N.L. writes politicized poem, gets crowd of thousands interacting on Day of Action for Immigration Rights - By N.L. Belardes
I don’t get writer’s block like other people claim to get. I believe such mental blocks are people admitting to themselves they have given up on a goal of completing a writing project. With that said, for about a week I had the words “Immigration! Interrogation!” in my head. The words played like a constant chant. I had visions of marchers, people screaming from 9-11 style Guantanamo interrogation, and of flashlights from interrogators shining on eyes like the flash of media cameras; there were visions of snakes and bugs. But what could such imagery and possible symbolism mean? The non-poem views of a poem? The serpent would not be evil then, but a symbol of goodness, of rebelliousness. Why not? America has done it before with the flag “Don’t Tread On Me”. Don’t tell me you don’t know. You studied the good serpent in grade school.
People who know me well know I have distinct dreams and visions that often make its way into literature. Maybe that’s why I write. I see visions in my head that I want to capture as poetry or prose. My Chicano novel, Thick White Crust explores the 9-11 dreams I had in fiction form: planes crashing, the Osama Bin Laden scene written the summer before 9-11 as “The martyr who never died.” Why did I write such terrorist images before the attacks? The title itself is a take on World Trade Center: Thick White Crust (WTC=TWC) with thick white crust being the alkaline soil of the Central Valley and the dusty film cast by crumbling New York towers. Why did I write about the possibility of a Latino American-borne terrorist and the transformation of my own life during and after 9-11? Why today is there such polarization in America, even among Latinos and Chicanos over issues that affect every ethnicity of immigrants? When I saw United 93 on Sunday, the dreams came back to me of why I wrote Thick White Crust. I relived part of the book in my head. I shook in the theatre after the surreal spiraling death scene of hopeless descent forged by freedom. I tried not to cry.
Too late.
United 93 was filled with fellow Americans; strangers united despite their backgrounds, ethnic or otherwise. A black pilot was killed. A white pilot was killed. A white woman, dead, and in the end, everyone murdered except for the idea of freedom in rebellious hands. And of the statistics of 9-ll planes crashing like bombs, or towers falling and smashing people and dreams, never do we hear how many illegal immigrants may have died in the restaurant on top of the world, or in the building itself. A cook, a janitor or illegal immigrant sightseer. For the sake of such tragedy, all 9-11 deceased except for the Arab terrorists who gave illegal immigration a bad name, are viewed as American casualties. And not all of them were illegal. Only three. The problem is much broader: why were some of them allowed to go to flight school? Why didn’t the government pursue possible suicide missions in the U.S. more firmly. You better believe that if the Cole bombing happened off the coast of Mexico, Latinos would be racially profiled, kept from ships and boats and planes. Police the questionable actions of people. Yes, even the illegals can be tracked.
When I arrived at the park I gave copies of my poem to Bo Caballero and event organizer/CSU Bakersfield professor, Dr. Gonzalo Santos. Dr. Santos said, "This is a powerful poem. It will affect people."
Speaking to the crowd at Beach Park, Bakersfield, California
Don’t be so paranoid about foreigners. Timothy McVeigh was an American and last I checked, the Civil War wasn’t sparked by terrorists. The Civil War had plenty of terrorist type of acts and that was American attacking American where hundreds of thousands died (around 500,000 in an America with much less population than today's America).
Be diligent. Don’t scapegoat all foreigners when America is guilty of attacking itself to the point of huge cemeteries of mass graves. Grant amnesty after background checks.
And don’t listen to those who cry about all illegal immigrants as potential terrorists. That’s just not a true statement. There are far more American-on-American violent acts in the U.S. every day. Don’t you read the papers? Even our own armed forces have criminals.
When I had my poetic visions I could see a crowd yelling the words “Immigration! Interrogation!” But why? What did such words really mean to me?
I had to explore.
Poet Tim Z. Hernandez recently said to poets in Merced, California that writing a poem is about exploring space in unique ways, that instead of discovering what you might think is the poem surrounding you, often such explorations should explore the exact opposite of space, the negative space, the non-poem (listen to Buck City #34: Valley Writers Unite!).
