Immigrants, Borders, Entitlement and other messes

 

What is "Immigration Reform?"

 

 

I have written a number of times in other pages, about the question: 'Who is a legitimate immigrant?' mostly in the context of gentrification. Now that Mr. Drumpf and company will attempt to 'clamp down' on the namesake matter, whatever the matter is, I thought I'd better try to straighten my opinion about it, assuming I can define the issue.

 

If the son of Peter Muth did not become a citizen at birth, as far as I know he did in the Carolinas around 1800, and I, some 5 or 6 generations later would conceivably be an alien in this amerika. My ancestor that apparently swam the drink from Germany was an immigrant, possibly having his name modified at Ellis Island, and went on to create a family of amerikan citizens, including myself. There's some other lore about my father's side embracing a similar journey from England; so I am myself, an anglo-saxon son of immigrants.

 

If one wants to forget that other peoples, clans that whitey meant to exterminate and trace-erase and despite immense brutality failed to finish, lived upon the continent for dramatically longer than the duration of this nation state 'amerika,' then for one I may have no words, kind or otherwise. But if we care to recognize this fact, in this era where facts may be more gaseous than ever, I fail to see how every whitey in amerika is not an immigrant or the son of one; we ask who is a native?

 

One might think this goal-post sunk well into its pier, but alas, apparently it can move. One might also ask why it matters, what rights a native be entitled to. This door we approach then is called ownership, and the dog guard its bone. A 'native amerikan' as the son of an Asian immigrant from 9500 B.C. could be considered a native? Or is he still the remote son of an immigrant? So you see, who has graduated from immigrant to native? According to the Right, it's 'whoever we say has, mostly us.'

 

Though a relatively recent development, becoming a 'citizen' of this new nation state, via study of the actions of George Washington, the development of the cotton gin, eating apple pie at a baseball game and testing one's new knowledge to become one, is thought to bring one various privileges, first among them perhaps the right to live on the continent, then vote for one buffoon or another, work for a citizen scrubbing his toilet or pull yourself up by your bootstraps. In other words, one can transition to legitimate person by a process, devised and gate-kept by rather random and installed predecessors, who apparently govern and enforce such matters. So have we thereby stumbled into yet another 'who gets to decide' conundrum?

 

Those toward the xenophobe camp have opinions - people who appear to be Anglo-Saxon are acceptable, and then perhaps if they can demonstrate skill to properly assimilate, your Irish, your Italians, your Jews, and then later, maybe, just maybe, your light-skinned africans, Latinos, etc., if your math skills desirable, your asians; this is all rather obvious. I just reiterate to record the absurdity of 'nativism,' yet the peak of hypocrisy is the before mentioned 'white foot upon the rich and frozen Jamestown soil,' merely some 400 years ago, which last I checked was a small percentage of 12,000 years. And yet then we hear the accompanying pronouncement that a real amerikan landed thus and then.

 

Part of my quest here is to demonstrate that at the heart of this current moment is pure selfishness and if we find, as we might expect, that this is easily admitted as the motivation and that this naked xenophobia carries no apologies, then wow... ...is this merely something I want not to face? My face is already so close to buried in the sand that my eyelids have instinctively closed. But I feel some obligation to steady forward.

 

When the Centrists have announced their willingness to visit 'immigration' reform, as a calmer endeavor in response to the selfish xenophobe ranting about police states and border closures, they may speak of a process by which people can apply to immigrate to the 'United' States. What is needed they may say, is a straight forward form (by which they now mean app), with accompanying fees, waiting periods, bureau visits, interviews and general bureaucratic malaise involving head scratching with the inevitable square peg applicants. Such dreams provoke skepticism born of DMV experience, and this has not the shield to raise to the brandished sword of selfishness. And additionally, it hinges upon the fiction of human transcendence which would be required to avoid fatal contingency. In other words, such a system will likely not work, be horribly inefficient or expensive, despite the costs associated with indefinite detention and the mess of the actions of desperate shadow people. When the traveler scans the border crossing he faces a choice: To plead and pay the cost of this process whose far side exit is remote and unverifiable or turn to the ancient thug, the smuggler who may know where there be a hole in the fence, may show it to you, though you pay in advance.

