Immigrants are our great strength, not a source of weakness

In a response to a comment challenging an answer on Quora, I wrote the following comment.

My answer began with the words, “There is no DACA problem.” Apparently, you didn’t get the point, which is that the entire Trumpist critique of our system of immigration is flat-out wrong. If there is no problem, then I don’t need to spell out regulations to fix it.

Trump’s plan makes basic assumptions that are false. Your comment repeats those assumptions:

“So now we must secure the [border].”

This conclusion ignores the fact that no terrorists have come across the Mexican border since Pancho Villa did it in 1916. At that time, the US army easily repulsed the invasion forced and posted 100,000 soldiers to protect the border from further incursions. Given the current increased mobility of US military units and technical improvements for discovering fleeing adversaries, it would seem we have plenty of resources already available to protect our southern border.

Battle of Columbus (1916) - Wikipedia

Trumpists are acting as though Mexico had already declared war on the US, but this is not true. Our relations with Mexico had been completely peaceful and cooperative during the previous 100 years. Trump has antagonized the Mexican government and American citizens of Mexican heritage, thereby worsening relations with Mexico to build support for his southern border wall.
Even if we were at war with Mexico, building a wall along our Southern border would be a symbolic gesture at best. Walls were last an effective military measure during the 100 Years War.

How Castles Work

Trumpists apparently admire walls and believe that they have been effective at repelling invaders or keeping neighboring nations from entering a country illegally. They look at the Great Wall of China and believe that it served the purpose of repelling invaders, but it did not. The Mongol armies, for example, invaded China in 1276 and subdued the entire country, having passed through the area supposedly protected by the Great Wall.

Mongol conquest of China - Wikipedia

Trumpists don’t seem to care about actual facts. The 9/11 attackers were not Mexicans, nor did they attack over the Southern Border. Fifteen of the 19 terrorists were Saudi Arabians and the rest came from countries in the Middle East. None had entered the country by crossing the Mexican border. So the $20 billion wall Trumpists are proposing would have done absolutely nothing to prevent the 9/11 hijackings.

How the Terrorists Get In

Trumpists believe they can control terrorists by reducing immigration. But to do so would destroy what has always been a source of strength for the US. Furthermore, they believe that Muslims have committed most acts of terror in the US, but that is not even remotely true.

In Opinion: Terrorists do not come from the seven countries named in Trump’s Muslim ban order

Therefore, I do not support any of Trump’s proposals to exclude immigrants on the basis of race, religion, or country of national origin, primarily because none of these proposals address the actual causes of terrorism or the people who commit these acts. Trumpists’ rationale for these beliefs are based in large part on a flawed list of terrorists released by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

We have got to stop basing foreign policy decisions on blind prejudice and faulty data. We must start trusting immigrants to do what immigrants have always done, become good citizens and improve the nation in every way imaginable.

In response to a critic of Portland, a Sanctuary City

This post was written in response to a post that appeared at http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/sanctuary

Tessera, you are making a number of false assumptions here. You call sanctuary cities, "sanctuaries for criminals", when in fact they are the opposite. They are sanctuaries from criminals.
I've known many immigrants. I was adopted by one. His brother lived in the US as the owner of a successful small business until he died recently. Neither of these men were remotely criminal. They came to the US seeking sanctuary from war and persecution.

If you look at our history, you will see the same story repeated over and over again. Immigrants came to our shores to escape starvation, repression, or sudden death at the hands of true criminals. That's what history tells us. That's why the US has always welcomed immigrants.

The story you are repeating--for I know you did not invent it yourself--is an utter lie. You compare immigrants to burglars, assassins, and thieves. Those are not the immigrants I know. The people I know who seek sanctuary are children and their parents, who left countries where criminal gangs have taken the place of civil government. They deserve our love, not the hatred you pour out onto the page.

Coincidentally, the measures being proposed by our soulless government are precisely those that will turn the largest number of young men into criminals. ICE arrests these people near the border and releases them on the other side of it, where criminal gangs can abduct them, torture them, and force them to become members. Those young men, once converted, will return to this country as criminals.

