Here We Go Again

About five years ago, I thought I made headway with a friend on the issue of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Like many MAGA devotees, this friend, a real friend whom I have known for more than forty years, could rattle off the names of victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants as if they were his own grandchildren. As you might expect, these names formed the backbone of his argument that all undocumented people in this country should be deported, extenuating circumstances be damned. 

One name he failed to mention, because his story was not reported on Fox News, was that of a relative of mine by marriage, my wife's cousin. He was killed as he was driving with his wife from a wedding in Chicago to their home in suburban Milwaukee, when their car crashed head on with a car driven by a man going the wrong way on an interstate highway as he was being pursued by the police. Fortunately, my cousin-in-law's wife managed to survive the crash, meaning their two young boys who were thankfully home at the time, were not left orphaned. As these things so often go, the perpetrator of this tragedy who was intoxicated, also survived.

He'll have plenty of time to think about his actions that terrible night while he sits in an American prison, before he is sent back to Mexico where he'll most likely have more time on his hands to contemplate. 

I brought this up with my friend just to let him know that I did in fact, have skin in the game when it comes to the subject of undocumented people in this country committing crimes. I wanted to point out to him that despite the unspeakable tragedy of the senseless death of a loving husband, father, brother and friend, I do not hold all undocumented people in this country accountable, only one. 

That's the way it goes with human beings. If you take a representative sample of any group of people, then make a graph that measured the quality of their character, you'll inevitably come up with an enormous bell curve, with a handful of exemplary people at one end, an equal number of despicable people at the other, and a whole mess of people like my friend and me, average folks somewhere in the middle. 

Then I pointed out for every undocumented alien who commits a crime, there will inevitably be at least one who did something remarkable in the service of others. It's just that for some reason, their story doesn't get reported very often, especially on the ultra-right-wing media outlets my friend and millions of folks like him gravitate toward. 

Nonetheless, my friend seemed to get it. That is until our next argument when again he parroted off the names of all the American victims whose story he heard on Fox. 

Well today, you-know-who is about to become president again and he is promising mass deportations starting tomorrow, his first full day in office. With it will come some justice I suppose along with unimaginable human suffering. And I'm willing to bet my firstborn that none of this will do one iota to improve the lives of the American people as promised. 

The new president, the first and hopefully last Felon-In-Chief, plans to start deporting people by the way, right here in Chicago for reasons I can only assume stem from his animus toward this city. I don't know why he hates us so much, one of our largest buildings proudly displays his name so it can be seen for miles around. 

He loves that kind of shit.

But I digress.

When I told my friend that for every undocumented resident who commits a crime, there is at least another who does something remarkable to help someone else, it seemed so obvious that I just let it rest at that. Now I have something to back it up. Last week as Los Angeles was burning uncontrollably, this story came across the wires. (so to speak). 

Be sure to read it.

In a nutshell, as people were forced to evacuate their homes and their communities for their own safety, another group rushed in to help them. In addition to the first responders who were heroically doing their job, there were many others who volunteered to help put out fires in order to help save homes that hadn't yet caught fire.

Many of these people were undocumented. Here's the money quote. Israel Garcia from Guatemala made this comment as he was in the middle of saving a stranger's home:

I don't know who lives here, I don't know if they had children. But if they did, I'm thinking about what the children are going to feel when they come back and see that their house is gone. And I ask myself, how would I feel?

Interestingly enough, just now as I went in search of an article to share with you, I googled "undocumented immigrants help put out fires in LA." Dozens of articles with the story came up. Not surprisingly, none of them came from Fox. The lone article that popped up from that beacon of "fair and balanced journalism", as they once described themselves (but not anymore), was an article with the headline: "Man arrested near LA fires with a 'possible' blowtorch was an illegal immigrant." I read the article and so far, at least at its writing, the man had not been charged with anything.

And so it goes.

In other news, this month we said goodbye to Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States. Due to circumstances largely beyond his control, Carter was perhaps not our best president but was without question, our best former president. Jimmy Carter was a man of remarkable good will and charity, someone who took to heart the fundamental teaching of his faith, that is to say, love your neighbor, even if he is your enemy. 

Present at his funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. were all the living presidents, including one current and one future, as well as one recently deceased. These six men, as a representative sampling of Presidents of the United States are a good example of the bell curve of human nature. At the one end, representing exemplary character is Jimmy Carter.

At the other end, well let's put it this way, enjoy the next four years. 