 

So therein, if there be guard posts, standing shoulder to shoulder, as peripheral fence around the entire country, and at any given stretch of this barrier, a person arrives to say: "Hello, I wish to move to the United States." What be the guard's response (other than: 'It's cold and boring in this outpost, my salary low.') But be him fleshy or silicon, the border agent must respond, I guess, and with what options in the pop-up menu under: "Immigration Request" ? I suppose such a system would need be easier to navigate than climbing a fence or risk the withdrawal of the applicants, at least until nightfall ... ...a tall order or a taller high-voltage electric fence.

 

But to the choices:

 

1) Sorry, our country is full.

2) Please fill out this questionnaire, demonstrating your mathematics and computer science skills.

3) Please pick your skin color from the following tone example swatches.

4) Please write an essay under 500 words, in clear white english, describing the depth of your Judeo-Christian adherences, sighting specific examples from the King James bible.

5) You get the idea...

 

Again, "who decides?"

 

Of course, the acceptable immigrant works through the system of 'invitation' letter, rather than shivering huddles at the desert crossings. The institutions of higher learning or the tech worker recruitment departments can provide lubrication to the penetration, perhaps with less intimidating liaisons, though the middlemen's hands out stretched be similar though less leathery than that of the smuggler. If you do exemplary work in your trial period, perhaps you are lucky enough, your CV padded properly for a Goog corp cubicle. And what will be new or troubling about this, the touted 'meritocracy' incarnate.

 

There's nothing new about gatekeepers and arbitrary judgments. The Nazis standing beside the cattle cars arriving at Auschwitz, arranged two cues, a finger-wand between them, and had presumably Germanic criteria. But did the officers merely take brief look at each immediately doomed or delayed doom-nation sub-human and employ his fate-wand with only vague feelings of 'more or lesser' distaste, or possibly grant the lesser gaunt individual a few more weeks of life, to provide acceptable slave labor for the Reich?

 

Once, when I found myself required to visit the "Taiwanese Economic and Cultural Organization" for the purposes of obtaining a visa to visit Taiwan for more than 2 weeks. I was directed to a 'supervising' stocky and humorless man, in proper suited western attire, who proceeded to walk around the bullet-proof glass to look me 'up and down;' I, an Anglo-Saxon in amerika, albeit in a leather motorcycle jacket and three-day stubble. "Why do you want to go to Taiwan?" he announced. I did not appear to be a desirable visitor. Imagine if I had stated: "I wish to move there." I may then have been reunited with my knowledge that I should work more on my clothes and demeanor.

 

So at this juncture, we may want to spend a moment with the general wishes of a nation. Many may want to announce: "What is wrong with a nation attempting to control the style and attributes of its population?" Putting aside for the moment such grand and seemingly contradictory notions as 'A land of Freedom" and "Bring us your poor, destitute, etc.," do we have a problem with 'setting up shop' as a land filled with a presumably dominant type, with some sort of conformed 'standard' person as its reference for acceptable look, demeanor, style and attribute, one thought not to offend, and ban the 'others?' This sounds terrible and not so 'compassionate' as the Right masquerade prefers to think of itself. And we do need entertainment, apparently, so we must have clowns - but black-face garb worked well for centuries, and it didn't require a black person. But Louie Armstrong has come out of the bag already.

 

This may cut close to the tumor: The Xenophobes feel they have right to dictate who is an acceptable person, of course. One can also somehow maintain straight face while admitting or denying that rules can be stretched here when it benefits them; a brain drain is perfectly acceptable because the Asians can be discreet and remain confined to the laboratory, their contributions affect dramatically the profit of the corporations and their shareholders. When the 'other' can be loud and obnoxious in the traditional white way, they are thought to have properly assimilated and can join in the revery outside the research facility; we may hear the whispering, that the jokes should stay 'tasteful,' lest you find yourself back in the kitchen at Peking Delights. I had the pleasure of talking with a Taiwanese man who came to Firestone Ohio in 1968, to somehow contribute to the development of automotive safety glass. He held a plaque describing this honor, and the $2000 bonus was used justly somehow, perhaps to cover his property taxes for a moment. I assume he took his citizenship test, knew that Thomas Jefferson was a man and everything worked out for the best; a mild-mannered man, I doubt he caused any trouble.

