There's No Place Like Home

My most profound understanding of life is the result of my experience in Vietnam. In that experience, I learned that war takes place in someone's home place, that the presence of armies, weapons and violence is an ever-present fact of daily existence which itself is tenuous and at the whim of others. The corollary to that lesson was that my home was not a place where I would be at risk of war's systemic and pervasive violence.

Although I no longer live there, Arizona is part of home for me. I know many fine people who live in Arizona. So when I see armed gangs shooting it out with police in Pinal County, killing ranchers in Cochise County and invading Tucson homes I feel a definite connection. A place I know well, where I have friends is now a place where residents can feel safe from violence. That is a real loss and a failure of elected officials to address a serious problem.

My last visit to southern Arizona was 2004 when I accompanied a friend on a birding expedition from Madera Canyon south of Tucson to the Chircahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona. On that trip we saw the abandoned immigrant camps, littered with debris(*), in the national forests. Seeing how closely immigration routes came to homes helped me understand how uneasy residents may feel. I saw, too, the watchtowers and aerial surveillance cameras. I passed through a Border Patrol check point. (We two middle aged white males were waived through with our verbal assurances of legality.) My strongest reaction was anger at the destruction to the land. I could understand how a family with longstanding ties to this place would be distressed that it was no longer safe.

Six years later the situation is far worse,with drug cartels violently challenging the national government for control of large swaths of the economy and territory. Violence spilling over the border is enough to convince people that any action is better than none, especially one that offers protection from Them. The Arizona Legislature at its most rational has always had a hard core element of reactionary craziness. In troubled times, their ideas will appeal to the somewhat more "moderate" members who basically share the reactionaries' core beliefs if not usually their means. The new legislation does not surprise at all.

Not surprising also is that it will have no effect. If America were truly serious about ending violence on the border and stemming the flood of economic refugees from Mexico, we would:

• End the drug war and focus drug policy on education, treatment and remediation. Eliminate the profit and regulate the trade.
  

• Change economic policies that eliminate opportunities for Latinos to live and prosper in their home countries.

• Recognize that citizens of other nations are part of US economy by providing them with visas that allow them to work here and return to their homes without fear that they will be barred from future entry.
  

As always, the devil will be in the details but that's the direction I would go if I were in charge. These days, I wonder how many Americans would follow me. Some but not enough, I bet.


(*) Not unlike the footprint of our night defensive perimeters in Vietnam, I might add.

update: Randall Amster writes knowledgeably about this issue from Arizona at Truthout.

Border Wars

Frontiers are difficult places. They are the dividing line between Them and Us. Frontiers often test the limits of any authority attempting to control what passes across that line. The US-Mexico border is a frontier where US authority faces its severest tests.

Culturally, the southwest never fully surrendered its Mexican history and heritage which has re-asserted itself in many parts of the US that were carved out of northern Mexico in 1848. Latino demographics indicate that Hispanic culture and ideas will shape the American southwest in decades to come. Nothing the anti-immigrant, US nativists can do will change that. The numbers are there.

A cultural resurgence will be a hollow achievement,though, if the US and Mexico cannot control the violence along their shared border. Weak public institutions and endemic corruption in Mexico combined with a strong US demand for intoxicating drugs and US prohibition of same has spawned waves of violence along the border. Cuidad Jaurez has long been known for its high murder rate; more recently the city has endured a wave of violence associated with the drug trade. El Paso, Texas gets the collateral damage, as do the occasional others.

If he United States is truly concerned about weak, corrupt governments that allow organizations to flourish who are likely to perpetrate violence against American citizens, then a good place to begin would be Mexico rather than Afghanistan and Iraq. Not military occupation, to be sure, but rather working with Mexican government and NGO’s to identify indigenous solutions that strengthen public institutions and provide alternatives to violence.

