What Do Gays And Undocumented Do For "Us"?

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I've been hearing a lot about how good gay marriages will be for California's economy. I am not comfortable with this simplification of the issue. It's like heterosexuals have found a way to justify gay marriage in pure economic terms. After all, how much harm can homosexuality do to California's heterosexual culture if it does so much good to California's economy?

Michael LIndenberger from Time reports,

A report released by the Williams Institute at UCLA law school says fully half of the state's 102,000 gay couples could wed in the next three years. UCLA law professor Brad Sears told TIME that the number is in keeping with experience in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is also legal, and Vermont, which permits civil unions. Another 67,000 or so are expected to arrive from other states, says Sears, the report's co-author. Those couples and their guests will spend some $680 million in tourism dollars, a welcome boost to a state whose hard-hit economy could use all the help it can get.

Justin Ewers at U.S. News & World Report also mentions the UCLA study, which predicts,

approximately half of the 103,000 same-sex couples living in the state will get married in the next three years. Nearly 70,000 same-sex couples from other states, they predict, will come here to marry...the combination of marriage license fees, increased state and local tax revenues, and the attendant boost in tourism spending by wedding guests is likely to create and sustain over 2,100 jobs in California...Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has thrown his support behind the court's decision, has said same-sex marriage will be good for the state's economy. "You know, I'm wishing everyone good luck with their marriages, and I hope that California's economy is booming because everyone is going to come here and get married," he told a gathering in San Francisco on May 21.

This kind of talk reminds me of the cost-benefit discussions of undocumented immigration. Like those claims that undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes, strain our health are and public education, and abuse our welfare system--these are all misleading and largely untrue, but they strongly support our country's anti-immigrant sentiment. They are based on the idea that undocumented immigrants bring us a little labor and lots of family.

In other words, undocumented immigration today is hypersexualized, feminized. Pure labor wasn't a problem when it was just the men coming to work on a seasonal basis, we happily incorporate undocumented male labor into our economy. Why not? It's pure gain for U.S. citizens; they work hard and don't demand rights because we keep them under fear through their undocumented status. But we resist children and pregnant mothers because they become our dependents. Immigrant labor brings wealth to our country, but immigrant children bring costs: they are a net loss.

On the other hand, gay marriage is being framed, in an economic sense, like the pure undocumented male labor that is good for California's economy. Gay marriage is about non-dependent adults. They work, they spend money.

It doesn't feel right reducing gay marriage to pure economic gain. I know there are people using this information as one of the pluses for heterosexuals to accept gay marriage, and I get that. But it's just weird, and how do gay people feel about this? The us/them mentality really stands out with gay marriage just as it does with immigration--what can "they" do for "us?"

I don't know, as long as gay marriage passes, its advocates should be happy. But the end result can't be the only thing that matters--it's good to at least take a good look at what measures are taken to get to that result.

"This is our version of ethnic cleansing.”

I wrote a blog post over at my blog the Mustard Seed on the rising fascism and racism in Italy:

Well, the neo-fascist state of the new center-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has wasted no time in manipulating the public’s fear and racism of “illegals” in his decrees of the removal of undocumented workers from Italy and new initiatives from the police force to expel immigrants and actually make it a criminal offense to come into the country without proper papers.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading when the Times (U.K.) reported:

This week’s assaults on Roma shanty towns by scores of youths on scooters and motorbikes wielding iron bars and throwing Molotov cocktails were sparked off by the capture of a 17-year-old Roma girl who last weekend entered a flat in Ponticelli and tried to steal a 6-year-old girl. Chased by the mother and neighbours, she had to be rescued by police from being lynched.

The city erupted in fury, with local women leading the marches on the Roma camps to the chant of “Fuori, fuori [Out, out]”. Night after night young men — allegedly acting on the orders of powerful local clans of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia — have set the sites ablaze, blocking attempts by the fire brigade to put out the fires, with exploding gas canisters completing the destruction. The women jeered at the firemen, shouting, “You put these fires out, we start them again”. (Italics mine)...(Read More)

"We Must Do Someting About Those Native Born Legal Citizens!"