 

It seems that I often conclude that the Right just cannot bring its collective to resist its perceived self-interests. Should I require balance in my judgment here? All men, in the image of dogs or as associates of dogs upon this spinning rock in space, can only lightly touch upon self-compromise, mostly with the reciprocal section of reciprocal altruism a priori, the enforcer loitering in the lobby. In other words, do I practice what I preach? Could I squander my white privilege, as nominal as it might be, deliberately playing second fiddle to a less fortunate traveler from elsewhere? The Right would call me a fool; in retrospect I would come to discover them correct they would say - concentrating wealth is the only route to self-preservation, for the hoards are coming for any crumbs and more.

 

I wonder occasionally about donating family land to the descendants of 'native' peoples, peoples who don't care to be called descendants, for one thereby dismisses their current vibrant status as people, and native people, no thought of living as ghosts be tolerable for it is too difficult to live (solely) as victims. I bring this here just to point out that I actually don't know if I could really give up so much value, so many greenbacks inscribed with the logos of the nation. But here I go again making calculations regarding notions of 'enough,' so visited in other forums. Do I deprive myself or my son value that neither of us can 'take with' us to the other side? Does the dog give up the bone should he have a few others?

 

So these recent paragraphs seem to be supporting the Right's endless Tragician's fatalism that have been tortured in many of my previous pages; Success is only really achieved and maintained at the point of a bayonet, with the appropriate legal framework and now the 'A.I.' generated corroborating video. If I there, the deepest self-defeatist I know, cannot bring myself to sacrifice, are we not doomed?

 

Where does that leave our poor, desperate masses struggling to be free and prosperous on amerikan shores?

 

We've yet to speak of the need for masses of entry-level workers. If it weren't amerika built on the backs of enslaved Africans, then we'd want to talk of the backs of migrant workers, all be them paid employees, a pittance at least. But the more exploited peoples the wealthier the Anglo-Saxons be, so come one, come all! Well, I mean, at least until we meet our quotas. And there's those jobs no amerikan would bring himself to do, removing pubic hair from hotel bathtubs, chopping onions in dank kitchens or spreading and breathing molten tar upon the rooftops of our many rental properties. Before the robots and their thoroughly de-bugged firmware succeed in replacing immigrants in these roles, even their employers on the Right surely recognize their reliance on immigrant labor, though the statements remain: 'At $4.25, these people are killing us with their 15 minute breaks every 4 hours.' I suppose they distinguish between the subservient hard-working and thankful first round immigrant, seemingly happy to scar their bones at task and the following generations who may not assimilate properly, noticing how the Anglo-Saxons live, determined not to work as hard as their parents, taking turns for the resentful, a short step to thuggery.

 

The Right Whites like to tell stories about the ancestors starting from the ground floor, paying their dues, hard-working types somehow living the immigrant experience at first; the 'dream' the bleeding hearts suggest the poor and tired masses should have access to also, and thus a well-trodden trail there without check-points or judgement outposts for entry grant. If the amerikan dream be carrot, what be the stick? And why create a myth carrot should there be political valve whose hand on the lever be that of a xenophobe? Why make such a complex incentive just to enforce the whim; why not reiterate the unapologetic statements of Hitler? To appear to be for inclusiveness with the tools of exclusion? Because appearances matter, they say. Better to be a Janus - 'Big Smile, Hide Knife' as the Chinese expression outlines. Nothing but cruel joke - to offer the dog the bone just to rap him upon the head with it when he move forward for a closer sniff.

 

We can look upon this tap as a more sophisticated valve, to be opened or closed as needed. When the grand hotel is completed and the profits pouring in, only a skeleton crew of gardeners and hospitality workers are required. This is business as usual, and of the modern efficient sort. Despite the growing inequality gaps, and the dirty work reserved for the underpaid, the Centrists want to think of this dynamic as functional, everyone living the dream at the various tiers. One might think this correct, and if the Right was to step back slightly from complete and utter greed, their ledgers will show they are doing quite well; we return thus to the problem of 'enough.' But it may be worth asking, in this, the Right Might save themselves a lot of trouble; the sedatives of interweb 'feed' garbage and alcohol should easily provide thorough distraction for the still troubled underclasses. Anyway, the flare-ups tax-deductible business expenses.

 

 

So what are the line items?

 

a) Do we need a country?

