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The Bloody Truth Behind Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric
A week after a white supremacist attacked the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and on the day that three teenagers are being sentenced in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, for brutally beating and killing a Mexican immigrant, it’s time we confront the fact that behind violently anti-immigrant and supremacist rhetoric is a real urge and a real encouragement for actual violence.
On May 30, 2009, a group of armed men and women killed 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in Arivaca, AZ. The vigilantes were Minutemen, members of a “civilian defense corps” that polices the US-Mexico border for undocumented immigrants. When Jason Bush, 34, Shawna Forde, 41, and Albert Gaxiola, 42, allegedly busted down the front door of the Flores home and murdered Raul Junior Flores and his daughter and seriously injured Flores’ wife, the armed gang was supposedly looking for drugs and cash to fund their anti-immigrant organization.
Arizona police allege Shawna Forde was the ringleader. Shawna Forde was the Executive Director of Minuteman American Defense (M.A.D.) and a spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), often touted as a “mainstream” voice opposing immigration. But if Forde was indeed involved, the bloody acts in Arivaca reveal the true hatred and contempt behind anti-immigrant organizations in our country. Many well-meaning, average Americans who have understandable concerns about our economy and how they’re going to support their families have been convinced that anti-immigrant organizations are on their side and feel their pain. But the reality is, organizations like the Minutemen and FAIR are only co-opting our economic insecurity (an insecurity that’s actually shared by immigrants and citizens alike) to mask their real agenda, motivated purely by hatred for those who are different.
It was the same thing in Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler started by talking about how Jews were threatening the German economy and should all be expelled from the country. And then he killed six million.
Are we really so naïve as a nation to think that the anti-immigrant fervor, from Lou Dobbs to the Minutemen, is anything about our economy or our well-being or our way of life? After all, our nation was built by immigrants, our strongest economic times in recent years have been driven by high rates of immigration and even now, our economy actively lures low-wage worker from across the border to get back on firm footing. Do we really think we’d be reacting as negatively if the immigrants coming here had light skin and spoke French?
Jason Bush, one of the other Minutemen charged in the Arizona murder, was charged in another slaying in 1997 in Washington State. He allegedly bragged to a police informant about “killing a Mexican.” The man Bush killed was a 29-year-old homeless man who had been sleeping under a blanket near a parking lot when Bush stabbed him several times with a knife.
Regarding the Arizona murders, the Minutemen American Defense group has placed the following statement on its website:
MAD does not endorse or condone any events that are outside of the normal boundaries of any normal private citizen who is concerned about the current conditions of the opened border condition and we do work totally within the boundaries and with the total cooperation and knowledge of all appropriate Law enforcement agencies in our areas of operation.While revealing how ironic it is that groups like M.A.D. criticize new immigrants for not speaking English, the statement does anything but condemn violence against immigrants. It’s worth noting here that Forde and her gang allegedly entered the Flores home wearing law enforcement attire. Groups like the Minutemen are pretending to uphold laws that they flagrantly violate. Who are the real law breakers? Immigrants who come to the United States without legal permission but every single economic invitation, to work for companies that actively recruit them in order to support their desperate families back home? Or the vigilantes who prowl our southern border with assault rifles and camouflage and raid innocent families’ homes and slaughter 9-year-old children?
“This was a planned home invasion where the plan was to kill all the people inside this trailer so there would be no witnesses,” said Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Arizona. “To just kill a 9-year-old girl because she might be a potential witness to me is just one of the most despicable acts that I have heard of.”
I actually feel badly for Shawna Forde. She was fed a load of crap about how her economic troubles and sense that the 21st century was passing her by were the fault not of something vague like the public education system or American trade policies or Reaganomics but something specific, something dark-skinned, something that fit perfectly into the us-versus-them scary story that readily embraces misplaced blame: immigrants. Never mind that we were all in the same boat, sinking fast, immigrants and citizens alike --- and never mind that shaking her fist at foreigners and patrolling the US-Mexico border was distracting Shawna from taking action that would have brought about real change, like making our economy more democratic, changing tax policy to help working families, easing the burden of health care costs and gas. No, Shawna believed the hate mongerers on CNN and the internet and stuck to her guns. Literally. But if the allegations against her are true, Shawna can really only be blamed for taking to extremes the garbage that so many Americans believe is true, the lies we swallow to make the bigger pill of America’s real, shared problems seemingly dissolve but in truth get stuck in our collective throat as we’re looking the other way.
The alleged acts of Shawna Forde and her gang are inhumane. Our outdated immigration policies are inhumane. We can and must reform our immigration laws to make America work better for all of us, immigrants and citizens alike. That is the only pro-America side of this debate. Everything else must be unmasked for what it is — a façade for an anti-immigrant bloodbath. On which side will you stand?
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13 Comments so far
Show AllRepeal NAFTA and legalize drugs, and this problem disappears, to quote the warden of Shawshank Prison, "like a fart in a windstorm."
Your ideas would improve this problem, but the problem would not be greatly diminished. Throughout the history of the US (and most other nations), when jobs are scarce and social services burdened, many look for an easily recognizable scapegoat to reduce the potential number of job applicants. Just yesterday I learned that Hoover deported 2 million Mexican-Americans, many of whom were US citizens. Local officials would often threaten to burn them out or shoot them (ain't it funny my high school history class forgot to mention this?). Vicente Serrano's recent documentary, A Forgotten Injustice, details this.