I first heard about this on NPR but couldn't find the link to it, so here is the New York Times article about the study:

Immigrants in the state, about 35 percent of adults, are far less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group. Among men ages 18 to 40, the group most likely to commit crimes, native-born Americans were 10 times more likely than immigrants to be incarcerated for crimes in California prisons and jails. The study included both legal and illegal immigrants, without focusing separately on illegal immigrants. But it found that native-born American men ages 18 to 40 were at least eight times more likely to be imprisoned for crimes than Mexican immigrants in that age range who were not naturalized citizens — a group likely to have a high percentage of illegal immigrants.

So where's the press and the indignation of "native" born citizens over our most dangerous and menacing population in the United States, which is native born American citizens.

Opponents to immigration reform and to undocumented workers have been shouting for years about the "dangers" of "illegal" immigration, especially immigration from countries filled with brown people.

"OH THE HUMANITY! ALL THEM COLORED FOLKS!"

Obviously much of our suspicion was right all along. And this study is but one of the many things that proves it.

It's not surprising, however, that oppenents of immigrants "legal" or "illegal" will use scare tactics such as this to lash out against immigrants of color. Crime was one thing that kept whites riled up about newly freed Blacks (and still does mind you) in the 19th century; crime and drukeness was a propaganda tool that the white establishment used against the Irish; crime and fear of job losses was what whites also used against the Chinese in the 19th century and which helped pass the Chinese Exclusion Act; fear was used against Italian and other Eastern European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century, those crazy Italians and their strange Catholic and filth ridden ways would overrun "American culture" (i.e. WASP culture); and the list goes on.

Much of these peoples fears are mainly based on the fear of the "dark skinned man" which has been a sometimes subtle, and not so subtle, undercurrent in American history.

And, as we can see, it still goes on today. One of the main issues that many opponents of immigration (mainly immigration of people of color from underdeveloped countries) use is "lose of culture," and yet when they say "lose of culture" or the "Balkanization of America" they mean the undercutting of the dominant culture in the United States, which is White Anglo Saxon [Christian] Culture, which is the culture of the ruling elite.

Image From:
Welker's Wikinomics Blog

South Asians and Deportations in a Post-9/11 America

Found a good article on New American Media on the detention and deportation of South Asians in relation to "terrorism" concerns. Unlike some of the stereotypes of South Asian immigrants as being rich and getting jobs in the high tech and medical fields there are many South Asians struggle just to get by while working low wage jobs (especially in California) and these deportations hit many families hard.

The fear of possible detention and eventual deportation looms large in the minds of many immigrants in America today. For South Asians in America, the experiences of detention and deportation, exacerbated in the wake of Sept. 11, continue to take a significant toll on families.

South Asians in America are still experiencing the impact of government policies implemented after Sept. 11 that led to an unprecedented number of detentions and deportations. The names and descriptions of these post-9/11 policies differed -- the Alien Absconder initiative; “voluntary” interviews of 3,000 immigrant men from certain countries; and special registration – but their impact was alarmingly similar in nature.

Detentions and deportations of South Asians, predominantly men, have resulted in broken families and displacement of homes and businesses. In the post-9/11 environment, the largest number of detainees were from Pakistan. After special registration (the policy that required nonimmigrant males 16 years and older from certain countries to register with immigration authorities) ended, 13,000 of the nearly 83,000 men who complied were set to be deported, and 35 percent of those were of Pakistani descent...(Read More)

Latinos Equal Terrorists?

I was just listening to Latino USA on NPR and they were talking about the recent immigrant reform bills floating around Congress and anti-immigrant groups like the Minute Men.

It was reported that the Minute Men (What? No women?) claimed that over 40,000 Americans have been killed by "illegal" immigrants. I went to their website to check it out and sure enough I found this:

“Since 9/11 alone, about 45,000 U.S. residents have been killed in action via homicide or manslaughter at the hands of illegal aliens, and about another quarter of a million to 300,000 have been wounded,” Gilchrist told Cybercast News Service in an interview.