So you see, the sanctuary movement is not accepting criminals into this country. It is welcoming young men and women who have nowhere else to go and saving them from a life of crime.
Paradoxically, the government that you claim is preserving the rule of law is actually in the process of destroying it. Rule of law requires that people be convicted of a crime before they can be punished for it. Yet here you are, claiming immigrants to be criminals and calling for their punishment. On what evidence? On the words of a right-wing website you happen to have read?

Possibly you were frightened by those words of hate and dissension. No wonder! The authors intended to scare you and used every means at their command to do so. But we must resist these enemies of humanity whenever they appear.

We must emulate the members of the Underground Railroad in the antebellum South, who saved slaves from an inhuman system of bondage and gave them a chance to be free. We must emulate the underground in Europe during the great slaughter of Jews, who hid them, shepherded them away from Europe, and brought them to America, where they and their descendants are still living today.

Most of all, we must resist people who use lies and propaganda to foster hatred and division. We can't let them sucker us into their heinous game. Please reconsider your position on this issue and adopt the ways of understanding and love.

The Fourteenth Amendment Guarantees Birthright Citizenship To All

Since Donald Trump is totally unaware of anything he doesn't learn from tv, he cannot know that his immigration plan is pure racism. The tip-off comes from right-wing websites and Ann Coulter, who have this strange idea that the Fourteenth Amendment does not guarantee US citizenship to anyone born in the US. They cite Judge Richard Posner as the most authoritative holder of this view. (It's amazing how all these websites and right-wing pundits use exactly the same language and arguments, isn't it?)

The American Civil Liberties Union disagrees:

Citizenship under the 14th Amendment includes those born in the United States to parents who are not U.S. citizens. This was clearly established over 100 years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Fourteenth Amendment states it clearly:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

Someone reading this Amendment should logically conclude that anyone born in the US, regardless of the nationality of his parents, is a US citizen. But Trump's lawyer friends say that, no, the Congress that passed the 14th Amendment intended it to apply to slaves and their children, not to the children of immigrants. Because, they say, the Congress in 1868 didn't have an immigration problem.

As with almost everything to do with racists and their beliefs, this opinion presents a false idea of history. That's how they operate. In fact, immigration was a huge issue in 1868, much bigger than slavery in the North and West. There was no concern about illegal immigrants in 1868 because immigration was uncontrolled. Whoever wanted to emigrate to the US was welcome. Even the Chinese--who were widely regarded as an inferior race--were allowed to freely immigrate because their labor was necessary for the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Between 1880 and 1920, 20 million people immigrated to the US. All of their children enjoyed birthright citizenship.

Why should we change the law now, if it has worked so well in the past? There is only one answer. Many people who declare that the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't mean what it says are avowed racists who believe that Latinos are incapable of governing themselves.

The first court test of the 14th Amendment was US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). The Supreme Court ruled that Wong was a citizen of the US by virtue of his birth in San Francisco and could not be prevented from entering the country. Since that time, numerous court rulings have upheld this ruling and concurred that the 14th Amendment does, indeed, make all children born in the US American Citizens, regardless of who their parents are. In the early days, the acceptance of birthright citizenship was essential, since about 15% of the population came from other countries and their children were only citizens by virtue of their being born here.

Judge Posner states his viewpoint in Oforji v. Ashcroft, 354 F.3d at 621 (2003). Posner concludes that the courts cannot outlaw birthright citizenship, but the Congress may, simply by passing a law. Posner unaccountably gives as one of his arguments against birthright citizenship that the 

Federation for American Immigration Reform [FAIR] estimates that 165,000 babies are born each year in the United States to illegal immigrants and others who come here to give birth so their children will be American citizens

This figure is pure fiction. Factcheck.org concludes that, while it is true that there are millions of immigrants who have children in the US, Mexicans come to the US to work, not to have babies. 

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Federation for American Reform (FAIR) is a hate group whose sole purpose is to severely limit immigration into the United States. Its members include avowed racists and eugenicists like FAIR founder and Board Member John Tanton, who wrote

I've come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that."

— John Tanton, letter to eugenicist and ecology professor Garrett Hardin (now deceased), Dec. 10, 1993

and FAIR President Dan Stein, who claimed that the 1965 immigration act 

was a great way to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance and hubris, and the immigration laws from the 1920s were just this symbol of that, and it's a form of revengism, or revenge, that these forces continue to push the immigration policy that they know full well are [sic] creating chaos and will continue to create chaos down the line. 