What was the non-poem about in the Day of Action for Immigration Rights? I asked myself after hearing the chants in my head. I realized that the poem of the event was what Bo Caballero ended up giving, an endearing poem about immigrants as ghosts in America, who are there but not there. His poem asked what Americans would do without such people.
After all, that is what the day meant: what would a day be like without immigrants.
But what was the non-poem side? Was there a space to be explored in the realm of politics and immigration? Either way, I was on a path to write a politicized poem. Either exploratory path of non-poem or poem still meant a poem, a rhythm, a chant, an ideological address to the hearts of people within the social consciousness and social fabric of America.
I took intellectual, ideological constructs of early America patriotism, immigration, and inverted such thought into a distinctly Central Valley exploration of false interrogation, envisioning a mass of people hidden behind the patriotic flag of "Don’t Tread on Me", with marchers like the very serpent that symbolized America rebelling against European convicts sent to America. After all, old Benjamin Franklin joked that in response, Americans should send rattlesnakes back to England.
I had been seeing so many serpents of marchers, snaking rebelliously into downtown Bakersfield, their images captured by media, their collected mass like a body of scales to protect the rights of the immigrant serpent: the rebellious “Don’t Tread On Me!” with their main symbols as flags, not representing superior countries but of the melting pot of ethnicities who love the American Dream.
As a friend of mine said: “If people are already here, then why not make them legal so you can track them? Don't you want them tracked? Here in the Central Valley we dealt with this before. Okies worked the land too. And they were treated like scum…”
Ahh, the rebelliousness of the serpent… a snake in the sun, gleaming, threatening a bite of a boycott just to say, “Don’t Tread On Me!” When America was British. Yes, that would be colonial America. People considered themselves British, they yelled "Don't Tread On Me!" too...
I finally finished the poem sometime after midnight. It was early on May 1st, the day of action itself. I sat at my computer, satisfield that my writing captured the visions I had been seeing...
Interacting with the Beach Park crowd...
Immigration Interrogation
By N.L. Belardes
(May 1 2006)
Immigration! Interrogation!
In our Central Valley the immigrants and their descendants gather.
Recently they huddled in the streets, chanted in the parks, rallied in the spring and rain,
Marched like a serpent—wound into downtown Bakersfield,
Every man, woman and child a scale on the snake’s back.
The serpent of “Don’t Tread on Me”
Remember the flag of rebellious unity?
Rebellious patriotism for a country not to take over.
But to be a part of.
Listen to the people of the Central Valley:
Mexican. El Salvadorian. Hmong. Filipino.
Basque. Burmese. Ethiopian. Eritrean. Indian. Chinese.
Russian. Israeli. Japanese. Pakistanian.
How many do we list of more than 190 countries?
Immigration! Interrogation!
On a day of action, listen to the media talk.
Quietly turn on your cable television.
Listen to the rhetoric.
Hear the senators balk.
They say immigrant languages are not worthy.
Yet we sing love songs in every language.
Oh but not of your love for your nation.
Immigration! Interrogation!
Peace be to you.
But listen as the rhetoric questions us.
Peace be to the peoples in the spotlight.
Interrogated in the doorway to America.
Detective Bush putting on his dark glasses of law-speak.
He says. “I think people who want to be a citizen of this country
ought to learn English
and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem
in English.”
Peace be to you Bush,
Unappreciative of love songs to America.
Unappreciative of true amnesty;
Freedom for the poor who seek the life of liberty.
Immigration! Interrogation!
In Asian countries there are so many oppressed,
who make their way to America.
In China, cycles of revolution that saw Tianamen slaughter hidden,
but hinted to televisions.
An example of cultures afraid to march for the rights of man.
We march for them.
An immigration declaration of rights of man.
A rite of self-passage, of multi-ethnic passage…
What would a New Millennium modern Thomas Jefferson say
About the rights of such men, women and children?
Oh Mr. Jefferson, your ghost walks through the fruit-filled valley,
A transcendent America;
A new revolution in thought for immigrants,
For a multi-cultural people to be a part of one nation,
Under God, with life, liberty, happiness and property.
Don’t tread on me! Don’t tread on me!
Yes, we can say it too.
E pluribus unum!
Do you know the meaning?
Say to yourself: out of many, one.
