North Korea, the Marxist/Stalinist dictatorship? Someone wants us to be more like them? Can't be a right-winger saying that, can it?
Oh yes, they can be just that illogical.
You'll remember Ray Stevens as the author of 70s comedy songs such as Gitarzan and The Streak, the humour of which owed as much to their obviously sweetened laugh and applause tracks as to their lyrics.
Well, he's back, and weighing in caustically on the immigration question, with this song, "Come to the USA" (video below the fold).
In it, he wears a festive sombrero, and portrays himself as a Mexican illegal immigrant, coming to America to pick up all kinds of "free stuff" such as "welfare, education," health care, and other goodies.
The funny thing, though, is how much of the song is devoted to comparisons with countries such as Iran and North Korea. In these countries, he notes approvingly, the police state apparatus is so well-developed that they'll throw you in jail and "you might never be heard from agin."
So... we should be more like the Marxist police state of North Korea, then?
Immigrant bashing--it's long enough after Hitler did it, right? Hilarity ensues, as Ray Stevens, author of "Ahab the A rab" (hat tip to our posters, below), weighs in with this rather startling love letter to Kim Jong Il's North Korea, and Ahmadinejad's Iran:
After all, he says, if you attempted to enter THOSE countries illegally, you'd be in for it! Because of their strict police controls, which make them a brutal dictatorship that we oppose! So that's why America is wrong, because we're not enough like those countries! Huh?? Wh...wha...
Want to combat the evils of Communism and Fascism? Then we need a police state! Post-haste! And concentration camps!
Shooting fish in a barrel for the kiddie prize? You judge, but a friend of mine sent me the video*, and I just had to ask: how on earth is it that so many on the right can say "Obama is evil! Because he's a Marxist! And has a dictatorship planned!", and then bemoan the fact that we're not ENOUGH like the Marxist dictatorship of North Korea?
And for God's sake: they'll decry the social welfare (that is, the "goodies") that socialist countries bestow as evil, but they'll not only keep the dictatorship and police state repression stuff (what I'll go out on a limb and describe as "the bad stuff"), but want us to do MORE of it? So much so that they'll actually write a song griping about our lack of will to use police state tactics such as draconian, more threatening punishments for illegals?
*(I want to point out that the friend who sent me this is a hell of a person. She's a soldier, who has been tremendously brave, not least by putting her Constitutional money where her mouth is and allowing me to blather my left-wing social democrat bilge all over her Facebook page. I do NOT intend this to be a sneer at her for sending me this video. But damn it all--as much as I know I piss her off too, I'm sure, I CAN'T get over some of the stuff she posts sometimes. I want to take the high road with her, so I hope I do, and I hope I am with this diary.)
And how on earth is it that so many on the right can say "Obama is evil! Because he's a Fascist! And he has a dictatorship planned!", and then claim that those on the left are "whining" when they object to concentration camps for illegal immigrants, as one poster does here? In an interesting twist of logic, he says that--well, let's just reproduce his whole post here:
Well...let's look at it in the historical terms that this titling implies. In "concentration camp" era Germany, the Nazis were in power. The Nazis were national socialists by name and fascist in practice, and they HATED communists. And the Nazis were essentially the biggest threat to communists. So the allied forces defeated Germany and her allies, which left the communists where? I would say whining about "concentration camps" for illegal aliens when in fact these are detainment centers, which are completely rational when considering that the number of offenders often makes regular jails impractical. Incidentally, communism will be met by fascism again. This is how the pendulum works. If you don't want a resurgence of fascism and REAL concentration camps, quit bowing to the communists. Throw them out of our governments, and that especially includes the US. We've had enough after 50yrs of their mentally challenged ineptitude.
Posted by: Sharky at June 12, 2009 04:00 PM
Now, I don't want to jump to any false conclusions about what this person is saying. This is where you, my readers, come in. Could you please read the above quoted passage and tell me: did "Sharky," or did "Sharky" not, really, truly just advise combating fascism and communism BY ALLOWING CONCENTRATION CAMPS?? Perhaps his sentence structure is throwing me, but it sounds as if s/he's saying that "the communists...[have been left] whining about 'concentration camps' for illegal aliens..." So, in other words, the Communists, in this case, would be AGAINST concentration camps?
I must not be reading correctly. Whew.