These are not just the views of racial supremacists, although they are that. These are the views of eugenicists, people who believe that inferior people should be eliminated to make way for superior ones. They view Latinos as both inferior and expendable, since they want to maintain an Anglo-Saxon majority by any means possible.

Judge Posner should have known the racist basis of FAIR and he should have realized that statistics provided by them could not legitimately be relied on. Did he intend to incorporate the racist, eugenicist views of that group into the legal record? If not, he should apologize for his actions. If he did, then all of his judgments should be reviewed for racist bias and expunged from the record if necessary.

Since the Republicans refuse to act on immigration, Obama will

Obama's proposal, as released, contains several different options, which he is evidently inviting the Republicans to accept. The Republicans, of course, will reject all of them, so immigrants to this country will have the first real breathing room since 1986, when President Reagan granted amnesty to 2.7 million undocumented workers then living--and working--in the US.

Today there are 11 million undocumented workers. Many of them have American children and relatives who would like to join them, like aged parents, but cannot. Major corporations that hire these people would like to keep the system the way it is, because it saves them money.

I know one undocumented worker who works cleaning up operating theaters in a hospital, a dirty, difficult job. She makes $10 an hour from the company the hospital hires to do the job, The hospital also hires people directly to do the same job and pays them $14 an hour, but the hospital requires those direct hires to be validated citizens. So the entire US economy is based on a discriminatory system as unjust as any Jim Crow Laws, where some people can be paid less than others because of the chance of their birth.

There is no chance that corporate-ruled America will expel immigrant laborers from this country. The corporate system uses immigrant labor to pad its bottom line. Our corporate masters make too much money off the current unjust and immoral system for them ever to question it.

The worker of whom I speak has been the sole support for 2 children and works 2 jobs. She is just the sort of person the Republicans are always extolling as exemplary citizens: hard-working, law-abiding, receiving no government benefits. But instead of rewarding her efforts, the Republicans propose to expel her and her child who was born in this country, thus punishing a child for the transgressions of her mother.

There is no excuse for such immorality. The Republican party must be rejected utterly by every thinking, feeling American. Though the Republicans use every conniving trick to stay in power, no one party can stay in power forever. We will remember your excesses whenever evil deeds are mentioned.

Arizona has passed a very bad law

The state of Arizona has recently passed a new law that persecutes latino-American citizens in the name of controlling immigration from Mexico.

Arguing about this law with conservatives makes my head explode.

This law is simply bad law. Only the Supreme Court can determine whether it is unconstitutional, yet one conservative after another declares it is constitutional. Evidently being a talking head on Fox gives you insight into the future decisions of SCOTUS.

But we can all see it is bad law, because it moves us closer to a police state, in which all private actions are closely watched by the police and no one is ever safe from police interference.

The law does not define what is "reasonable suspicion". It is vague and general, and relies on the discretion of the individual, unsupervised police officer. Whether there is proof the law will be abused is beside the point. The fact is, it could be abused, because it offers no guidelines for the police.

Some have assumed that the legislature would not have passed the law if they believed it to be unconstitutional. This is obviously not true. Laws are passed because the politicians believe their constituents want them passed. So this is a politically motivated law.

What is that motivation?

Many people of Arizona do not like latino immigrants. Furthermore, they have no objection to subjecting citizens of latino heritage to harassment by the police. So the legislature and governor scored political points by giving them a new law. Yielding to bigots and racists is not a good reason to create a new law.

Many people of Arizona are upset that the federal government has not resolved the issue of immigration. So the legislature passed the law to send a message to the federal government that immigration reform is necessary. By doing so, many of them must have realized that the states cannot legislate in areas where federal law takes precedence. Passing a bad law to punish the federal government makes no sense.

Many politicians of Arizona would like to make a popular gesture in an election year. This includes many Senators and Representatives, the very people that are responsible for making improvements to immigration laws. But these people are ducking their responsibility. Instead of taking responsibility for bad laws and making better ones, they blame the poor and powerless, the ones who are the targets of this very bad law.

This is a very bad law

1. Because it is at least partially motivated by racial hatred.
2. Because it is at least partially motivated by political animosity.
3. Because it permits the harassment and imprisonment of American citizens for the crime of being brown.