Immigration! Interrogation!
Listen to the interrogation rhetoric
That questions the declaration of rights of many men.
Instead of out of many, one,
E pluribus unum becomes ‘out of one are many wrongs’ by immigrants.
That is the immigration interrogation,
The flashlight in your eyes that tries to make you think your beliefs are wrong.
Are you wrong? No.
Immigration! Interrogation!
People of the Valley, immigrants are not demons.
But be careful, people have been demonized,
interrogated as devils in your own backyard.
In the Central Valley a land of interrogation, of Mean Justice,
Where the planting of one false book about Satanic oppression
caused false interrogations to be spawned;
And the cover-up cost the entire nation.
In the Southern Central Valley
People paid dearly for years of false court cases!
The power of false interrogation, of false confessions,
The Great Salem witch hunts of Bakersfield!
Making the innocent into illusions of child molesters,
Satanic ritual abusers!
Scapegoats for the interrogators,
Memories planted into emotionally damaged children,
ruined careers,
and 15 million dollars spent on demonization
that the media believed.
That America believed.
That was false!
Immigration! Interrogation!
Immigration demonized as the new American ritual abuse daycare!
Immigrants are not looking to be babysat!
Take your welfare accusations away from the employed immigrants!
Immigrants are not a group in need of a welfare daycare!
Falsely accused in the new American witchhunt,
The false interrogation of millions of so-called devils.
Listen to the rhetoric, paranoid of multi-cultural flags of unity.
Demonizing culture.
Don’t tread on me, interrogators!
Don’t tread on me!
Wearing your white robes,
hiding lawyers underneath, and painting immigrants Lucifer neon red.
Don’t tread on me!
Stay tuned for a lot more on The Day of Action as I write on the entire day, including podcast interviews, and my interactive poem at the event…
People who know me well know I have distinct dreams and visions that often make its way into literature. Maybe that’s why I write. I see visions in my head that I want to capture as poetry or prose. My Chicano novel, Thick White Crust explores the 9-11 dreams I had in fiction form: planes crashing, the Osama Bin Laden scene written the summer before 9-11 as “The martyr who never died.” Why did I write such terrorist images before the attacks? The title itself is a take on World Trade Center: Thick White Crust (WTC=TWC) with thick white crust being the alkaline soil of the Central Valley and the dusty film cast by crumbling New York towers. Why did I write about the possibility of a Latino American-borne terrorist and the transformation of my own life during and after 9-11? Why today is there such polarization in America, even among Latinos and Chicanos over issues that affect every ethnicity of immigrants? When I saw United 93 on Sunday, the dreams came back to me of why I wrote Thick White Crust. I relived part of the book in my head. I shook in the theatre after the surreal spiraling death scene of hopeless descent forged by freedom. I tried not to cry.
Too late.
United 93 was filled with fellow Americans; strangers united despite their backgrounds, ethnic or otherwise. A black pilot was killed. A white pilot was killed. A white woman, dead, and in the end, everyone murdered except for the idea of freedom in rebellious hands. And of the statistics of 9-ll planes crashing like bombs, or towers falling and smashing people and dreams, never do we hear how many illegal immigrants may have died in the restaurant on top of the world, or in the building itself. A cook, a janitor or illegal immigrant sightseer. For the sake of such tragedy, all 9-11 deceased except for the Arab terrorists who gave illegal immigration a bad name, are viewed as American casualties. And not all of them were illegal. Only three. The problem is much broader: why were some of them allowed to go to flight school? Why didn’t the government pursue possible suicide missions in the U.S. more firmly. You better believe that if the Cole bombing happened off the coast of Mexico, Latinos would be racially profiled, kept from ships and boats and planes. Police the questionable actions of people. Yes, even the illegals can be tracked.
When I arrived at the park I gave copies of my poem to Bo Caballero and event organizer/CSU Bakersfield professor, Dr. Gonzalo Santos. Dr. Santos said, "This is a powerful poem. It will affect people."
Speaking to the crowd at Beach Park, Bakersfield, California
Don’t be so paranoid about foreigners. Timothy McVeigh was an American and last I checked, the Civil War wasn’t sparked by terrorists. The Civil War had plenty of terrorist type of acts and that was American attacking American where hundreds of thousands died (around 500,000 in an America with much less population than today's America).