Rhyming History

Here's an apt quote for the day, one often mis-attributed like so many others, to Samuel Clemmons, aka Mark Twain:

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

The following is an even better quote which is in fact from Mark Twain:

It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.

Re-examinging one of the most famous and significant chapters in Chicago history in preparation for a forward to a book I have been asked to write, I've been struck by how issues that tore our city and country apart almost one and one half centuries ago, still resonate today. Not that we re-construct history brick by brick, but it's clear that we create the same problems for ourselves over and over and over again.

The event is the Haymarket Affair, the late nineteenth century struggle for workers' rights which led to a disastrous confrontation between workers and the police on May 4th, 1886. Eight police officers and an untold number of protestors died as a result of a bomb thrown toward a phalanx of officers as they tried to break up an otherwise peaceful rally in Haymarket Square on the near west side of the city. The business community as well as the general public, who were influenced by biased and incendiary coverage in the local media, were shocked and appalled by the deaths and demanded that the organizers of the event, most of whom were not even present when the bomb went off, pay with their lives for the deaths of the police officers. Even though the identity of the bomb thrower was never known, four men, all well known leaders of the workers' rights movement, Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel and Adolph Fischer, went to the gallows on November 11th of the following year. A fifth defendant, Louis Lingg, cheated the hangman by committing suicide the night before his scheduled execution. Three other defendants had their sentences commuted and were eventually pardonned.

Today the trial that condemned the five men known to this day the world over as the Haymarket Martyrs, is by and large considered a sham, a show trial, and a gross miscarriage of justice, with neither the judge nor the jury making any attempt to disguise their prejudice against the defendants and their cause.

Obviously we don't hang people anymore for allegedly inciting riots, so we're not, literally at least, repeating that part of history. Yet reading about the buildup to the Haymarket Affair, one cannot help but see the connection to current events such as pitting the rights of one group of people against another, the role and the mistrust of police in society, and most important, the resentment, fear and sometimes outright hatred of newly arrived immigrants to this country. In fact the anti-immigrant rhetoric spewed by prominent members of nineteenth century society, while perhaps a trfile more bellicose, seems to hauntingly reflect the statements of some current day pundits on the subject .

Consider these words from lead States Attorney Julius Grinnell in his closing argument at the Haymarket trial. Describing how scores of working people in Chicago, mostly German and Bohemian immigrants would react should the "jurymen unjustly acquit the anarchists", Grinnell told the jury...

...all the slimy vermin who have taken cover in the holes and byways of the city during this trial, will flock out again like a lot of rats.

That statement was met by a cheer of approval from spectators at the trial as well as from members of the jury.

A particularly vocal critic of the workers movement was former Chicago mayor and owner of the Chicago Tribune, Joseph Medill who once wrote in an editorial in his paper about the day when he joyfully imagined:

...communistic carcasses decorating the lamp-posts of Chicago.

Granted the threat of violence from the workers as witnessed by the Haymarket Riot was real, but much of it was a reaction to violence committed agaisnt striking workers by the police and by private security companies hired by the companies they were striking against. In fact the May 4th  Haymarket rally was a direct response to the killing of striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works complex on the south side the day before. Parsons and Spies, who had both been radicalized by the brutal treament of striking workers, spoke at the rally. It is said that Spies only agreed to speak if the mention of protestors arming themselves was deleted from pamphlets advertising the event. After Parsons spoke to the assembled crowd, he left the rally and was not present at the time of the bomb blast. One of the condemned, George Engel, was at home playing cards during the entire event. Only two of the Haymarket defendants, Spies and Samuel Felden who was speaking at the time the police began their advance on the crowd, were present at the time of the blast.

So what was all the fuss about? The issue was fairly simple; the over-riding concern of the workers was the enofcement of a state law banning companies from forcing their employees to work more than eight hours per day. That law which was put into the books in 1867 had no teeth, and was consequently all but ignored. The argument of the industrialists was that no one was forced to work for them and there were plenty of people in those economically depressed times willing to replace striking workers. The argument of the workers, who were paid on average $1.50 per day which was cut by 25 cents during particularly difficult times, was that such demanding hours, often 12 to 15 hour days, six days a week, essentially enslaved the wage earner to his job which didn't provide him the time to develop other skills in which he could enrich his life and better his situation. In other words, the struggle was between the rights of the capitalists to make the rules in their own compnies and the rights of the workers to earn a fair and living wage under reasonable and humane conditions.

