Caution: Criminal Aliens you may be removed!

Re: bg, Reply 8

Sure. Blame the West and the ``big boys`` for the third world miseries! What a cop-out!

AA

you have hit upon an important issue. in these days of self-congratulatory, `triumphant` capitalist `globalization` the US, the WTO, the IMF/World bank types tell us that `opening up`economies is the way to go (SEA anyone?). but, as usual, the opening up is supposed to be one-way: let capital roam free and flee from troubled economies, but keep those poor, brown/black, hungry people OUT of our countries no matter how sick their economies are. if they come at all, let them be `illegal` so that they can be sweatshop labor within our enlightened borders.

you have a million dollars? you got yourself a green card. if not, well, tough!

AA:

You are entitled to your obscurant `abstract idealism`.

My disagrrement arises out of my obverse obfuscative obsecration, obstreperously swimming in a lava of realism.

regards

temporal:

the world consists of the haves and the have nots. I agree with you, and lets say, further.. The world is a place where haves exist at the expense of have nots and if there were no have nots, then there may in fact be no no haves. Big statment . No corroboration. But income disparites in the States have increased over the last few years. And the well known statement cliches away all over media and elsewhere that the rich grow richer, and the poor grow...you get my drift.

If all the world is 10 adjacent bus lines, then the lines will equal out, so everyone thinks they have just a good a chance as getting to the tyrannical conductor. Some lines lead to plusher buses and will be longer, even though the liner-uppers have a better chance making it in another line..but why do they want that line..it only gets them to a gadha gaari-, you know.

My point being: if there was no need to migrate, whether economic or human rights abuse, then no one would..everyone would stay put in their own damn bus. But short of this Utopia, people will dribble across the economic and political gradients of the globe.

My philosophy...let them. Let all the bus lines equal out, so there is not one state better than the other, and eventually there is economic and political levelling. This is an abstract and ideal thought, but if you see where I`m coming from, you`ll see why this is supportive of a political opposition to immigration control.

About people being rude at immigration in pk..I don`t have intimate knowledge, but I can only imagine the rudeness..

AA

AA:

There are, the world over, only two kinds of people. Those who have it, and consequently those who don`t have it. I have left the `it` intentionally vague and all-encompassing.

People move, voluntarily or involuntarily, because of hunger-----of stomach, of mind, of peace----you get my drift? This movement happens the world over.

In Bombay, at the Grand Central Station, Shiv Sena stalwarts would physically prevent the out of towners from entering the city. They felt these southerners or easterners would compete for the scarce jobs.

Karachi has seen similar migration patterns. Go, visit the Cantonment or City Stations when the

trains arrive.

If people were truly free than they can move freely where the pastures are greener. To a limited scale they do. Look at the Bengali servants and Sri Lankans ayahs in Karachi. But if they overwhelm the locals, then we will see the kind of reactions witnessed in Bombay.

That is why I do not consider the states ``unique``.

Here in Canada we have similar three-strikes-and-out laws. But being more humane, those laws mainly apply to immgrants only. Once you have taken out the Canadian citizenship, these laws do not apply.

Now let me ask you something. In our Pureland , I have heard passengers arriving from Karachi are routinely interrogated, asked to produce IDs, and otherwise harrassed. Is that the norm?

regards

temporal, yes, I think you`re saying,so what? nothing new? Even if, shouldn`t it be expected? People are not free and shouldn`t expect to be so? especially in the US? If that is the judgment, then fine. I stand corrected.

But to answer your question, US is unique because if its economic position.

Many people want to immigrate here for a chance at making a better living. Yet, the US turns them away, taking in a drop at a time and only those seen as ``useful``. Pakistan may not have the same control because people don`t want to go there..hence, US necessarily uses abusive strategies at the ariport and can get away with it.

Two, refugee patterns across the world and those in the US are grossly at conflict; while the world takes in people in crisis,the US takes in those that reinforce its ideological beliefs ..earlier, Cubans and Afghanis, and those fleeing ``terrorist`` regimes in the Middle East.

Three, US often deports people on crime grounds after they`ve literally lived all their young lives in this country, therefore, uprooting thousands every year and sending them back to countries they`ve left in childhood.

Tough? States just do that. That is certainly one view.

AA:

What exactly are we imparting here?

Nowhere in this universe, and certainly not in the land of the free, are all persons created equal. Or treated as such. Anyone believing it to be so reinforces Barnum`s (of Barnum & Bailey) famous adage.

Yeah, the Immigration department gnomes are vested with immense powers that can adversely affect the fates of foggy eyed visitors. So what else is new? Do you really believe this phenomenon is unique to the States only?

regards

There is nothing alarming in the parnoia of American immigration laws and its historic scape goating of immigrants. Immigrants have been the favorite whipping boy of the politicans, in this country or for any other, for well over a hundred years. As RR has stated, that is not likely to change. Scape goating of immigrants offers a simple expedient to politicans to mask the real problems confronting them. Since immigrants do not have any political clout, politicans tend to prey on them, because they are helpess to retailiate politically.