Be diligent. Don’t scapegoat all foreigners when America is guilty of attacking itself to the point of huge cemeteries of mass graves. Grant amnesty after background checks.
And don’t listen to those who cry about all illegal immigrants as potential terrorists. That’s just not a true statement. There are far more American-on-American violent acts in the U.S. every day. Don’t you read the papers? Even our own armed forces have criminals.
When I had my poetic visions I could see a crowd yelling the words “Immigration! Interrogation!” But why? What did such words really mean to me?
I had to explore.
Poet Tim Z. Hernandez recently said to poets in Merced, California that writing a poem is about exploring space in unique ways, that instead of discovering what you might think is the poem surrounding you, often such explorations should explore the exact opposite of space, the negative space, the non-poem (listen to Buck City #34: Valley Writers Unite!).
What was the non-poem about in the Day of Action for Immigration Rights? I asked myself after hearing the chants in my head. I realized that the poem of the event was what Bo Caballero ended up giving, an endearing poem about immigrants as ghosts in America, who are there but not there. His poem asked what Americans would do without such people.
After all, that is what the day meant: what would a day be like without immigrants.
But what was the non-poem side? Was there a space to be explored in the realm of politics and immigration? Either way, I was on a path to write a politicized poem. Either exploratory path of non-poem or poem still meant a poem, a rhythm, a chant, an ideological address to the hearts of people within the social consciousness and social fabric of America.
I took intellectual, ideological constructs of early America patriotism, immigration, and inverted such thought into a distinctly Central Valley exploration of false interrogation, envisioning a mass of people hidden behind the patriotic flag of "Don’t Tread on Me", with marchers like the very serpent that symbolized America rebelling against European convicts sent to America. After all, old Benjamin Franklin joked that in response, Americans should send rattlesnakes back to England.
I had been seeing so many serpents of marchers, snaking rebelliously into downtown Bakersfield, their images captured by media, their collected mass like a body of scales to protect the rights of the immigrant serpent: the rebellious “Don’t Tread On Me!” with their main symbols as flags, not representing superior countries but of the melting pot of ethnicities who love the American Dream.
As a friend of mine said: “If people are already here, then why not make them legal so you can track them? Don't you want them tracked? Here in the Central Valley we dealt with this before. Okies worked the land too. And they were treated like scum…”
Ahh, the rebelliousness of the serpent… a snake in the sun, gleaming, threatening a bite of a boycott just to say, “Don’t Tread On Me!” When America was British. Yes, that would be colonial America. People considered themselves British, they yelled "Don't Tread On Me!" too...
I finally finished the poem sometime after midnight. It was early on May 1st, the day of action itself. I sat at my computer, satisfield that my writing captured the visions I had been seeing...
Interacting with the Beach Park crowd...
Immigration Interrogation
By N.L. Belardes
(May 1 2006)
Immigration! Interrogation!
In our Central Valley the immigrants and their descendants gather.
Recently they huddled in the streets, chanted in the parks, rallied in the spring and rain,
Marched like a serpent—wound into downtown Bakersfield,
Every man, woman and child a scale on the snake’s back.
The serpent of “Don’t Tread on Me”
Remember the flag of rebellious unity?
Rebellious patriotism for a country not to take over.
But to be a part of.
Listen to the people of the Central Valley:
Mexican. El Salvadorian. Hmong. Filipino.
Basque. Burmese. Ethiopian. Eritrean. Indian. Chinese.
Russian. Israeli. Japanese. Pakistanian.
How many do we list of more than 190 countries?
Immigration! Interrogation!
On a day of action, listen to the media talk.
Quietly turn on your cable television.
Listen to the rhetoric.
Hear the senators balk.
They say immigrant languages are not worthy.
Yet we sing love songs in every language.
Oh but not of your love for your nation.
Immigration! Interrogation!
Peace be to you.
But listen as the rhetoric questions us.
Peace be to the peoples in the spotlight.
Interrogated in the doorway to America.
Detective Bush putting on his dark glasses of law-speak.
He says. “I think people who want to be a citizen of this country
ought to learn English
and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem
in English.”