Like Spies and Parsons, the newly arrived immigrants from central Europe and Scandinavia, many of whom were already aquainted with the work of Karl Marx and other writers promoting radical change, were deeply concerend by the over-zealous reaction of the powers-that-be, and the ruthless sometimes deadly force used against them by the police. The few who chose to arm themselves, admittedly encouraged by people like Spies and Parsons, did so for their own self-defense.

Not surprisingly, native born Americans, many of whom could only claim one or two generations of American ancestry themselves, reacted bitterly to this new wave of immigrants. Because of the relative few who committed violent acts, they painted all immigrants who came to these shores with the simple intent to better their lives, with a very broad brush, protraying them as  interlopers who seemed hell-bent on destroying the American way of life.

Sound at all familiar?

It may be legal, but is it right?

Our laws are not created equally. Some laws on the books are deeply rooted in our moral and ethical principles. Others exist for the protection of the public, while others still, exist for merely practical purposes. Some laws embody all three principals while others, only one or two.

Sometimes, one of those principles, contradicts another. This past February 19th, we marked the 75th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, where two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave the Secretary of War, the authority to establish...

...military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion.

The result of this order was the rounding up, forced relocation, and incarceration of tens of thousands of Americans, the majority of them US citizens, who traced their ancestry to the nations who were at war with US the time, namely, Germany, Italy, and Japan. While many German and Italian Americans were rounded up and incarcerated for the duration of the war, the vast majority of Americans who were affected by this order, were of Japanese ancestry.

Despite the fact that there was little or no question of their loyalty to the United States, for the stated purpose of national security, the entire west coast was declared off limits to Japanese Americans, which happened to be where most of them lived at the time. Persons with as little as 1/16th Japanese ancestry were rounded up, had their property confiscated, and were forced to move to inland government relocation (concentration) camps located in remote portions of Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado Utah, Arizona,  and Arkansas. There, roughly 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent would remain under lock and key until Roosevelt suspended his executive order late in 1944.

Japanese American Grocery, Oakland, California, 1942.
Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

That same year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Executive Order 9066. In their ruling in the case known as Korematsu v. United States, the Court declared that as we were at war at the time, the president, whose power being conferred by Congress, indeed had the authority to "demand that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily." As it was not integral to the specific case presented, the court punted on the issue of the legality of the incarceration of 100,000 plus Japanese Americans without due process, on top of their relocation.

The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is truly a dark moment in US civil rights history. That fact was acknowledged years later as subsequent presidents rescinded the order (Gerald Ford), created committees to investigate the matter (Jimmy Carter), signed a piece of legislation, known as the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which authorized reparations payments to surviving internees, (Ronald Reagan), and actually presented payments and a formal apology (George H.W. Bush) to the survivors.

The shameful treatment of Americans of Japanese heritage, while it may at the time have been viewed as a necessary evil for the security of the homeland for two and one half years, turned out to have been a failure on all counts. From a practical and strategic standpoint, the displacement and imprisonment of over one hundred thousand people took up a massive amount of resources that could have been effectively used in the war effort. There is little or no evidence that Japanese Americans were any less patriotic than any of their fellow countrymen, or posed any threat to national security, which made the action utterly pointless.

Of course, both those arguments pail in comparison to the collapse of American moral and ethical principles that resulted in the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

I bring this up not to imply that the current administration's dealings with immigrants compares in its magnitude of transgressions to this tragic moment in American history, but only to illustrate that the laws our government makes, do not always reflect our moral values.

With that in mind, I question why opponents to the current president's first and second travel bans are arguing against them strictly on legal grounds. I understand that the fate of act two of his travel ban is ultimately in the hands of the courts, who themselves can only rule based upon the constitution and legal precedent. From my very limited understanding of the law, the president can legally impose restrictions upon certain groups of people for a limited period of time. In regards to the ban, Donald Trump did himself no favors during the campaign when he proposed a ban on Muslims entering the United States which in itself, is patently illegal. Those words have worked against him as his proposed ban of travelers from originally seven, now six predominantly Muslim nations, inevitably comes down the question of whether the ban is in fact a ban on people of a particular religious creed. The president insists the ban is not a religious ban, but he is constantly betrayed by his own words from the recent past.

I have no idea how the courts will rule on the new "and improved" ban, they could very well allow it on legal grounds, as would be their prerogative should they find no constitutional reason to rule against it.

But there are much deeper questions involved than legal ones. As I see it, there are no moral imperatives for immigration laws, they exist solely for practical reasons and to a lesser extent, public safely. Therefore the implementation and enforcement of such laws should be based upon honestly questioning their efficacy in achieving the goals set for them, a serious assessment regarding their costs vs. benefits, and most importantly, a heartfelt consideration of the moral implications of the actions. No law should be enforced simply for its own sake, and no action should be taken, just because it can be.