Hardly. Migration has always occurred. The hate, and the violence towards migrants, has also always occurred. All over the world, all throughout history.
the real essence of the problem lies with business elites like walter walter mart, chamber of commerce, microsoft and others whose influence - bought and paid for - have encouraged the goverment to look the other way on a wide range of issues that concern us all - immigration being the biggest
without taking sides - for a moment - i think it is awkward to say the least that we have around 20 million or so mexicans walking around the country undocumented
what other country in the world would allow it
don't tell me they are not taking american jobs
don't tell me they haven't contributed to the downward spiral of earnings
that there are citizens who are forced into doing things themselves is not surprising
that those citizens do stupid things is predictable
that they break into houses, killing occupants in order to steal drugs to fund their operation is a whole other thing
i guess they figure it worked so well for ollie the fascist north during iran contra that they decided to try it
once again the citizens are juxtaposed against their own goverment
how the fuck did our goverment become so anti-citizen
they are aginst us on wages, health care, the wars, minimum wages, gay rights, equal rights and on and on
the immigration question is so out of hand i think it is to the point of being beyond any resolution
i blame it all on the bought and paid for government
of course, as things continue to spiral downward and out of control, the same americans - whose ancestors obviously immigrated from somewhere - will be fighting the current group of immigrants for jobs they once denounced as being beneath their american arrogance:
- cleaning bathrooms
- hauling trash to dumpsters
- hard manual labor (this one could fill pages)
- hand picking fruits/veggies
-cleaning horse stalls
and on and on. m.a.d., while you are busy with your self-righteousness, think about your future and the fight you'll soon be having with these immigrants. killing innocent people should be the last thing on your infantile minds.
Bashing immigrants has a long and dubious history in the USA. That the Minutemen have appropriated a name from history that unfortunately has no copyright holder who can sue the scum for bringing it into disrepute.
There is a HUGE economic inequality in Mexico and many Latin American countries - often along racial lines. Most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small minority. THAT is the real problem that forces desperate people to try and 'escape' one misery and run towards another up north. In countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia where there are some attempts to address this basic problem of economic inequality, there is a huge backlash from those disproportionately enjoying the benefits, often actively supported by the U.S., calling their leaders as "dictator", "populist" and so on.
Mexico is perhaps the worst when it comes to this wealth gap, even when its economy was expanding. And to think phonies like Vicente Fox going around, touting the benefits of NAFTA and making claims about the "strength" of the Mexican economy...!
History has actually taught us that OPEN borders work, and closed borders don't.
The problems we are experiencing now were created by us when we started closing the borders after WWII. Until then, Mexicans would come north, work and return home. Likewise, it was easy for Americans to go south or north to work, and to return home when they wanted.
Immigrants have always been the lifeblood of the United States. Every period of real growth in the past coincided with waves of immigrants. And yes, hatred of each wave by the ones who came before has been endemic, thought that doesn't make it right or wise.
I believe loosening restrictions, enforcing the minimum wage laws and re-industrializing the country are far more constructive than the ever tighter restrictions and regulations that also inhibit citizens from free movement and allow police to break down doors on the thinnest of suspicions.
Sioux Rose
This is like open season for sociopaths! This "Shawna and her gang" remind me of the two men who became the subject of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood." These frenzied persons with no inner lives of their own are seeking targets for their angst and emptiness. It's disgusting that jingoism combined with racism is granting them a thin veneer over the truer action of premeditated murder.
Most of us in this forum recognize the degree to which NAFTA has made life more difficult for subsistence farmers south of the border. Most of us know that some U.S. companies rely on this cheap labor. There are many collaborators and the pain to lower income families of all ethnicities is real; but there is NO excuse for letting loose these Clockwork Orange style thugs so they can kill with relative impunity. This war-supporting, gun-loving, violence-worshiping nation has possibly already gone off the deep end.
Yes, yet I hear on a regular basis that some city near me is losing another police officer or city worker to budget cuts. The forces who are supposed to bolster the safety of regular citizens has been severely decreased, and I wonder if this is somehow part of the plan.
We have lawlessness at the highest levels of government that goes unpunished. We can't even decide if torture and extraordinary rendition are "really" crimes. No wonder Shawna and Co. think it's a good idea to try out their version of justice. Everybody else seems to be getting away with something.
But of course the people who suffer most are not the employers who capitalize on the vulnerability of immigrants, nor those whose policies (or lack thereof) make that vulnerablity possible.
In this case as usual it's some relatively innocent working stiff trying to take care of his family.
I do have to say that I don't care for some of this author's comments, like a comparison to Nazi Germany.
Or that the only reason to object to illegal immigration is because we're a bunch of racists. Yes it is, too, about our economy, and I don't care what color the people are that are being used to lower the wages and standard of living of the middle class to benefit the elites.
It is hard to take die hard liberals who don't think things through. Whatever the cause, whatever is "politically correct," they fall right in line to what is deemed correct.
I am not against immigrants, particularly those that come from South of the Border. Our economy could not work without them. For example, the meat packing industry in this country would not exist without foreign labor.
By the same token, unchecked immigration is a real problem in this country. I am against illegal immigration because it decreases American wages, overtaxes our already overtaxed social services, and increases crime.
The real solution to this problem is an international minimum wage, with workers rights and benefits for all. Most people would like to stay in their own countries, and they would do so if they could make a living.
Instead of taxing our own social system beyond its means, we should look to providing a living wage for all workers-wherever they live. "Workers of the world unite."
It is hard to take people who rant about "politically correct", who don't think things through.
If Mexico had a social welfare system, they would not be coming across the border. There is no welfare system in Mexico like there is in the US.