Sending Home the Other
I have always been clear on the basic human instinct for immigration law but never really understood the application. We are tribal peoples in our cores, that old insider/outsider behavior pretty much kicking in during threatening times.
"That's mine!" we cry on the playground.
"That's mine," we cry on the border.
We are still protecting our ground, wanting to claim something we can't really own. We forget that on this particular patch of ground, no one actually emerged from the sludge. We had to walk here. So why is it a bunch of Johnny-Come-Latelys get to decide who can live here or not?
My idea of the border is sort of a free flow thing. People come and go from either or any direction, and the same for me wanting to go to, say, France. I want to live in Normandy, so I go, rent a little stone house, and write until I go insane and start talking to the cow in the pasture next door. Okay, my choice, and who would I be hurting but the cow? Yeah, maybe I use up some resources, but I'll give back given some time. I'll pay taxes and sign up to vote and spend money in the local town.
People just want to live. Sometimes living seems easier elsewhere. Sometimes that is true, sometimes it's just a dream. But let people have a go at it.
Yesterday a young man I know was handcuffed and put on a plane headed to either Argentina or Italy. He'd been here, working, living, being a basically decent human being. And then because he was other, not us, he was sent off. This, as you can imagine, caused great consternation among his friends and family. Where is "Rafael"? Gone. Not here any more.
We are guarding our end of the playground. We are building a ginormous fence. We arm people to guard the giant fence. We put chips in our own passports, for our own citizens. We detain people we don't think look right. We send back ones we've rejected.
I guess I'm lucky I am here. Different parts of me came over on many different boats. My boys are lucky--their father's family drove up in a big ass car in 1963. Someone let us all in. We all became not other.
Anyway, this ramble goes no where. I just hope Rafael is okay.
Jessica
- Login Or register To Post Comments
- Send To A Friend
RSS- Bookmark With:
Eric Nichols says:
The lady who named me Chutla sent me this
Of course, I had to remind her that they bought the rifles from us. :)
Jessica Barksdale Inclan says:
But didn't we get the rifles
But didn't we get the rifles from elsewhere?
Human culture is borrowed, and we know that and it freaks us out. So we try to box things in, lest they dribble away.
J
Jessica Barksdale Inclan www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
Eric Nichols says:
Perhaps I can put a little perspective on this
Recent Alaskan history has a lot of parallels to American history...but a lot more recent. Alaska is bigger than a lot of countries, richer than a lot of countries, and nearly unpopulated. The native people here lived pretty much a subsistence lifestyle before the Alaska pipeline. I was here to observe the transition happen before my eyes.
Was there social upheaval? Certainly.
Were there injustices done? Certainly.
Do the Athabaskans or Eskimos want to return to their subsistence lifestyle?
NOT ON YOUR LIFE!
Let me tell you a little story about Kathy Alexander, (now Kathy Caroll), one of my dearest friends on the planet for the past 30 years. She bestowed the name Chutla upon me, which means "Joker," a fact which I was finally able to confirm just last year. :)
Anyway, I met Kathy at the radio station I was working at, when I first came up here. She was a D.J., already well known throughout the interior of Alaska. I was an engineer, but occasionally did some announcing. She always called me Chutla on the air, always with a sly chuckle. Anyway, she was an outstanding news reporter, and ran all over the place gathering Native affairs stories.
In 1978, when they turned on the spigot for the Alaska pipeline, she made the announcement on the air (over a 50,000 watt A.M. station, by the way), and then started jumping and shouting and hooting and hollering. I thought for sure she was about to wet her panties with excitement. I had to take over the microphone and try to say something intelligent...but probably in vain. I was still pretty clueless about the implications. After the hollering settled down, I learned that she was a major shareholder of Doyon Limited, http://www.doyon.com/board.html and that she had just become a VERY rich woman. (But she continued DJ'ing for years, anyway).
Now, in Fairbanks, you'll see a lot of Indians wearing Bluetooth roaches on their ears. I don't even have a bluetooth! The point is, the Native Alaskans LOVE all the white man's toys. (And for the most part, they even like US!)