Peace be to you Bush,
Unappreciative of love songs to America.
Unappreciative of true amnesty;
Freedom for the poor who seek the life of liberty.
Immigration! Interrogation!
In Asian countries there are so many oppressed,
who make their way to America.
In China, cycles of revolution that saw Tianamen slaughter hidden,
but hinted to televisions.
An example of cultures afraid to march for the rights of man.
We march for them.
An immigration declaration of rights of man.
A rite of self-passage, of multi-ethnic passage…
What would a New Millennium modern Thomas Jefferson say
About the rights of such men, women and children?
Oh Mr. Jefferson, your ghost walks through the fruit-filled valley,
A transcendent America;
A new revolution in thought for immigrants,
For a multi-cultural people to be a part of one nation,
Under God, with life, liberty, happiness and property.
Don’t tread on me! Don’t tread on me!
Yes, we can say it too.
E pluribus unum!
Do you know the meaning?
Say to yourself: out of many, one.
Immigration! Interrogation!
Listen to the interrogation rhetoric
That questions the declaration of rights of many men.
Instead of out of many, one,
E pluribus unum becomes ‘out of one are many wrongs’ by immigrants.
That is the immigration interrogation,
The flashlight in your eyes that tries to make you think your beliefs are wrong.
Are you wrong? No.
Immigration! Interrogation!
People of the Valley, immigrants are not demons.
But be careful, people have been demonized,
interrogated as devils in your own backyard.
In the Central Valley a land of interrogation, of Mean Justice,
Where the planting of one false book about Satanic oppression
caused false interrogations to be spawned;
And the cover-up cost the entire nation.
In the Southern Central Valley
People paid dearly for years of false court cases!
The power of false interrogation, of false confessions,
The Great Salem witch hunts of Bakersfield!
Making the innocent into illusions of child molesters,
Satanic ritual abusers!
Scapegoats for the interrogators,
Memories planted into emotionally damaged children,
ruined careers,
and 15 million dollars spent on demonization
that the media believed.
That America believed.
That was false!
Immigration! Interrogation!
Immigration demonized as the new American ritual abuse daycare!
Immigrants are not looking to be babysat!
Take your welfare accusations away from the employed immigrants!
Immigrants are not a group in need of a welfare daycare!
Falsely accused in the new American witchhunt,
The false interrogation of millions of so-called devils.
Listen to the rhetoric, paranoid of multi-cultural flags of unity.
Demonizing culture.
Don’t tread on me, interrogators!
Don’t tread on me!
Wearing your white robes,
hiding lawyers underneath, and painting immigrants Lucifer neon red.
Don’t tread on me!
Stay tuned for a lot more on The Day of Action as I write on the entire day, including podcast interviews, and my interactive poem at the event…
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Tuesday, May 02, 2006.
You can leave your response.
What a powerful poem... an enlightening historical perspective, and a much needed message.
I don't know how you spoke to all those thousands of people, I would have passed out from nervousness for sure.
Some interesting facts from the mecca(L.A.)of all people searching for a new life in our great land.
• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.
• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.
• The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.
I'll keep getting to the bottom of this whole thing and have an answer for the world shortly. According to all the crime survey's I've been reading, we really don't need a law that makes illegal immigrants felons, they're doing a fine job on their own.
THANKS, Bro for standing up for
what you belive in. Stuck up here
with no transportation, was no fun,
but always with you in spirit. Will
show this to Sabine, Austin &
Johnathan. They and I are very
proud of you. Keep up the great
work, we do have a great heritage
to be proud of, LOVE, Cathy Belardes Warren
Yes, do background checks!!
Great article! Thanks Nick.
Keep up the good work, hermano.
paz, Tim
"We're Illegal, not criminals"...
Yeah, some braniac painted that on a sign the other day for the rally.
I'm not even going to pursue that double reverse slogan any further.
Is it me, or am I just failing to see whats really going on here.
Wow Nick...Powerful doesn't even begin to describe your poem (non-poem) Before I read what came from your soul I was really on the fence over this whole immigration issue. Being of Basque descent (yes my family was one of the many Basque immigrants to settle in the Bakersfield area) I knew where I should be standing on the issue, but was confused and felt pulled in many ways. You helped me find my way over the fence and understand from a new perspective. I'm so thankful to you!