Of course, the job is not limited to the other side of the border. The US drug war is yet another war that merely exacerbates the problem it is supposed to eliminate. Drug prohibition, like its 1920’s antecedent, simply forces the trade outside of the law, where corruption and violence flourish. Ending drug prohibition would remove one major source of income and power from criminal gangs that know how to seize the advantage in that environment.

Pigs will fly before this nation rethinks the drug war. Depending on how you count, the Drug War is in its 26th or 39th year. The former dates back to Nancy Reagan in 1984, the latter to Richard Nixon in 1971. The Drug War’s history reaches back to the 1930’s. At 26 year, the Drug War is still America's longest, a failure that lumbers on.

Politicians' Games

Today's About Face continued last week's discussion of immigration and why we, as veterans think it important to make a statement about the violence and hostility that characterizes much of our national discussion about immigration. You may recall that last week Dennis spoke out against politicians who use racial hatred to divide Americans. We had some interesting and sometimes disturbing responses that tell me not all our listeners heard what we said about hate.

John Henry said this in response.

First, let Dennis, Mark and John wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. A wonderful Happy Holiday for those not into the Christian aspect of the holiday. We love you all and wish you the best. Salude, Amor Y Paz.

Last week Dennis, Mark and I jumped into the immigration theme that is the top topic across this country. We received mixed emotions and comments from the listening audience. We plan to continue this debate this week, 22 December.
We are not discussing who is undocumented or who is documented. Who is coming across the border is not a major concern of ours. It is the hatred that is being generated and the profiling that is being used against a race of people in the United States. The police are beginning to use profiling in stopping people of Hispanic origin just as they did with the Middle Eastern after 9/11 and they did with the blacks. This practice is generating hate and violence against the Hispanic people. I could hear that sentiment in some of the listeners voices. So I am going to rant a little about this subject today!

Recently a young undocumented Mexican crossing the border gave up his chances for freedom when he came across a mother and son who had encountered an accident. The mother eventually died from the accident, in the arms of an immigrant, but the son survived thanks to the Mexican who came into our country illegally. Yet, in the paper, people here wanted him arrested, incarcerated , and handed the worst of punishments because he was Mexican. This is an excellent example of inhumanity. There seems to be no compassion in our hearts for our neighbors who are trying to find a better opportunity for their families. An opportunity that they seek in our rich country. Just as we did to the blacks, we are trying to generate hate and bigotry against our Hispanic neighbors. This is inhumane!

One of our listeners stated we should not be going after the undocumented but rather going after the government of Mexico, demanding they raise the standard of living and create better paying jobs for their citizens. She suggested that the United States and other wealthy countries should work together with Mexico and other improvised countries to help curtail the government corruption and bring about better paying jobs and fair labor practices. I tend to agree but I do not see that happening in the near future. I think it would be best addressed by the United Nations because I cannot see our government cooperating with others on this problem. Canada is accepting many of the fleeing immigrants from our country and giving them a living allowance plus housing for up to one year or until they get a job. Our country is targeting the immigrant and spewing hate and bigotry. That is inhumane!

One caller asked us to give one example of how the vigilantes are spreading hate and violence while protecting the border. I googled that subject and came up with examples of pistol whipping, stripping and beating, unlawful detention, name calling and many more. I did not find any examples of compassion. That is inhumane!
I also found evidence of the vigilantes being linked to the White Supremacist movement in the United States. That is not hard to find. It is hard to understand how people can be duped by fear and bigotry, by a few, into taking violent action against another race of people after we have spent decades of trying to improve our bigoted feelings of oppression and hate against the black race. What is wrong with us? Do we ever learn from our past mistakes? That is inhumane!