Recently in Germany, when the new party took power, one of the first things it did was to scrap an immigration law, dating to the 1880s, that allowed German citizenships based only on blood lines. One needed to have pure German blood in his her ancestery to be considerd a German. That law was passed, in the name of nationalism, by likes of Bismarck and was later officially legitimized by the Nazis in the 1930s under the so called Nurenberg Decrees. Under that law, thousands of Jews were disqualified from German citizenships; were denied the protection of the law and shipped to places with names like Bergen Belsen and Dachau.

In the present, Turkish children born in Germany and living there could not apply for German citizenship, because of this law. The European Human Rights Commission was aware of this discriminatory policy, but was silent in the face of German dominance of European Union`s monetary fisical and economic policies.

Why the sudden change of heart ? The present invalidation of those laws have nothing to do with fairness or equality, but just a hard cold political calculation by the Greens, presently the ruling party, that if the Turks were so politically endowed with a ballot, they could become a critical political force that would serve as a loyal political base for the Greens`.

In many nations of the west, there is still a lingering hold over from the ideas of ``Uber Mensch``, or a master race. The words of Hitler, ``ein volk und ein reich`` (one people and one land) still finds many an audience today, because we all have a deep seated sense of xenophobia that we all privately nature.

This is more ironic in the German sense, because the Germans do not share a pure blood line. Throughout history the frontiers of present day Germany, or as it known in diplomatic parlance, Mittleuropa, have contracted between royal marriages, invasions and treaties. The present day Germans are the decendents of Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Jews, Almans, Huns of Atilla, Franks, Tatar Mongols and the pagan Wends who were converted to Christianity under the sword of the Teutonic knights in the thirteen century.

The German identity, historically, has no claims to a common ethnology despite the best intentions of the Nazis. In this sense, the identity of the modern day Germany is more a result of a common lingustics pecularity than it is of a racial or cultural ethnography.

The same applies to the United States, in the lingusitical sense, but also in the racial make up of its population. There is, apart from the original inhabitants of the continent, no native majority to speak of. Like Australia, the United States is an immigrant based culture that has its raison d` étrê in the ethos of an immigrant`s dream; fear from percecution, a more secure existence and an opportunity to be judged in his her own right and not on the basis of what his her parents once did.

In this, the Americans are suffering from a duality of intent. On one hand, they have an ingrained urge to welcome the immigrants, because too are one. On the other hand, they see themselves as an established group resisting influences they believe are contary to their dominance of the society`s share of resources. The color of America is changing day by day and presently there is a stuggle to define what the final mosaic of America will be.

This struggle is being exploited by the politicans to serve their own ends and current anti-immigration laws that have been enacted and the laws that are discriminatory, are attempts to preserve the majority`s sense of political, and cultural homogenity that is ``under siege`` from forces of change. People do not take kindly to change, because it suggests insecurity, a fear of the unknown and a sense of vunerability to forces that might be outside ones control.

In a micro sense, there is an instititutional confrontation within the Immigration and Naturalization Service itself. This is due to the fault of the Congress which chose to burden it with the twin tasks of preventing immigration and to encourage it. It can not decide on the true nature of its mission; it has not, yet, formulated a coherent mission statement which would faciliate its job; to prevent or to encourage immigration. While it struggles with the emerging concept of its own identity, in the mean time immigration to the United States continues unabated.

This unfortunately creates the impression that INS is ineffective in stemming the tides of immigration and thus, politicans take matters into their own hands and excerabate the problem. To correct the problem, the politicans have given it powers to expediate a solution that has made it, after the IRS, the most hated agency of the American government. INS abuses it powers, because due process of the law does not apply to it. Other than the IRS, INS is only agency that follows the principal of the Napoleonic Code: guility till proven innocent based on the evidence it judges to be presentable.

The problem lies in the perception of the situation. Given that congress passes ad hoc measures to correct the problem, it has never in a systemic way ought to address the issue. It needs to delineate the functions and demarcate the tasks of preventing and encouraging immigration to different agencies. The immigration code needs to be simplified and criterias for immigration clarified, as is in the Canandian case.

Till a comprehensive review is undertaken, this country will always swing between bouts of welcoming immigration and bashing the immigrant. Immigrants need to realize their own political power and try to change the system through the ballot box and political action committees. Immigration law in this country will always be at the whims of the prevalent political xenophobia of the day and it will, like a pendulum, touch both the extermes, but will never stay in the middle. It is, and will be, another of life`s vageries and ones fortune will be determined, as always, where one was when the pendulum of chance swung.

P.S.: Sorry for the lenght of this post.....

LA Times reported sometime ago about an old man of Mexican heritage who didn`t apply for citizenship and ultimately became a victim of this law. Apparently, he was arrested in 1972 for possessing dope. He repented and lived a clean life since. Got married, had children and grand-children.

More than two decades later, INS discovers his past and determines that he deserves to be deported to Mexico. Can you just imagine the agony of that man?

America`s love-hate relationship with aliens is not new. Among the villains, there were first the Irish, then the Eastern Europeans, the Southern Europeans, and then the Japanese. The Mexicans have always been considered the bad guys.

And just recently, Newt Gingrich questioned the INS about the influx of Muslims and its negative impact on the American society. Welcome to the land of Freedom and Justice!

Rehan.