Now, it may come to pass that we all have to revert to a subsistance lifestyle. Probably more Alaskans could handle that than the average American...but why not enjoy the toys while we can? We invented them.
Just some thoughts from the Wilderness. :)
Jessica Barksdale Inclan says:
Sometimes
the "Indian /White man" distinction is hard to take, though I am sure that's how it all goes down. I'm not really sure how we got here on this disucssion of borrowed culture, anyway, though I'm sure it's my fault! I remember reading somewhere how all wonderful style stuff of the past 25 years was disseminated from gay culture. Okay, then! Borrow away. Why wouldn't we all want what is fun and "cool" and nifty? There's no fault in that. Toys is toys.
And from what I hear from my anarchist friends, it's time to learn how to subsistence live--get that plot of ground going. Now!
J
Jessica Barksdale Inclan www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
Evie Shockley says:
it drives me insane
Thanks for this post about the absurdity and destructiveness of this kind of us/them thinking (especially as it concerns current immigration law). It does seem to be as old as the hills -- but what is not so ancient is the system of national borders that divide one hill from another. Yet we act as if they were handed down to us from a divine source...
Peace.
Jessica Barksdale Inclan says:
We want our little territory
And in a few thousand years, someone else will be guarding this ground. We try to fool ourselves into thinking it's ours.
J
Jessica Barksdale Inclan www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
Eric Nichols says:
Well, if it's any consolation
There's a whole square mile for every man, woman, and child in Alaska. I still want my square mile. :) Good thing nobody else seems to want it!
eric
Darlene Arden says:
Immigration
I may have to don my flame suit here (BTW, Eric, I just bought a tee shirt with that photo on it in Old Town Albuquerque.)
The point isn't immigration but the difference between legal and illegal immigration. I'm all for legal immigration but what part of "illegal" don't people understand? I live in a town where a truckload a week of illegal immigrants arrives weekly and they stay in hot beds. I'd never even heard of that before! They take work away from those who want it. Truly. They take services for which taxpayers are paying, and they truly do not put back. They are not paying taxes but sending everything home.
My father came to this country as an immigrant. He was 12 years old. He arrived with one of his brothers and their father. He went to work at that age, built up a business, paid for his mother and siblings to come over legally. He put most of his brothers through law school. The one who didn't want that was the one he set up in business. He employed them while they went to school. He made his sisters' weddings, complete with dowries and all the while worked his butt off, learned the language and loved his new country. No one handed him anything. He worked for all of it and didn't expect either handouts or everyone else to speak the way he had in Europe.
Today, I live in the largest town in the U.S. As a taxpayer, I can tell you that no longer are residents' kids allowed to ride the school bus free. We spend so much on illegals that the parents have to pay for a basic like busing. That is only the tip of the iceberg.
And if you want to see how well being officially bilingual works, I suggest a trip to any part of Quebec Province in Canada.
Okay, I'll shut up now. I think you've just hit a nerve. LOL
Eric Nichols says:
Well said
The most adamant opposers of illegal immigration are LEGAL immigrants, as you suggest. (I suppose that includes almost all of us at one time or another. My ancestors were Vikings....came over here 500 years before Columbus...figured there wasn't anything here worth sticking around for...and went back to Denmark).
But....revisiting the white man's toys...I can guarantee we wouldn't have swarms of illegal aliens trying to get in if the infrastructure wasn't already here.....they are coming here for the THINGS we built...not the land.. If they wanted wilderness to build upon from scratch...nobody would object. In fact, if they wanted to come to Alaska, they'd be welcomed with open arms...but they aren't! (On the other hand we have a vibrant community of Thais and Laotian refugees in Fairbanks who have fabulously rejuvenated the old Downtown).
I would depart from my conservative friends on just one point of immigration...political asylum. Anyone who would desire to come to America because of proven political persecution should have first priority. I think America was built on this. There's a big difference between political persecution and just plain political corruption, however, which is the main reason Mexico's in the state it's in.
I think our beloved Belle said it best. "I'm 100% American and 100% Chinese."
If every immigrant could say, "I'm 100% American and 100% Mexican/African/Saudi......" there would be no problem whatsoever.