Well, again, that's shooting fish in a barrel. And that's just one poster. But search for "Mexico" and "Concentration Camps," or any similar terms, and don't worry, you'll find many, many right-wingers lambasting Obama as a "Marxist" or a "Fascist" with one breath, and hyperventilating before they take the breath that advocates concentration camps (the favorite devices of both Stalin and Hitler) with the next line of text. Look, for example, at the comments on this video. The right-wing commenters make their feelings as to concentration camps quite clear, and this is far from the only site I've found saying such things.
This is all excused by the claim that illegal immigrants are raking in nothing but free stuff, paid for by the hard-working American taxpayer. Yet the Economist suggested, in the issue of the week of May 14, 2010, that we enact a guest-worker program, that would allow illegal immigrants to enter to work, for a limited time. Other countries allow just such a program. This would accomplish many things, including the following:
- Don't like the fact that immigrants come here in droves to work, without paying taxes to pay for the services they use? Well, voila: here's a Christmas gift of several billion extra dollars a year in taxes that we're not currently raking in.
- Don't like the fact that illegality allows criminality, potentially serious criminality, along with the unchecked passage of hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers each year? Well, voila: most of those hundreds of thousands, if we allow it, could come in through the legal channels, with legal paperwork, if they don't wish to settle permanently; then another ten or twenty thousand a year, say, who want to settle here permanently; and they'd all come in through the front door. The only criminal ones, then, who'd come in the BACK door, smuggled in in vans with secret compartments or across a desert or the river, would be the criminal ones, who couldn't pass the background checks affirming they'd no criminal record. These, then, would be that much easier to winnow out. Is it easier to find a needle in a haystack? Or several needles, on a table, among only twenty or thirty pieces of straw?
A guest-worker program, allowing virtually unlimited numbers FOR THE SHORTER TERM, NOT PERMANENTLY, would provide these benefits to us and to those who are in poverty, and need to come here for work, and who've never committed a crime and don't want to BECOME criminal by crossing the border for work. It sure sounds better than having 12 million people here who DON'T pay taxes.
Is it better to have concentration camps or forced repatriation? I owe a hat tip to a Kossack for this, whoever posted about this earlier, but I'm afraid I've forgotten who it was; but we already tried forced repatriation, and it was a farce, not to say a tragedy, for many.
In the article "Mexican Repatriation and the Possibility for a Federal Cause of Action: A Comparative Analysis on Reparations," by Eric L. Ray
(The University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, Vol. 37, No. 1 [Fall, 2005], pp. 171-196, Published by: Joe Christensen, Inc.), the author says that, following a period in the 1910s and the 1920s, when Mexican immigration was allowed or encouraged for mining, farming, and other manual labour (for which Mexicans were prized due to their willingness to work for low wages), something changed. Especially with the Great Depression, anti-immigrant feelings began to surface. "...[R]egardless of their reputation as 'hardworking' and 'law-abiding' people, they were always considered second-class citizens." Between 500,000 and 2 million Mexicans, most of whom were actually American citizens or legal residents, were forcibly "repatriated" to Mexico, between 1929 and 1944. The reason as many as 60% of those "repatriated" were here legally (and this, like so many other aspects of this story, should remind you of present-day issues surrounding immigration) was that the children of many of the Mexican immigrants were themselves American citizens, having been born here. These children were offered the impossible choice of being ripped from their parents and family, or from the country of their birth, which they regarded as their true home. This is exactly the problem facing many a child of illegal immigrants today.
"In its 1932 report," continues the article, "the government's own Wickersham Commission stated, '[t]he apprehension and examination of supposed aliens are often characterized by methods [which are] unconstitutional, tyrannic and oppressive."
"Unconstitutional." Not a word the Teabaggers or other rightist patriots would like to embrace. "Tyrannic and oppressive." Also not far from the lips of those decrying fascism or Marxism. Yet it was the mass deportation of Mexican immigrants (though, again, most of those caught up in the dragnet were here quite legally) that caused these abuses, that we associate with fascist or Marxist police states.
Let us simply consider the sheer numbers involved in any zero-tolerance scheme for illegal immigration. Some 12 million illegal immigrants reside here in the United States. Therefore, it is impossible to conceive either of such a repatriation of illegals, or of the concentration camps ("detainment centers," as the aptly named "Sharky" prefers to characterize them) that would perforce be necessary in conducting any such repatriation, without conceding that there would HAVE to be abuses associated with any such repatriation or police action, on such a massive scale.
