[Peace-discuss] [Peace] Partial victory against SB 1070. Protest is still on!

[David Green]

I did visit Champaign Surplus yestertady, and found two of the "Kill 'em all" 
T-Shirts. In contrast, I found a whole shelf devoted to "Border Patrol" 
t-shirts, caps, and perhaps other paraphernalia. I assume they're not talking 
about Canada. 




________________________________
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net>
Cc: Ron Szoke <r-szoke at illinois.edu>; peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; Stuart 
Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu>; Karen Medina <kmedina67 at gmail.com>
Sent: Fri, July 30, 2010 10:59:02 AM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Partial victory against SB 1070. Protest is 
still on!

Mort forms the question with perspicacity: "open borders or not." And the answer 
obviously is open borders, the situation that obtained until less than a century 
ago.  Passports in general didn't come into use until after WWI. In the US, 
immigration was first limited for class reasons - labor control - in the Long 
Depression that followed the Panic of 1873.

The peculiarly bloody labor struggles in the US always were occluded by American 
racism, so labor control here took the form of the Chinese Exclusion Act, signed 
into law by President Arthur in 1882.

The present situation vis-a-vis Mexico is similarly a result of the Clinton 
administration, which secured the misnamed "North American Free Trade Act." (It 
was actually an act to establish rights of American corporations, threatened by 
popular demands in Mexico.) The Clinton people knew that their investor-rights 
act would seriously harm small-scale agriculture in Mexico as well as local 
industry, throwing many people out of work and off the land. To the Clintonoids, 
the essential companion-piece to NAFTA was militarization of the southern border 
of the US, which they proceeded to put in place.

Mort thinks that "the USA is not going to dramatically improve the living 
conditions in the lands south of the border that are a main reason for 
immigrants illegally trying to get here for a better life"; but the USG 
(specifically the Clinton administration) is responsible for ruining the Mexican 
economy and producing the exodus. Mort's proposal is what the USG should do, in 
justice and self-interest - as it faces the demand for social justice form the 
working class on both sides of the border. We can encourage that campaign.

Open the borders. "Mr. Obama, tear down this wall!" - as R. Reagan put it.


On 7/29/10 10:17 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> Somewhat different from what Stuart expresses, I would guess that what
> determined Susan Bolton's opinion was less the demonstrations than what she
> perceived as justice and fundamental laws. Hispanic immigrants and their
> allies' demonstrations probably will not carry a great deal of weight  in the
> courts' decisions unless the bulk of the American public supports them, and
> that is far from happening.
> 
> The immigration issue in my lights is not so simple as some make believe. For
> me it comes down to "open borders or not". The USA is not going to
> dramatically improve the living conditions in the lands south of the border
> that are a main reason for immigrants illegally trying to get here for a
> better life. (I suppose if there were not jobs for these illegals in the U.S.
> that would also "help".) That would be the only non-legal, non-criminalizing,
> non physically restrictive solution to stemming the illegal flow. Unless the
> whole character of our government and the mores of the country changes, it
> aint going to happen.
> 
> --mkb
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