The United States was founded by immigrants. Throughout our history as a nation we have been renewed by successive waves of people of many different cultures an ethnicities coming to our shores. All have contributed to building our nation into what it is today. New Immigrant groups usually do work that those already here will not. Unfortunately our country has not been that welcoming to each new immigrant group, often caricaturing the immigrants as lazy, stereotyping them as morally flawed or dangerous, making laws that discriminate against them, and utilizing them as slave labor.
There are many reasons why immigrants have come to this country. Some have come willingly, others forcibly. Some came here seeking opportunity; others were brought here in slavery, and yet others came to avoid economic hardship, political turmoil, religious persecution, political repression, or cultural and ethnic oppression. Over the centuries immigrants have come, wishing to build a better life for themselves and their children and have enriched this nation in the process. Whether it was the English, Dutch and who laid the foundations for the Colonies; or the Germans who built farms, small business, and industries; or the Irish and Chinese who built the railroads; or the Africans who built the agricultural might of our nation; or the Italians who did the difficult jobs building the infrastructure of our cities; or the many other immigrant groups who have come here over the last three centuries – all helped build this nation and expand its potential. The only people living here who are not immigrants are the Indigenous People of the Americas, although many of them were turned into migrants in their own lands. Nonetheless, the values and traditions of Native Americans have given us our uniquely North American notion of freedom and our sense of government; providing us with the basis for our Constitution from their Great Law of Peace. Each of these groups of people make our nation stronger. We are a melting pot and our diversity increases our cultural wealth, expands our creative potential, and brings new knowledge, new ways of thinking, and new ways of living to our society. All of this makes us stronger, not weaker. This diversity has made us into what we are today.
On the other hand, there are those who dislike diversity and wish to preserve some vision of a way of life they imagine from the past. They claim that immigrants threaten their culture, and that they need to mobilize to preserve their “Traditional Values” – violently if necessary. The names of their movements change over the years, but their values remain the same. Which values are they defending? What are these “Traditional Values?” Just whose are they? These groups – such as the supporters of the Confederacy, the old KKK, the modern Conservatives, the Tea Partiers, and the Militia Movement support the values of income inequality, oppose civil and equal rights, and are for State’s Rights, in opposition to any federal governmental regulations which get in the way of their bigotry, racism, classism, and single minded radical religious viewpoints (which they wish to impose on everyone else - contrary to our freedom of and from religion)! Are these the values of Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale, Sitting Bull, Susan B. Anthony, Black Elk, Doc Holliday, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Harvey Milk, and Gloria Steinem – or those of Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, John D. Rockefeller, Phyllis Schlafly, Ivan Boesky, Jerry Falwell, and David Duke?
It is clear – now more than ever - that the Conservatives, the Tea Partiers, and the Militia Movement are showing their true colors – they have all embraced the political positions of the Confederacy and the old KKK. This is unacceptable in modern America! We need to point out the basis for their beliefs and resist their attempts to turn the clock back on progress.
The Immigration law enacted in Arizona is a case in point and it is Un - American. I do not use this term lightly. Not only does it fly in the face of our traditions of immigration and progress towards equal and civil rights, but it supports a form of legalized racial profiling. This is tantamount to legalizing racism and discrimination. Asking people to provide their “Papers Please” – based upon their ethnicity is a throwback to one of the darkest periods in human history and has no role in a free, democratic, just, fair, 21st Century United States. We do need comprehensive immigration reform, but destroying the civil rights of whole groups of people – most of whom are here legally – is not a way to do it that is consistent with American values. Many of the very people who will be negatively impacted by the new Arizona immigration law – and any other such laws enacted in the South West are American citizens. A large number of these Latino and Latina citizens are descended from families that have lived here for centuries.
It is an abomination that the new immigrants, who come here to avoid extreme poverty and seek opportunity, are asked to do work that others here won’t, are subject to slave wage labor conditions and pay, and are stereotyped and oppressed by the sanctimonious people who benefit from their labor. It is unthinkable to anyone who values the ideals of this country to suggest that computer chips should be put into any immigrants (as Iowan Congressional candidate Pat Bertroch suggested) or that naturally born citizens of this country should be deported if their parents happen to be here illegally (as California Congressman Duncan Hunter suggests). How could we treat anyone like that regardless of their ethnicity or point of family origin? If we don’t recognize the citizenship of people born in this country where do we drawn the line on who is a citizen? Furthermore, if our new immigrants earn wages, they pay taxes, but get no representation and do not receive any of the benefits from paying these taxes. This is nothing less than modern slavery and racism. The United States fought a Civil War to make a CLEAR STATEMENT that these values ARE NOT American values.
It is sad for the Mexicans that they just happened to be born on the 'wrong side of the tracks' (i.e. border) and that because of their severe poverty, they feel that they have to come here to provide for their families. What gets lost in all the rhetoric is the fact that these immigrants are real human beings, not abstractions, and that they are victimized by the people who bring them across the border, the people who profit from their slave labor, the injustice system that oppresses them, and the heartless people who demonize them.
This new law is clearly racist. The Conservatives, Republican and Tea Parties, and Militia Movement all support this legislation. Why don't these Conservatives want to crack down on the slave wage labor profiteers who make their money off the backs of these poor people coming from Mexico? Instead they would rather enact discrimination into law! Conservatives are always first to take the rights away from minorities and prosecute the least among us, but never wish to go after the greedy legions of Mammon! Can't we do just a little better than this - after all, we are the greatest, richest, mightiest country in the world - or are we just a nation of bigots and slave-mongers?
We need to reclaim the symbols, ideals, traditions, and values back from the Conservatives. We must no longer put up with their perversion of these icons of the United States for their own ends of greed, bigotry, and class warfare through their twisting history and promulgation of outright lies designed to confuse, divide, and control our people.
We need a new Civil Rights movement in this country to reclaim our culture and history back from the forces of fear, hate, intolerance, and bigotry; resist the rise of the Tea Party, and oppose the values it espouses that are derived from a long discredited vision of who and what we are. We must not go back to our sad past of bigotry and discrimination; we must advance forward in the light of freedom, tolerance, and human rights. We need a new Civil Rights movement to reclaim American values so that we can stand up, hold our heads high, and say when asked the question, “whose way of life is going to prevail – the regressive one, or ours?” – By proudly responding, “Ours, the progressive one, OURS!”
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