Gilchrist said he used the terms “killed in action” and “wounded” intentionally “because essentially, we have a war going on here that’s not a declared war, that’s not a conventional war, but it is costing us 9,000 lives a year.”

I haven't seen any real statistical data on this but to equate undocumented immigration with war and combat is pretty mind boggling.

In the report it was also stated that the Minute Men claim that our "open" boarders are paving the way for terrorists. But a interviewee on the program said that between 2002 (or 2004, memory hazy, will update soon though) and 2006 around 8,000 undocumented immigrants were detained by the U.S. and out of those 8,000 only 12-15 were suspected of having slight and remote ties with terrorism (terrorism in the broad sense I'm sure). So that's basically .18%. Hmmm...Some crazy and real threat we have there. Anyways.

When looking critically at issues such as immigration one has to look behind the rhetoric and use history as a guide to see how much of these fears are real and legit and how much stems from racism and the fear of people of color and non-English speakers. In my opinion (more on this latter) this is the true driving factor behind such insane rhetoric from anti-immigrant groups such as the Minute Men (see "Anti-Immigration Groups Cross Breeding With Hate Groups")

Latino on Black Ethnic Cleansing in L.A.? Not So

Tarso Luís Ramos writes an interesting article on the supposed "ethnic cleansing" of Blacks by Latino gang members in L.A. However, as Ramos reports, things aren't always as they seem. Especially when "the vast majority of gang crime has been and remains intra-racial—Latino on Latino and Black on Black—a fact often lost in the jumble of crime statistics, and media coverage that highlights racial conflict between communities of color."

Here are some excerpts from the article below:

“We need to go on the offensive to put an end to this idea of ethnic cleansing in L.A.,” declares Noreen McClendon, executive director of Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles. “It is not happening.”

McClendon—an African American who serves as vice president of operations for the Watts Gang Task Force—is upset about a recent deluge of news stories claiming that Latinos are “ethnically cleansing” their African American neighbors in southern California. The reports, which McClendon characterizes as dangerously misleading, have circulated widely in print, broadcast, and Web media, generating alarm in civil rights circles and unrestrained glee in those of anti-immigrant activists and white supremacists. In McClendon’s view, all this hype obscures some basic realities: “Gangs kill each other. Gangs kill innocent people.” The ethnic cleansing label, she says, “is blown so far out of proportion” with the facts on the ground.

...

In January that phrase, which had previously appeared on gang-watch websites, was suddenly everywhere following the Los Angeles Times’ publication of an editorial by Rutgers Law Professor Tanya K. Hernandez. Referencing the trial of Avenues 43 members, Hernandez pronounced Green’s murder “a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods.” Rather than explain this bombshell of a conclusion, Hernandez used the Green murder as an opportunity to present her thesis that Latino prejudices against African Americans often have roots in immigrants’ countries of origin–a subject on which she has published scholarly articles. This argument deserves consideration, but in presenting it as context for the charge of ethnic cleansing, Hernandez provided ammunition for those who would argue that Latinos, as a generalized whole, are a threat to African Americans and that the danger posed by new (read “illegal”) immigrants can be lethal. Ironically, the people actually charged with the Green, Bowser, and Wilson murders were members of Chicano gangs whose L.A. roots go back many decades.

Originally read on New American Media.

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Hip-Hop Music Classic

Police Brutality in (duh) L.A.

Angry Brown Butch blogs about (and has a video of) the recent violence during the May Day protests in L.A.:

I’d heard about the police brutality at the immigration protests in LA, but I didn’t see this footage until today. It looks like a warzone. It is a warzone - the police vs the people. It’s horrifying.

Something striking about this particular footage - even Fox News (albeit a local affiliate) showed the truth in a “fair and balanced” way. The LAPD really fucked up this time, it seems, by not only attacking the protesters, but also brutalizing members of the media, who have the ability to put the story out there and who can’t be so easily written off as unruly protesters or “anarchists.” Who knows, maybe some change will come after this. Not holding my breath, though.