evelyna, poor white people have been voting against their own best interest for 100 years because they believe cynical politicians who feed them the goods you are trying to sell.

evelyna- You are completely out of line, out of step, and a borderline bigot! You are advocating the abrogation of my civil rights as an American.

Thanks to the other posters that remind us that our government has long practiced and/or supported genocide here in America and abroad. This is not a new practice. I totally agree that the roots of illegal immigration are based on the depravity and exploitation of other nations, particularly South America, by the U.S. government and corporate interests. Free trade agreements, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank are all in the service of corporate greed and profits. All at the expense of the indiginous populations and their environment. By any other name, this is RAPE! I genuinely believe that the wrongs done to other countries by the U.S. and the corporations should be righted. Reparations from the same corporations are in order. I also think our immigration policy stinks to high heaven. Our current policies only repeat the exploitation of the same peoples of the countries we have already raped. That being said, I have to return to the topic at hand. Whenever our civil liberties under the Consitution and the Bill of Rights are denied to ANYONE, we ALL lose our liberties.

So I repeat, inform your representatives of this travesty on YOUR rights! Do it NOW!

They are lowering our wages and lowering our standard of living. I do not feel sorry.
I walk around with a bad knee and sore foot because I cannot afford medical. MY taxes go to take care of people who do not belong here.
The free ride is over for them. That is almost like the blacks complaining about being shot during a car chase.
If they want control of a situation do not break the law.
Go home.

Why are you surprised in Boston?
In 1755 ,Gen Lawrence ,from Boston,wearing a British redcoat, assembled all the Acadiens of Grand Seault in their churches then put the men on one ship,the children on others and the women on last one. At the same time that was repeated all along the coast. Some died at sea,some came back,some went to Louisiana etc.Many times in your history Generals have done the same look at your 5 dollar bill: Jackson deported the Cherokee in 1834 after signing a treaty with them 2 years before. 90% died on the Trail of Tears. U have a blind spot in the USA and need to realise that genocide has been around there for a long time.So why are you surprised at the way immigrants in yourcountry are treated ?you have always denied them rights.Is there another country in the world that puts a genocide perpetrator on its currency?

1) I fully agree about what the authors say on the human rights issue; and I agree that govts have a responsibility to control borders. Great. We so far agree, though not saying that there's any related disagreement with what the author say, or rather not, given that I don't know what their view is in this following regard.

Pushing those Latin or South Americans back to their country's without FIRST FIXING THE MAJOR BREAKING THE US COMMITTED THERE, now this is to really wish to be extremely criminal, even if there are not written laws to address this kind of crime.

Those people try to come to the US ONLY because the US and its corporate buddies have rendered the lives of many millions, tens if not hundreds of millions of South Americans pure hardship of the most extreme kind; NO ECONOMIC viability there for these people. Sure, the govts there were complicit, but, and again, ONLY because of the US making sure of this; else, the peoples would have seen to the needed regime changes.

It's is because of the US' hellbent predation on their part of this world of ours that those people try to come to the US in order to earn what no Americans accept to earn, because it's still enough for them to survive, in poverty, while being able to send money back home to help out family still and starving there.

So, deporting these people is just one more MAJOR CRIME against humanity.

YOU BROKE THEIR COUNTRIES, YOU FIX, REPAIR THEM, IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. If you don't, then may God treat you the same way you treated His impoverished and oppressed peoples.

2) President Slobodan Milosevic, based on many enough analysts, and I believe also the court, was found to have been quite innocent in the "ethnic cleansing" matter, not having commanded this, only being treated as somewhat guilty because of his political position while "ethnic cleansing" was or supposedly was going on.

There are differing analyses on this, and the so-called West has produced a lot of bogusness, which is the usual theme of Western corporate media anyway. So we know that they cannot be trusted on important matters; that they would condemn him and not condemn much more strongly the President Bush and P.M. Blair, which they haven't even done to any really significant degree, until years too late, well, why should we believe what they say about President Milosevic, who did NOT commmand the "ethnic cleansing", if it indeed really happened.

Also, why don't they condemn former President Clinton, who presented the Rambouilet Accord, President Milosevic accepted the terms, which were certainly aggreable, and then that, oh-oh, that was apparently not anticipated; because Clinton then and suddenly said, but, "oh, no, we can't have that, we can't have agreement here, there's another clause that we have to add", and that claused was a gangster's play. It was a clause which only fools would accept in totally blind fashion, for it was gangsterish armtwisting. So of course a man with the intelligence and self-respect, and national respect, that President Milosevic was would therefore refuse to agree to the previously aggreeable accord.

No, and why? Because the US war on Kosovo was NOT at all because of the ethnic cleansing to begin with; absolutely and very clearly not, not for those of us who are well informed about the whole situation over there anyway; and meaning back then as well as today. It is US imperialist, capitalist, etc., "gaming" that is going on with regards to Kosovo, as is also the case in Africa and the Middle East, and in South America.

Since when does the US truly care about other govts committing ethnic cleansing? And that's besides the FACT that this is what the US govt is established upon from the start, anyway.