 

Though it may be late to ask, a global society reasonably continues to put this forward, as an academic exercise anyway. It is said that xenophobia can be dissolved by relations with the 'other;' we are 'more alike than different,' hatred is grown as crystal by dehumanization. Do statements promoting the celebration of cultural variance ring hollow as a bandaid?  I do not apologize for my personal tastes; what neglected need be taught is what it means to impose your tastes and habits upon those who hardly care about your schtick. But in this world, even the criminals that constitute the advertising "industry" cannot recognize their activities as crime.

 

Does transcendence require evolutionary leaps for the human mind unwritten in the DNA? The 'country' surrounded by walls built by hands too smalls or not, seems currently rather entrenched, ossified, nationalism a rather stubborn and permanent stain. Therefore transcendence from the nation-state a remote notion, apparently the nation also be thought of as necessary and desirable. Only an unappreciative malcontent could ponder otherwise. Hopefully, I am at least 'before my time' herein.

 

 

b) Does a country need borders?

 

A more accurate question would be, without borders: "Would amerikans finance and put up with the subsequent profiling and harassment, with constant authoritarian agents asking on the streets of amerika, to 'see their papers?' The Libertarians won't like it (nor the Leftists or the bleeding hearts.) In other words, a harsh, expensive border is better? When I've been asked by various state representatives to identify myself in amerika and abroad, though it be unnerving at times, I have stood behind my passport, even a little proud to 'belong' to somewhere, anywhere - to be somehow a legitimate person from somewhere; I am not 'nobody' with my official looking little book. I can't speak to the thoughts of the foreign agents reviewing my documents, whether their opinions of me were altered in the realization that: "Oh I see, this one's an amerikan." And I've not been driving while black or doing anything subversive, feeling myself unimpeachable. So lucky then, I guess. Borderless countries have precedent in 'unions' though. One doesn't so much stop in Alsace anymore; one doesn't stop driving from California to Texas, though you might consider stopping to have your head examined. I would have amplified pride (though pride not my strong suit) should I be carrying a passport from 'planet earth;' my body indeed already carries a tattoo cryptically identifying it as: "From this earth."

 

 

c) Can a country announce that only certain types of people can live there?

 

Clearly conservatives care to conserve the interests of the chosen ones; they alone possess the wagging finger of choice. It begins with the creation of exclusive fairy tales, the stories that pit heathens against the pious. Rampaging hyenas seeking the resources needed for the next meal are the natural original guidance for earth creature behavior. But then we enter the zone of higher animals, so the feelings of insecurity dictate the notion of divinity. One might see the acceptable behaviors difficult to discern from unacceptable ones; perhaps no description after Dr. Suess can demonstrate more fully the arbitrary nature of the Righteous and the Pagan, than his Sneeches and their star-bellies or lack thereof. The anti-Abortionists provide example of the ludicrous nature of the delineations: Why on earth or beyond would a party have an opinion about whether the 'others' reproduce? If the baby-factories inherit the earth, the heathens with their baby-killing, perish. And imagine the conservative who would reject a particular pretzel arrangement of the human form during sex, because he fears a god not approve, therefore a cock-sucker or a corn-holer be damned and banned from citizenship or immigration asylum seeking. In other words, how do we define the 'other,' a sexual deviant, a Haitian who may own a doll, a 'ching-chong' with his 'funny sing-song' tongue, anyone who talks too loud on a porch, need I go on?

 

Perhaps if things had 'gone differently' and immigrants from England and 'free' immigrants from Africa had something of a simultaneous arrival upon the north amerikan continent, forging something of a functional relationship. And the discreet and stiff northern European descendent, deprived of sleep, was to stumble over to the joyous and boisterous proverbial porch party during African celebration to ask: "Hello friends, happy birthday an' all. I wish I could participate, the bbq smells fantastic. But I gotta get up at 4:30am tomorrow and d'you suppose you could tone it down a little?" But the sub-human cannot garner respect and brutality and enslavement doesn't build friendships; further, assimilation and conformity does not a common humanity make.

 

But the raw and itchy truth seems rather obvious yet admissions rare and media hesitant to call out the selfishness in plain sight: Entirely too many people prefer to live among those they deem similarly conformed. What is more obvious than the lubricated acceptance by whitey of the 'light-skinned black' who's voice on the phone stealthy and educated. What a bizarre requirement - 'If you talk like me, I feel comfortable renting a room to you.' In other words, the unapologetic continue to shrug and announce: 'So I want to live among those I like..., sure, those I deem to be like me... ...is that a crime?'