So to answer the issues I just presented one by one, no, I don't believe the travel ban currently on the books will make us safer. I firmly believe it will almost certainly alienate an ever growing number of the world's Muslims whose assistance we need to help us in the efforts to defeat groups like ISIS and al Qaeda, and who. regardless of statements to the contrary, will see the motivation of the order of the president to be a ban on Muslims. I can't imagine a greater recruitment tool for terrorist groups than Donald Trump. Singlehandedly he is doing all their hard work for them.

Secondly, I see the extremely broad scope of this ban to be the equivalent of performing an appendectomy with a chain saw. True, you may remove the offending organ, but you will also do tremendous damage to the rest of the body. Affected by this ban will be countless individuals who perform vital services to this country, such as doctors who serve in rural areas where native born MDs refuse to serve, as well as teachers, researchers, scientists and other essential professionals, not to mention tourists from all nations who are realizing that the United States is not the welcoming place it once was, and have already altered their travel plans.

Most important of all is the moral issue of refusing entry of refugees who are only hoping for a chance to live their lives in peace. These people have already gone through a rigorous vetting process in order to enter this country. I have no problem if the vetting process needs to be a little more rigorous as long as we can protect the safety of these people. But we do not want to repeat another shameful episode from World War II, the refusal of Jewish refugees from Germany who were ultimately sent back home to their deaths in the concentration camps of the Third Reich.

As I mentioned in my last post, the administrations before this one were very conscious and pro-active regarding the varied issues regarding immigration. While unfortunate and even tragic occurrences have taken place in this country at the hands of people not from this country, with the exception of the events of September 11, 2001, none of them come close to what could be considered a national emergency, or a crisis that requires a drastic response. Despite what the president wants us to believe, home grown terrorism, criminal behavior, and general hooliganism are more prevalent issues today in the United States than "bad hombres" coming from abroad.

If we have learned anything from the 9/11 terrorists, it is that people intent on doing harm to the Unites States of America are smart, and very resourceful. Strongly motivated and resourceful adversaries will not be stopped by closing our borders to immigrants, they always will find ways to get in. To stop them we need help from our allies, especially those in the Muslim world who themselves are the greatest victims of the Islamic terrorists. The current president's decrees are nothing more than misguided attempts at a show of strength, directed at his base as proof that he is fulfilling campaign promises. Trump's saber rattling antics will do nothing to make us safer. On the contrary, the ill will generated from them will only intensify anti-American sentiments around the world and will serve as a launching pad for the recruitment efforts of terrorist groups.

Military leaders have made this perfectly clear but our president, who during the campaign, claimed "he knew more about stopping ISIS than the generals", apparently is not listening.  Teddy Roosevelt famously used the phrase "speak softly and carry a big stick", to describe his philosophy of foreign policy. It would appear that Donald Trump's philosophy is this: Bloviate as loud as possible and carry a limp biscuit. He is like a chess player who thinks you win the game by knocking over all the pieces.

I strongly believe that this president's draconian efforts to curtail illegal immigration, deport undocumented residents of long standing, prohibit travel into this country for people from specific countries, and severely limit the inflow of refugees from war torn nations, will do nothing to protect the safety of Americans. Rather, they are counterproductive, and have the very real potential of causing grave damage to this country. I believe that the costs, both in currency and far more important, in human lives, health, prosperity, not to mention our moral credibility, far outweigh the miniscule benefits.

His efforts may in the end may be ruled legal, but no way in hell are they right. 

Immigration Man

The core argument over immigration goes something like this:

Statement: This is a nation of immigrants. Remember, all of us, either we, or our ancestors, came from someplace else. 

Response: We're not against immigrants, as long as they are here legally.

In theory, that response makes perfect sense; this is a country of ample, but limited resources. Simply put, we do not have enough resources to accommodate everyone who wants to immigrate to the United States. Therefore, government makes laws regulating the number of people we allow into this country every year. And if we make those laws, it is incumbent upon us to enforce them, After all, it makes no sense to force people to jump through hoops and other obstacles to get into this country legally, while looking the other way for those who don't.

Unfortunately like most issues, reality is different from theory. The reality is that there are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States at the moment. Approximately two thirds of them have been living here for ten years or longer. As a simply practical matter, the amount of effort and resources it would take to deport all those people would be staggering. Even more daunting is the ethical issue. Most of these people work, pay taxes, and contribute in other important ways to the communities in which they live. Many of them have children who were born in this country making them US citizens. Mass deportations of established residents would mean uprooting and separating many of these families, causing them and their communities tremendous hardship.