Rebel Farmer March 26th, 2007 5:53 pm

Lobo,

"You missed the point on this one. You are usually more discerning than this."

BTW, thanks for pointing it out.

Rebel Farmer March 26th, 2007 5:53 pm

Lobo,

"You missed the point on this one. You are usually more discerning than this."

You're right I was off on this one.

Lobo Gris

When are the managers of these businesses (and let's go after the boards of directors too for good measure)to be similarly rounded up and imprisoned as accessories to illegal immigration? This is what we do with other "criminal activity' isn't it? Unless we are just targeting a particular racial, ethnic, or class group in which case we have selective prosecution.

ENDGAME IS SINISTER - no doubt about it. Everyone should have the opportunity to prove themselves innocent, if indeed they are.

"We need an immigration policy that balances the right to control our borders with the civil liberties we must preserve in order to remain free."

Well, we do have immigration policies that have been on the books for years. The problem is that they haven't been enforced. Congress just loves to make laws and not bother to enforce them. It makes them all look like heroes to their constituents around voting time, but does nothing to elevate the country or its standing in the world. That of course is a "secondary" consideration to politicians whose only concern is getting re-elected to their cushy job on the Hill.

With the exception of a few politicians who are actually on Capitol Hill to represent the interests of the citizens of this country, the remainder are simply parasites. This needs to change, and "we the people" must make those necessary changes.

Kelmer, you are so right. The hierarchy of oppression in the slaughterhouse is an amazing metaphor for larger issues of specieism, racism, nationalism, and even gender, since most of the immigrants working in those hellholes are male.
Even more ironic and metaphoric is the way the immigrants are separated from their families, mothers and fathers torn from children, just as so many animals are torn from their natural family groups, such as cows from their calves. The amount of suffering we inflict on animals is beyond description or imagination.
It's a real tragedy that, instead of sensitizing people to the suffering of all beings as we see in them the suffering of ourselves, those who speak up for animals are often ridiculed and demeaned, and then attacked because they dare compare the suffering of animals to that of humans. If there was ever an example of how oppression serves to privilege one group over another, its the "ranking" of suffering according to whose is more important.
I think that until we begin to understand the way species, racial, class, gender oppressions are interlinked and how they reinforce each other, we will never really deal with the roots of oppression and violence.

Lobo,

You missed the point on this one. You are usually more discerning than this. No one is saying that illegal immigrants shouldn't be deported. It's the process that the government is using to get to that end that is wrong and illegal. They are trampling on ALL Americans' civil rights when they do these mass round-ups in the dark of night (or day...whatever)without any Constitutional protections for American citizens that get caught in their net. The point that the other posters are trying to make is that this is how it started in Nazi Germany. The people in Germany that were not in the class being rounded up (Jews, Gypsys, etc.) turned a blind eye to what was being done. We can't close our eyes to this injustice here in the U.S. It can lead to nothing but the erosion of everyone's civil rights in the future.

stepfour March 26th, 2007 3:09 pm

"The phenomenon we refer to today as the holocaust began with police roundups of people who were not considered proper citizens. These people, mostly Jewish, were thought to be racially distinct from and inherently disloyal to the German nation, and they were assembled, pending deportation, in prisons and prison camps all over Germany."

The Jewish people were not immigrating en masse from another country without passports or identification. They were citizens of Germany who were suddenly declared undesirables when the Nazis came to power.

What you are talking about would be more akin to the KKK coming to power, declaring people of color who are U.S. citizens undesirables, then rounding them up, holding them in detention, and then deporting them back to Africa.

Illegal aliens here have crossed the border illegally, are not citizens, never have been, and have no legal status in this country. And no amount of apples to oranges comparisons will change that.

Any country that refuses to protect it's borders, that refuses to acknowledge the difference between it's citizens and illegal interlopers is no longer a country.

I wonder how you would react if someone you didn't know moved a tent into your front yard, set it up and then declared that they were going to live there because they didn't have a home or a job where they came from. My bet is that you would protect your border, and would call the police to remove them.

Lobo Gris

"ENDGAME"?(!!!)

I'd like to know who the smartazz was who thought up this excellent rerun of "endlösung" -- he/she deserves a prize!

I haven't heard anything more sinister since the term "Homeland Security" suddenly appeared on cue and full-blown like Minerva from the forehead of Zeus.

Kelmer is exactly right. Anyone who has seen where this nation's meat and dairy products come from and can still eat at all has a strong stomach, and retaining the ability to eat meat just isn't human. When cows ate grass and dozed in the shade, and chickens lived under the house, and pigs were turned loose in the woods to graze I ate meat. Not anymore.

Corporate greed has no legitimate role in providing our food supply. If you can see a truckload of chickens go down the road and have no moral objection, a truckload of humans wouldn't bother you either.

Housten, we have a problem here....

And I didn't think this administration could possibly surprise me at their level of evil and degradation....But here we are. One more thing to be outraged about.

Join the ACLU and visit their site often! Also, e-mail this article to your representatives in the Congress and your State legislature! They are not as informed as you think they are, and this news is not hitting the major media.

Go! Do it now!

We need a criminal statute to protect all of us from those who under the color of law misuse their apparent authority to nullify the
constitutional rights of persons within our borders.