 

 

d) If the people in a country feel themselves too important to do menial, dangerous or tedious jobs, is it reasonable to recruit non-citizens to do these things?

 

There was an early interwebs phenom (prior to the 'UBoob' or the 'TitTot' or the advent of the thoroughly corrosive term 'influencer,') known as "Bum Fights." In case the reader is unaware, this was a series of videos in which people of dubious condition, seemingly unemployable, were presumably bribed or otherwise coerced into doing rather dangerous or disgusting things to themselves or each other. This was apparently arranged by some punk-ass young people who presumably thought this was amusing and profitable, and in some odd way would bring them a degree of fame as media producers. I tell this tale, just to point out that people are indeed willing to do things for compensation, albeit rather lowly or invaluable. I guess this is hardly necessary to point out.

 

The question of importance is whether those self-appointed chosen ones are only nominally immoral for building and maintaining a system of underground economies, of course minimizing the administration costs, by conceivably arranging illegal shadow employees who can appear or disappear as needed or politely expedient. In other words, in the context of immigration discussion, do we admit that our amerika is dependent on these economies? The Right, in their purer moment, would call this characterization exaggerated, for what of the 'supply and demand' of the negotiations? Despite the upper hand in wealth of dollars and lawyers, the upper crust views the dynamic as merely a business arrangement. Since the Right constitutes the 'smartest guys in the room,' it is not a question of morality, there is no need to balance scholarship at a Haas School of Business with an apprenticeship involving placing traffic cones. But then the free-marketeers here must chime in, with the meritocrats on second fiddle, and Huxley nearby, as conductor: 'There exists levels of intelligence and skill, even if we all see educational playing fields be uneven. There are no significant reasons, moral or economic, to ignore this.' So then we merely return to 'pull on the bootstraps, supply and demand and negotiate your worth at the bargaining table and: ‘Show us what you're made of. If you have not a lawyer to explain the fine print, tough luck for you, go back to your country, war-torn or not.' And we must give the designers and visionaries their just desserts, for ‘you ditch diggers needn't worry about grand pictures, budgetary shortfalls or take responsibility for the cut-corner scaffold collapse; you can have your Modelo beers and sleep well at night without those anxieties. Just keep your phone by the bedside, and if we need those traffic cones moved in the middle of night, we might need you to take care of it.’ Nothing is new under the sun, if not the tendency to get someone else to do your dirty work. And if we can avoid paying workman's comp, all the better for the bottom line - be it that line on our profit ledgers or the line of desperate, uneducated migrants who arrive to 'start at the bottom.'

 

 

 

e) If citizenship, borders, immigration and administration can be thought to be reasonable aims, what is functional immigration reformed policy?

 

It appears that there are certain realities that cannot be avoided, even in this era of 'reality is (now?) only what one says it is.' 1) The 'United States' contains a great many citizens, many of whom fulfill their duties, pay some taxes, contribute something of their labor to society, make some effort to be reasonable, law abiding members of the place. 2) Due to circumstances in history, many of which reflect intense selfishness, brutality and exploitation, yet despite this, amerikan society may be relatively safe, is advertised as a land of bread and honey, and is a destination for immigration by peoples from origins far and wide. 3) Amerika has always been a Janus speaking on one face publicly about opportunity, dreams, hard work and just desserts - while conversely in private clubs and Board rooms about evergreen profits, and the leveraging of the underclasses. On this 3rd line item, one might notice the underclasses and their backs upon which amerikan 'exceptionalism' was built, over which the black stage dress is draped lest it be exposed, were at first slaves, then pittance workers, then scabs, then out-sourced, all designed as invisible. In other words, amerika does appear to 'need' cheap labor. The visionaries may prefer robotics to constant agitation and negotiations, but the monied classes have no trouble maintaining the sophistication of their stance, their back-sliding well lubricated, their bones to throw juicy and fragrant, their 'take it or leave it' postures well-rehearsed and their lawyers abundant and well paid.

