant" are Brown Native Americans. The people who have created and popularized the term "Illegal immigrant" are white people. They are white supremacists to be exact whose clear motive it is to maintain an apartheid system on Native American land. The majority of people in America are Native Americans with 600 million on our continent compared to 200 million white people. However, the border at the Rio Grande River is an apartheid border and artificially maintains a white majority area in our brown Native America.
When we think of Africa most people think of a continent of brown people. When we think of America most people think of mostly white people. This is an intentional manipulation and lie. America is and will always be a brown continent. Love it or Leave it!!
So think twice before using the term "Illegal immigrant". If you are a white person using this term then you are a white supremacist. If you are a person of color using this term then you are an uncle tom supporting white supremacy.
Barry
"It is the greatest con in the world when the natives have became the illegal immigrants and the illegal immigrants have become the natives"
I wrote before about privilege and classism in the adoption community and our reluctance to be in solidarity with other immigrants now I want to ask a provocative question: is it because we're too white washed?
Transracial non-white adoptees who identify as white, and who benefit from privilege borrowed from their white parents as children have to be politicized as non-whites. I think a majority of TRA never take on a full identity as a non-white person. Those actively involved in the adoptee community are probably even less likely to see themselves as a non-white, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Latin@, Mayan, Colombian, Philipino, Arab, or Roma… person.
Adult adoptees introduce themselves online as having been adopted by "Caucasians". One poster referred to non-white people as "minorities". Non-white people hardly ever use these terms. PC white people – and white-washed non-white people—do. We identify ourselves by the nation or race we feel we belong to. I don't say I'm a minority. I'm Korean or Korean American. My adoptive parents weren't Caucasian. They were white.
Other adoptees claim that they are more enlightened than the people who bore them even if they acknowledge that they're not white because they've suffered from racism in the countries where they live. Their white-washed brains judge their birth countries as inferior in luxuries and comfort, human rights, equality, education, and progress in general. Those who still hold the colonial mindset of Europeans (and their ideological descendants) feel they're helping to civilize more backward nations and communities who don't value their female babies, or who don't accept Jesus, or are from societies that are just too poor, violent, and corrupt for children to live in.
White washing gets non-white people to identify with their white oppressors rather than their non-white sisters and brothers. It makes them subscribe to white supremacy and judge non-western societies as less developed than those based on Judeo-Christian European cultures. Symptoms include arbitrarily rejecting cultural markers of our birth countries, using euphemisms of race and class, and having more friends and associates who are white than from our own nationality. The result is self-hatred, internalized racism, and a weakening of our communities' strength. White-washed people hope that we will be again granted the privilege of white people or at least as a special non-white person. The House Nigger, the Imperial Collaborator, the white-washed adoptee.
You were "chosen". "Your parents really wanted you." You're "special."
America is the best country in world. Everyone wants to come here. This is the freest country in the world. We're number 1!
These are myths that need to be refuted because they're untrue and they do harm.
When you know, without a doubt, you're special or the best, you're disinclined to be empathetic about others' struggles. You understand power imbalance and stratification to be normal and accept it as inevitable.
Non-white international adoptees who are taught and believe that they're special and/or chosen, may fail to acknowledge that their privileges are borrowed are granted but not a birth right. They can be revoked at any time. Sometimes it's hurtful, but trivial, like in Adopted the Movie when Jen, a Korean adoptee, is told she will not be included with her family in the annals of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Jen is blindsided when she's told she's not eligible to be listed with her family. Why should she be so surprised that she cried? Because she deluded herself in believing that she was special. Like so many adoptees she became an overachiever to prove how special she is. She also became an addict.
Learning that American exceptionalism is also a claim that rests on lies is also a painful realization for many people, including American adoptees. We're told that people come here for freedom then we not only find out the slave trade brought people to the United States in chains. We learn in middle school about the poor huddled masses that immigrated between 1880 and 1930 and are told that everyone wants to come to the U.S. We're not taught that more people left than entered the U.S. in the 1930s, nor the fact, throughout the history of the country, half of all immigrants returned to their countries of origin. As adults we read reports in the media that the U.S. does not have the best students, the richest citizens, nor the healthiest population anymore.
This hurts us because the immigrants we need to just stay in the top tier of nations are being attracted to other countries with better health care, education, welfare, and standards of living. Our belief in American exceptionalism is also has more insidious results. The military industrial complex of the U.S. has committed genocide and continues to perpetuate violence domestically and abroad, yet the average American believes our magnanimity to the point of denial about human rights violations and feel morally superior to China, North Korea, and all other nations. We don't condemn our governments' policies nor hold private enterprises responsible for crimes because we can't fathom that we're really as capable as everyone else of callousness, violence, greed, and deceit.
When we realize that we're just average yellow, brown, or black people and not so special, it causes us emotional pain. When we face what our government is guilty of ignoring and perpetuating, it causes uncomfortable redefining of ourselves.
(This post was prompted by this article about Jewish exceptionalism.)