The NYPD at the last Republican National Convention used techniques coming from Hitler's Reich rather than following the masterwork of our Founding Fathers. And
immigration has long been a nesting place for
Gestapo believers.

The Nazis could never have done what they did without the rise of the slaughterhouse industry--which became a model for their practices---and which ironically is where the immigrant workers are being nabbed. The word Holocaust, as Peta failed to note in its recent "Holocaust on your plate" campaign that offended human supremacists for daring to suggest a relationship between human and nonhuman suffering/injustice, ironically can be traced to the practice of sacrificing an animal on the alter of God. So apparently, its ok to use nonhuman suffering as a reference for human suffering, but not vice versa.
Back to the present debate, causing disruptions to slaughterhouse operations is hardly ever a bad thing. It is unfortunate that in an industry with an almost 100 percent turnover rate, immigrants find employment. Gail Eisnitz's Slaughterhouse details the working conditions(being sprayed with stomach acid, fingernails falling off). Unlike Schlosser's juvenile take on the subject--she goes into detail on all aspects of the industry--including the phenomenon of workers taking their frustrations out on the nonhuman victims by gouging eyes, beatings etc.
Sorry for the digression--but when I see "slaughterhouse" other issues come to mind besides immigration raids.

The phenomenon we refer to today as the holocaust began with police roundups of people who were not considered proper citizens. These people, mostly Jewish, were thought to be racially distinct from and inherently disloyal to the German nation, and they were assembled, pending deportation, in prisons and prison camps all over Germany. Homes and businesses would be raided without notice, at any time of the day or night, by national police, who would remove suspect people bodily from wherever they might be found. Most of the abducted people were never heard from again. Most of the witnesses to these daily atrocities uttered not a word of complaint.

You wouldn't think that a history of that sort would repeat itself among civilized people, but here we are. The people we naively refer to as "illegal immigrants" are victims of a genocidal roundup so like the Nazi "final solution" that you can't help wondering when the authorities plan to fire up the death chambers.

At any time of the day or night, in this country, in this very state (Connecticut), a person can be picked up and imprisoned without charge as an illegal immigrant. The government agents who effect such captures are not required to give notice of any kind when they take people as illegals, and the people abducted may be held for long periods without any legal process. So far, the courts have placed few restrictions on these practices, which are without precedent since the incarceration of the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

Nobody knows how many are imprisoned at this moment. Thousands, certainly. Friends, relatives, and employers of the disappeared account for thousands, but many immigrants have nobody here, and there is no registry of reports from these immigrants' home countries. Across the USA, there are "correctional" institutions, many of the them privately operated, that house almost exclusively prisoners whose only crime was that they didn't have proper papers. Some have been held for years. Some are housed in tent cities more primitive even than many of the Nazi concentration camps of 70 years ago.

As far as we know, our government isn't putting these people to death or deporting them in cattle cars, but the operation is conducted so far outside the purview of the law and the public, that discerning citizens can justifiably suspect the worst. It's "homeland security" in action.

The terminology is appropriate. We used to call the authorities responsible for non-citizens "Immigration and Naturalization." The focus, in terms of language, was on letting people in. "Homeland security" (a term that would be promptly rescinded by principled democrats) emphasizes borders and fortifications, and so the focus is on keeping people out. It's all part of the new fascist vocabulary that calls imprisonment "detention" and kidnapping, "rendition." Like the Nazis, our leaders changed the language to accommodate their thirst for conquest.

Why do we persecute immigrants? Didn't we get over bigotry and that sort of thing a generation or so ago? I mean, Tiger Woods. Michael Jordan, for god's sake. Barak Obama. We do it because we don't know better. We are treated by the evil empire of commercial media to a steady stream of lies about us and our entitlements, all to entice us to buy stuff. And so I'm supposed to think that because of where my parents were when I was born, I have a legitimate claim of privileged status. The media don't tell me that the person born elsewhere can't quite see what makes my claim legitimate and his not.

So we don't know better, but the media mischief-makers want to take us to the next step: contempt and, ultimately, persecution. If the media can focus us on an enemy that's not them (and the commercial media are the most dangerous and ruthless enemy humanity has ever faced), it's win/win. Not only do they get points for exposing a threat, they also get an audience before which to promote their sponsors' wares.

And so you won't find out about the holocaust inflicted on Americans labeled "illegal immigrants" from your local newspaper. There is information on the Internet and alternative radio and TV, but not everybody has access to these outlets, and the reports are few and far between. With most local news sources, hundreds of people imprisoned without charge within 20 miles of the city desk is rarely mentioned and never discussed. In our commercial press, if it's not gossip, it's not news.

The condition of a republic becomes very fragile when the press ceases to function, as ours has. If it's true, as the plight of immigrants suggests, that we are being converted to Fascism without knowing it, we may be beyond help. The responsibility that falls on the average citizen in such circumstances is to remind others at every opportunity of the danger to the republic. This kind of griping gets tiresome, and nobody wants to be the bearer of news this bad. And so we have a dirty job that everybody has to do. All the time. Or risk losing everything.