 

So therefore, we might all see that amerika needs underclassmen, and if patriotic whites prefer to manage rather than be managed, are far too clever and skilled to clean toilets or bake their skin designed for the Irish fog picking cauliflower, then our underclassmen must be imported from the lesser parts of the globe. It is not clear to me why it seemingly impossible to admit the social dynamics at play here, design an immigration system to provide proper administration of migrants, control the terms under which immigrants appear at borders and most importantly, insist that employers hire people who are authorized to work, to be in the country, help them pay the appropriate taxes, find them some education, help them with their homesickness, their alienations. Forgive me for assuming, as this last list stretches out on the page, the resistance is obvious; such preparations are no doubt viewed as unnecessary expenses, appearing on the debit side of the profit ledger, and thereby unacceptable. Dare I say that the wealth of amerika is hardly diminished at the prospect of these concessions.

 

I also suggest that there hardly be the necessity to sugar-coat the amerikan immigrant experience. Could there not be reasonable regulation, processes by which migrant workers could be managed, such to respect them with the depth that does not drive them underground? Aside from the racism and classism that amerika cannot shed, there is of course the little gnawing worm of 'freedom.' The talk among the entitled whites that overheard by everyone leads to the salivating, the yearning to be 'free,' and then the paperwork and maintenance of the legality of the immigrant population prone to fall away, amplifying the choice to duck the radar, the underground hero's journey; where is the incentive to follow the rules? This is like the 'choice' of the homeless; it can be seen to be better to live 'free' on the street in a tent than to apply to a city's homeless shelter.

 

And the fact is, most immigrants are not seeking lousy jobs in the fields, to squirrel away unspent piggybanks, so that they might return to origins to start a small business, protected and taxed by armed gangs. They are looking to move somewhere relatively safe, to work like all their predecessors, the Irish, Jewish, Slavic, Chinese, Indian, etc., trying to arrange that their children have education, futures grander than their own. Are the dues not paid? Maybe whitely is correct in the fear of replacement; I don't work half as hard as many immigrants do, 80 hours a week making burritos, 48 hours a week struggling with farm machinery or thorny brush, 6 days a week grunting with greasy wrenches under your Subaru. Do I deserve a place in amerika? I've made little money for the monied classes, devoting my life to mocking them. I wouldn't take job in pubic hair management, if I could avoid it. In this I join an entire human race; there really is one.

 

 

f) Is it defensible to stand straight-faced or otherwise and declare oneself worthy of rights in and access to a 'country' and others not?

 

A person openly declaring himself a 'white supremacist' be mostly a clown in this era. More insidious by far is the combination of the before mentioned Janus and the 'I can have latino friends if they talk english like me.' Yet even a 'half-black' man like Obama can be hated, apparently more for being half-black than for being a Democrat.

 

Are we just collapsing at the brutish monster of entitlement? My arguments that 'Jesus teaching' and white-supremacy be so incongruous as to cancel, tired yet unheard; I needn't ramble more on that thread. But if the gun be pried out only from the cold, dead hand, the old white hand, veiny and brown-spot covered as they are; somehow this discussion comes around to gun control, how unexpected. So what, we just resign, that if whitey mounts soap box to declare: 'I want what I want, every man from every place is just out of sight salivating for my position, my tooth and nail is and must be poised to hold my ugly but upper hand in place. And it is indeed my place, this country.' And despite the sympathetic words mostly heard only in church rhetoric, 'I have no concerns other than my own. I do not loose sleep worrying my territorial claims be overstep.'

 

 

g) Is it reasonable to require someone to prove they are in need? How does one explain in broken English or otherwise that one is sincerely desperate or merely deserving of access to amerika and its ‘dream?’

 

 

Ultimately, we've returned to all the major themes: Unapologetic selfishness, racism, classism, and dominance of the tragic vision of human behavior. We cannot risk inclusive global society, because those with and those without cannot absorb notion that one's purse have finite capacity. Without acceptable or enforceable limit on resource consumption, every lurker in every doorway on any side of any border will not be satiated, and the reality or the unfounded fear of replacement or destitution thus control us. It doesn't bid well for something the Left might want to call progress; it smells more of limping along in contingency, cracks filled with desperate or unlucky people, crying from the mouths of the fallen and their bleeding-heart sympathizers, while nearby we see the nervous, partially hidden glee from the visage of the Righteous.