Ah you say but those people willingly came here knowing the risks of not playing by the rules; their suffering is not the fault of the US government, but their own. While there is some truth to this, the reality is that the US government has in fact rightly or wrongly looked the other way when illegal immigrants have proven beneficial to American industry and the economy. If you're all gung-ho about stricter immigration control, ask yourself this question: how would you feel about paying ten dollars for a head of lettuce, or for that matter, a similar exponential price increase for any product manufactured in the United States.

In other words, it's a complicated issue.

We wouldn't be talking about this at all, were it not for the current president who has put immigration at the top of his agenda. Last week he gave a speech to the American people before a joint session of Congress. As part of his "dog and pony show",  de rigueur for such proceedings, he dragged out no less than three relatives of people who were killed by illegal immigrants. What could be a better symbol of the "American carnage" he described at his inauguration, than law-breaking foreigners invading this country and killing our sons, daughters, wives and husbands? It's a tailor made issue for an ambitious politician, eliciting support by inciting fear and anger amongst would be constituents by creating an enemy that, even better, doesn't vote.

Not to diminish the pain and suffering of the victims' relatives, but again, the reality of the situation does not live up to the president's hyperbole. Statistics show time and again that immigrants, legal and otherwise, are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. Which only makes sense when you think about it, most people move to this country in order to better their lives. Most of them truly want to be here, therefore are less likely to jeopardize their status, or blow their cover, by getting into trouble.

That is not to say that of those 11 million undocumented people, there aren't exceptions. As supporters of the current president love to point out for reasons only they understand. under the Obama administration, more people were deported from this country than under any previous administration. Most of those were apprehended either in close proximity to the US/Mexico border as they attempted to cross, or were convicted of crimes. In fact right now, there is a negative flow of immigrants between Mexico and the United States, as more Mexicans are returning home than entering the US. It might seem reasonable looking at those statistics to believe that the US government has indeed taken the problems of illegal immigration seriously all along, and that as far as stemming the tide of alien criminals coming into the country taking away opportunities from home-grown criminals, its efforts are working.

Yet in his infinite wisdom, our current president is not convinced, or at least wants the American people to not be convinced. In the words of one of his executive orders, many immigrants continue to "present a significant threat to national security and public safety”.

Therefore according to him. we still need to build a great wall (paid for by Mexico), intensify the rounding up and deportation of undocumented residents, impose a draconian travel ban on people from specific countries, and perhaps most cruel of all, severely limit into this country, the number of refugees fleeing countries where their lives are in jeopardy.

Now you may be reading this and thinking: "man this guy is completely out of touch. He has no idea what it's like to lose someone to a person who shouldn't be in this country." Well actually I do. Two years ago, my wife's cousin, the father of two boys, exactly the same ages as my children, was killed in a head on collision. The driver of the other car was drunk. He was pulled over by a state police officer for driving the wrong way on an interstate highway. He took off as the trooper approached his vehicle. When he hit my wife's cousin's car, he was reportedly traveling in excess of 100 miles per hour. My wife's cousin was killed instantly and his wife was critically injured. Thankfully she survived, leaving her alone to care for her two fatherless children. 

Over and over again I've thought if only this undocumented, criminal jackass had been deported before he had the opportunity to commit homicide, a tragedy would have been averted and my wife's cousin would be alive today.

I'm guessing that had the authorities known what this guy was about to do, action could have, or at least should have been taken. Unfortunately, crystal balls are not very effective, and the drunk, homicidal driver, who may or may not have committed any other crimes in his life, slipped through the cracks. Three of his victims, the young widowed mother and my kids' cousins, could themselves have been guests of the president in the House of Representatives last week. The man who killed her husband and their father is a poster child for the anti-illegal-immigrant hysteria that has taken over this country.

Yes it's true, illegal aliens have killed American citizens. It's also true that other illegal aliens have done some pretty wonderful things during their stay in this country, no doubt they've even saved some lives. Had the good people been deported, who knows what would have been the outcome for the recipients of their good deeds. That's human beings for you, for every large group of them, you can be sure to find a few bad apples along with a few exceptionable ones, and a whole bunch of them who just like of the rest of us, are trying to get by, minding their own business.

One thing is certain, undocumented residents who have performed acts of charity, kindness, or heroism, will never be invited into the chambers of the House of Representatives during a presidential speech, at least not under this president's watch.

To be continued here.