I've previously stated, and stand by, my tremendous admiration for President Herbert Hoover's humanitarian efforts to feed people in Eastern Europe and Russia. One can, to this day, find a "Herbert Hoover Square" or two in Poland. It's said that he may have prevented more people from starving to death than any other man in history.
However, he also responded to anti-immigrant hysteria in the United States by enacting this calamitous "repatriation" initiative. This must, in turn, be considered a sad day for America, when Hoover gave in to the lesser impulses in the American spirit.
"We can't allow all these people in! They'll take American jobs!"
Was it only because of anti-immigrant hysteria that President Hoover did this? Were there no practical reasons for it?
Well, the other reason the Eric Ray article offers was, as the above heading suggests, to save American jobs, during the Great Depression. Devastatingly, considering current arguments against Mexican immigrants to the U.S., another thought was for cutting Mexicans from the welfare rolls.
In September of 2004, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed California State Senate Bills 37 and 427, "effectively ending any state cause of action for Mexican-Americans seeking financial reparations from the state of California for the injustices they sustained." Anyone applauding the Governor's action might do well not to clamour for a new, fresh repatriation scheme, just as anyone refusing Japanese-Americans restitution for their experiences at America's World War II internment camps should think before creating new concentration camps, this time for Mexican immigrants.
But did Hoover have a point? Was he not protecting American jobs during a national emergency, the Great Depression? Sure, we'd want to make sure not to bust legal immigrants this time, to the extent possible, but shouldn't we be protecting American jobs in a similar way, from illegal immigrants, during the present Great Recession? We needn't be cruel, but when you talk about throwing the doors open, we just can't take in all these workers. There have to be some limits.
Well... I MIGHT be open to hearing that, except for one thing. Three things, actually: Money, factories, and jobs, all three of which are exported freely, as our business owners dismantle factories and send capital and jobs abroad, in order to save money, quite freely. They do this outsourcing and foreign investment at speeds so quickly that it's no wonder we're having more severe hurricanes lately.
Why, why on EARTH, will it do ANY good to close the barn door against low-wage workers coming HERE, when we leave the barn window wide open and do absolutely nothing to stop jobs, factories, and money from going THERE? I've asked this question often enough, without EVER getting a straight answer, after years asking it, that I know there isn't a straight answer to be had. OK, I'm talking to right-wingers about it; perhaps some of you, more learned than a teabagger, will have a study that shows why outsourcing money and jobs and factories, to take advantage of cheap labour, actually does make sense if you're denying cheap labour the ability to enter HERE. Please, by all means, post that study; I may not have seen such figures as you've seen, yet. But bear (no pun intended) in mind that, if you're trying to "save American jobs," the outsourcing is costing us a few jobs.
I say let's take the Economist's advice. Throw the barn door open, to match the window. If it gets cold at night, well, it was already cold with the window open too. At least this will let a few more people take shelter here; it'll be a cold house, but at least it'll be a roof. Why leave them out in the cold, just to pretend that we need to insulate the house, when the house is already 50 degrees?
Let the immigrants in. Legalize them all, if they've no criminal record, or at least the NEW immigrants that come in, if you don't like legalizing the ones already here (for there will, of course, be a great backlash against such an idea, so it may be politically unfeasible ever to grant an amnesty; however, with courage, at least we may prevent NEW criminal status from being conferred upon those who only want to come here to work for an honestly-earned wage). It will make it easier to catch whatever real, serious criminals who may still take the old smuggler's routes (though, of course, some will be able to forge papers); and some tax money, from a huge, now legal, population, is better than no tax money at all. We need all the tax money we can get, as long as the immigrants paying it really aren't career criminals. If some ARE career criminals, on the other hand, that small percentage will be FAR easier to catch and deport, if you haven't simultaneously declared 12 million other people criminals just for being here.
As Wanda Sykes says: "why do we keep calling them 'illegal aliens,' as if they're career criminals or something. All they want to do is work! If somebody broke into my house, and all they wanted to do is vacuum my room? I'd be confused! But I wouldn't call the police."
If they're not criminals, then let them in.
EDIT: BIG hat-tip to HiBob, the poster below, for reminding me of a glaring omission in my diary. I disagree with HiBob, but he offered a substantive contribution: that there are certain service jobs that can only be done in the US, and that therefore, more immigrants would mean less of these jobs for natives. My rebuttal to him was that immigrants create jobs, too; according to this article, they create more jobs than they take.