I know there are many who will not agree with me on this issue. We, the United States, are asking these undocumented to join the military and place their lives on line for a country who wishes to continue to spew hate and oppression against them. The first Hispanic who lost his life in Iraq was recruited off the streets of Mexico. Yet, recently, we sent an undocumented high school student, member of JROTC and an ambition to join the service, to his death in a hospital in Mexico because it might cost the wonderful citizens of this country a few dollars to help him. That my friends, is a case of heartlessness. They can die in a war for us but cannot get a break to improve their education, or get a chance to better their lives, or complete an honest day of work in our wealthy country without being subjected to hate and bigotry. That is inhumane! Has our country grown beyond compassion, caring, hope, and helping others in need? I hope not!

My response:

Listen up, people. This discussion is about fearmongering and deception. It’s not about stolen jobs, falling wages, changing culture or sacred property rights. Those issues only come up if you take your eye off the ball: the politicians’ Terror War against the American people. Last week Dennis expressed his dismay about politicians using hatred to turn people against one another. Period. He did not advocate or endorse any immigration policy. He only asked that violence and hatred against other human beings cease. As a combat veteran, he knows where that leads.

What Dennis spoke about is how the politicians terrorizing Americans to prevent US from discovering and acting in our common interest. It’s the politicians’ age-old game of divide and rule. Much of our so-called immigration debate is nothing more than this year’s version of the distortions that led this country to invade Iraq and pursue a disastrous military occupation. After five years of failed war, countless deaths and vast expenditures, the politicians needed a new distraction, something to divert Americans’ attention from their leaders’ complete failure as stewards of the public interest.

Immigrants are this season’s Beast, joining gays, militants, abortionists and that all-time favorite, the terrorist with his ticking time bomb. Immigrants are even better than terrorists for inciting fear. Immigrants, with and without legal documents, are everywhere in this country, visible to all the Americans who’ve seen good jobs move overseas and worry about their future, who see America at risk from the world. The Terrorists have only attacked a few times, overseas and not Americans, unless you count Iraqis in their homeland fighting foreign occupiers. But desperate Mexicans and other inhabitants of the Americas, seeking to escape dire circumstances in their homelands and earn a living where opportunity exists, are a constant reminder of the a dangerous world and the need for the Strong Daddy Protector. The swaggering figure in a flight suit who will somehow keep us all safe.

The politicians are only too happy to oblige our fears. They get votes and support for bigger budgets from Americans who are perpetually scared and uncertain. Our political leaders avoid the hard work of crafting real policy solutions to address difficult economic and social challenges. Divide and bamboozle works at any level, from George W. Bush and his sock puppets all the way down to the Joe Arpaio’s of this nation. Everybody and his dog has an opinion about immigrants and immigration, and far too much of that opinion is overtly and directly hostile to other human beings. Hatred is the evil spawn of our fear.

I grew up in the south during Jim Crow. I saw the hatred and violence. Later in life I saw learned how the capitalists, the banks and the white elites used racial division to keep blacks and poor whites from recognizing their common economic interests. Now we have a new underclass who are denied human rights and physically attacked so that the natural born native so-called Americans (who by the way, are not really native to this land) can somehow think they will be on the winning side of the increasing polarization of wealth created by economic and social policies that favor the few.

Politicians barking at immigrants will keep Americans from seeing their own economic peril until it’s too late. By then we’ll all have few good options, regardless of our legal status.

A permanent underclass is good only for the few who aren’t in danger of falling into it; nor is a permanent underclass good for the long term health of any society. Nor is increasing concentration of wealth. An economic system that creates a few winners and many more losers is inherently unstable, whether it be in a nation or the world. Karl Marx was right about that.

Immigration and economic relations among nations are national and international problems that requires effort, thought and goodwill from many national and international stakeholders. Exclusion, discrimination, hatred and violence are not even in the realm of solutions to economic displacement and its consequences. If you think undocumented immigration is a problem–and it is a significant economic and social challenge to America’s open society–then insist that Congress and the president do their job and create the required national and international solutions. Local laws, ordinances and restrictions aimed at any group are tragically beside the point and only serve to divide communities that should be seeking common interest.