Eric
Jessica Barksdale Inclan says:
I don't live in a border town
but my feeling is that if the walls and rules went down, things would get worse. And then they would get better. And then it would normalize. Yes, living through that rush of madness to be "here" would be tough, and I know many generations of "Americans" have had to face newcomers taking jobs away from those who have been here longer. That's the real distinction. Those who have been here longer. We are such a young country that no one has been here very long at all, at least not while we were a clamped down system.
So no, I don't know what it is like to be on a border town, but I do know what it's like to want to change a life, to find a place in which to do it. Too bad all options aren't open.
Interesting and very broad, this topic, huh?
J
Jessica Barksdale Inclan www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
Eric Nichols says:
WMTs
No, not weapons of mass terrorism...but White Men's Toys. :)
I was born and "riz" in California, and though things have changed a lot since I was there, I think I still have a pretty good grasp. First, I have to admit that I certainly wouldn't want to pick veggies all day for a living. Few Americans would. There's very little doubt that the agricultural economy of California would implode without immigrant workers. It would be hard to say that the farm workers were taking anyone else's jobs away. However, even back in the 1970's it was pretty clear that a lot of the social services were already being strained by the farm workers who weren't going home at days end (or season's end).
Now, if I were king of the universe, which probably isn't too likely to happen in the near future, I'd annex Mexico as the 51st state, give New York back to Holland, run the corrupt politicians out of Mexico (they could move to New York, if they want some company), and set up some serious high-tech industry south of the border. (As well as some modern agricultural methods). Again, Mexico is a RICH country....they're on the same hunk of land as the U.S., for crying out loud! And the Mexicans DO know how to work. With the right leadership, they could be a superpower. Oh wait...they'd already be one, as part of the U.S.
Now you know. :)
eric
Darlene Arden says:
Eric, you are so right!
I also agree regarding political asylum. But please don't come here and try to turn it into another country. My question: What happened to the Melting Pot?!
Eric Nichols says:
Good question, Darlene
And you aren't the first one to ask it, of late.
The question certainly is worth delving into, because it goes right to the root of the nature of wealth....a major theme in my upcoming tome, "The Spirit of the Craftsman."
Most people mistakenly equate wealth with natural resources....but that is only PART of the equation. True wealth is created by ADDED VALUE to those resources. Just as a very simplistic analogy, but very relevant today....look at oil. Oil has been sitting unused for either thousands or millions of years (depending on your particular theology). Until a century ago, that oil had ZERO value, for at least three reasons.
#1) Nobody knew it was there.
#2) Nobody had a way of getting it even if they knew it was there
#3) Even if people knew it was there, and knew how to get it, they still didn't have a clue what it was good for...i.e., there was no market. Someone had to invent cars to USE the oil.
Knowledge, accessibility, and market are the three major value-added ingredients that create wealth out of raw goods.
In terms of possession of raw natural resources, the U.S. about average worldwide. Mexico has about the same amount of oil (if you ignore Alaska). Most of the strategic rare earth elements...of increasingly more crucial value...are to be found in China, southeast asia, and northern Europe. Despite two North American gold rushes, Brazil has FAR more gold than the U.S. ever had, with the Middle East close behind.
(Incidentally, modern geologic techniques are beginning to suggest that oil is almost evenly distributed around the Earth)
In terms of NATURALLY arable land, the United States is a vast wasteland compared to much of south america and asia. We only became the world's breadbasket with a lot of intense tweaking and science....i.e., CAPITAL.(*in capital letters!)
So, why is America the richest country on earth, despite it's pretty average natural resources? VALUE ADDED productivity....and a system that REWARDS innovation...and private property. By the way, we are the ONLY nation on earth that incorporates Copyright and Patent law right in our Constitution. (Although German patent law is better in some respects than ours, it was added long afterwards). We honor (at least in theory) innovation and initiative. Countries that emulate this, (like Thailand and Singapore, and ever-more-increasingly, India, for instance) are rising fast in the world.
There is no reason whatsoever that Mexico couldn't duplicate America's wealth if natural resources were the only factor. Or Argentina. Or Venezuela, for that matter.
Eric