But it all works for the politicians. They get elected. Their corporate buddies get rich and suppport the politicians , the rest of us get screwed. And some people become so scared that they must attack their fellow humans. That’s as foolish, pointless and just plain wrong as invading Iraq.

Callers today were very supportive. Maybe everybody else was already tuned out and we were preaching to the choir. Even so, I'm proud we took a stand in support of human dignity and brother and siserhood.

More and more I think of myself as a citizen of the world entitled to all of the human rights so eloquently declared by Thomas Paine in 1774 and adopted by the United Nations two centuries later. Nothing more. I also know that the exercise of those rights is only proper if I recognize the same rights in all others. The America that I love is that kind of nation.

Convenient Targets

This past Saturday on About Face, my co-host, Dennis, ranted about the demonization of illegal immigrants by politicians. Immigration is not exactly a veterans’ issue but we don’t strictly our discussions to those issues. Dennis’ point was that politicians are attacking immigrants to further their own careers and organizational budgets. Nothing new here; demonizing others is a longstanding tactic that often works. It plays to our basic fear and insecurity. In this case, we are made to think that our jobs and culture is at risk and that only (fill in politician’s name here) can protect us. Immigration is a big issue in Arizona since most illegal immigrants pass through Arizona at some point in their journey. Needless to say, the discussion turned lively with callers challenging Dennis’ perspective, asserting that the United States must protect its borders, economy and culture from a Mexican onslaught.

The responses largely missed Dennis’ point–dehumanization and the cynical use of the issue by politicians. Clearly, the growth of large undocumented underclass is bad for America. This underclass is largely unprotected, has few alternatives and is willing to work for less than native born Americans, much like the Irish, Italian and Chinese who came to the United States in the 19th Century. Like their immigrant predecessors, Mexicans and other Latin Americans come to the United States in a desperate attempt to support themselves and their families. They cannot do so in their home countries and resort to mankind’s oldest remedy: move on to greater opportunity even at the cost of personal hardship. As a nation of immigrants, America should have learned by now that the long term result of immigration is a stronger, more diverse and vibrant nation. Apparently not, since the populace responds so eagerly to the politicians who decry immigration and demonize the immigrants.

My take on the whole thing is that demonizing immigrants attacks the symptoms rather than the cause, which is a world economic system that favors corporations over people, that favors profit over social progress. In the process, people are turned away their traditional means of living and left to sink or swim as best they can. And swim they do, all the way to the nearest opportunity, which for Mexicans is the United States. Demonizing immigrants conveniently ignores the real perpetrators, corporations seeking to find the lowest costs and exploiters who take advantage of a group with few legal rights and a precarious legal status. Demonizing immigrants strips them of their humanity, thereby making them targets for our hatred and fear and deflecting attention from the real culprits.

Where this issue resonates with me is in the similarity to the dehumanization necessary to attack and kill others that is the sine qua non of military culture. Killing others is wrong, we all know that. Yet our country often asks its soldiers to do just that. To do so, we have to think of the adversary as something other than human–a fucking gook or raghead, or wetback--a threat to be eliminated. Once we make that transition, we can kill. It’s that simple. Killing is wrong, so we just alter our perspective to remove our targets’ humanity and open up our big guns on them. The bullets can be real, they can be public policy or just individual animosity. Whatever their nature they are aimed at the weakest among us and usually fired by the least advantaged and most fearful of us.

As long as Mexicans cannot support themselves and their families in their home country, they will come north. It’s as inevitable as gravity. That’s why an effective policy must deal with the economics that prevent Mexicans from earning a living in Mexico. And the issue is not just limited to Mexico which is just one society displaced by the global economy. Wherever people are dispossessed, they will try and move toward opportunity. Americans should know that. The concept is part of our national myth but apparently, it only applies to white-skinned people.

Throughout most of human history, migration has been the key to opportunity. The rise of the modern nation-state eliminated that opportunity by drawing lines and creating borders to prevent migration. If you look at the Earth from outer space, however, you don’t see any lines, only a single planet in the vastness of space. We are, in fact, a single population: the human race. We spent the past few centuries ignoring that fact. In the 21st century we ignore that fact at our peril.


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Not Dead Yet. Not Doing So Well, Either

The collapse of the immigration reform bill in Congress tells me that government failure in America may not be limited to the Executive. All these years the nation and the world has marveled at the inability of the World’s Only Superpower under CheneyBush to seemingly get ANYTHING right: 9-11, Iraq, Katrina, IRAQ!. Now comes Congress, unable to agree on how to deal with the pressing national and international problem of immigration. This setback follows the even more disappointing Congressional cave-in on funding the war. Congress’ great function is debate, compromise and consensus. Congress is also responsible for declaring war. These tasks are not always easy; our history includes times of failure and disappointment. The nation even went to war when Congress, along with the Executive failed to resolve a pressing national issue. Immigration may not be a matter of war (although it looks much like war along the border) but it is an important issue with great consequences for millions of people.

So the Senate’s failure to invoke cloture means that legislators must continue to work on the issues in other venues to craft the legislation needed to create a workable immigration policy. The issue is not going away. I was pleased to see that Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, formerly hard-core “no amnesty” vote, joined with Ted Kennedy to offer the compromise proposal. I would not have expected that from him and even stopped by his office to thank him. (He wasn’t in; a well-scrubbed Young Republican took my message.) I expect the Senate to continue the debate. The matter was only tabled. Like the Executive, however, Congress also appears capable of failure. Congress failed its first test on the war. Losing an opportunity for meaningful immigration reform would be tragic. If the US government cannot address an important social and economic issue, what the fuck good is it?

My own humble plan for immigration reform is simple. Let labor flow to where it is needed at a fair and reasonable wage that affords the opportunity to live in dignity. Ensure that anyone who works in this country has the full protection of American legal rights. Remember, one of our founding documents declares that “all men are created equal”. I would secure America’s borders by investing in Mexico. Not just money but ideas and reform. CheneyBush rants about “fighting over there, not here” and about “building democracy” as a way to lessen threats. Yet on America’s ACTUAL BORDER is a failed state, a state with the forms of democracy but a long tradition of corruption and political control, a society that cannot support it’s population, which then seeks opportunity where it does exist, in the US. It’s like water flowing downhill. Neither the United States nor Mexico can really afford to ignore what is happening.

US intervention in Mexico is always fraught with danger and great suspicion in that nation, with good reason given our shared history . But the ideas of democracy and economic justice do not belong to the US alone. They flow from universal principles, many of which are evident in Mexico’s own history. They did have a revolution in the early decades of the 20th century but it ossified into the cumbersome oligopoly of modern times. I would like to think that the Mexicans will change their own country in the interests of all rather than the few and the corporations. The United States should use its influence to promote regional cooperation and internal reform in Mexico (and throughout Central America). This is our neighborhood. What happens here affects us as much as anything in the Middle East. Economic and social reform are part of any long-term solution. Under the current administration in both countries, fine words about reform and opportunity are about all we are likely to get–nothing real or meaningful. Neither is likely to do anything that harms the profitable (for some) status quo.

I doubt if many of Jon Kyl’s former allies recognize the value of economic justice in addressing immigration issues. For them, the world is simple and those who fail to comply will be punished. They look at America’s southern border as something immutable that must be recognized by all. I recognize another border as well: pre-1848 Mexico, a cultural border that allowed seasonal migration in Mexico’s former lands during much almost eight score years since the US annexed them. I also recognize America as a haven, a place of opportunity and hope, a nation of immigrants. In many respects, our willingness to share our good fortune with others is a step toward balancing the injustices committed by the European occupation of North America.

The United States is not responsible for Mexico’s problems but we are affected by them. Moreover, as the “indispensable nation”, we have resources and influence that can indeed contribute to solutions. If only Congress can see far enough to find those solutions.