You're stereotyping because 'illegal' connotates negative images in your mind, kind of the way a lot of people stereotype 'punk' as drugged up sleezes who vomit onstage and shoot heroin for lunch while singing anarchy songs.
Yeah, So, What's wrong with that?
Illegal means Illegal... Right or wrong, in our society it means simply what it says... Illegal.
Where is the stereo-type in that?
Just as the term 'punk' takes very different meanings, so does a word like 'illegal' in the english language and in the area of law. Court cases get hung juries all the time because folks disagree over what may be 'illegal'. Here is just one example: Joey rescues a man from a burning house who would have died had he not been there, but there is a law that states people in Joey's town cannot enter burning buildings unless they are emergency personnel. Is Joey a hero? or does Joey's illegal act make him a criminal? And what if that was your relative he rescued?
We would all applaude Joey for his bravery and heroics.
However, this is hardly a comparable example...
I think you reached a bit there homey.
I don't know what to tell you, Heath. I used a perfect example. Why? Because the majority of illegal immigrants have full-time jobs and pay taxes and are not criminals. By your own logic you agreed illegal isn't always criminal, or criminal intent because you would have applauded Joey. 'Illegal' is a word that depends on how laws are interpreted by lawyers and juries. Such words are extremely complex. For illegal immigrants granted amnesty in the past, what would you call them? Criminals who got a free pass? No. You would not define them as such. And you would not call people criminals unless they were criminals, or unless they were convicted of being a criminal. If all illegal immigrants were criminals, why would anyone employ them at all? Who wants to employ people you can't trust? Do you think the majority of people who come to America don't want to work and don't want to be trusted? Is that why people come to America? Because it's a land of criminals and no trust? Most people want to work and be trusted. Criminals don't work on trust.
You are scapegoating people as criminals when the majority of them are only illegal citizens employed and trusted.
Wow!!! Are you pissed at me or Kenny?
I pointed out a sign that was nothing more than an oxy-moron. Didn't call the person holding it a criminal. There has been no scapegoating, nor stereotyping from my end of it. I was pointing out a stupid ass sign, thats it.
Oh, and yes I did say that Illegal means Illegal. However, I did not say that every illegal act committed is done so at the hand of a hardened criminal.
I don't understand the whole point with your "Joey story" metaphor. I would applaud this character you speak of, he may not be a sworn peace officer or fireman, but he preserved the life of another human being (a hero some might say). So, maybe I'm completely fucking dumb here, but I ain't make the connection. You were talking of illegal immigrants being taxpayers and lawful citizens, leave Joey's heroics out of it.
Being a woman of Hispanic descent and a mother I understand how people of nations less fortunate than ours, risk it all to make a new life for themselves, their children and their children’s children. My immediate relatives were born into this Country, the home of the free and the brave, none the less I am sure that within my bloodline there were a few “wetbacks” willing to break both Mexican and American laws to seek a better means. Is this brave? Are they now free? My response is no. Entering this country and infringing upon the supreme laws of the land and social norms is nothing more than chicken shit. What is so difficult about setting a good example for your children, bravery comes in the form of fighting the system, legally, not crawling through a tunnel at night, risking a loss of innocent souls. As for Freedom? Who is really free? Not a one of them…
Constantly running from the law.
The bottom line here is, that a law is a law is a law. Throw in any unrealistic law and run with it. It is to my understanding that Kern County has or once had, a law stating that two or more women living in one house hold is considered a brothel. Are these women then, whores? I say no. Are they criminals? You bet your ass they are! Good ‘ole boy Joey is a hero, but after all the smoke has settled, he is a criminal by that jurisdiction’s statutes, and it should be left up to the prosecutors within that jurisdiction to determine his out come. HE INFRINGED UPON A LAW SET FORTH BY THAT COMMUNITY.
Social norms dictate what is acceptable, what society is willing to tolerate. At this point society is fed up with the shenanigans of illegal immigrants. If we need people to pick our grapes and pour our concrete, then let them do it legally. I haven’t taken the time to do extensive research on the subject, but I’m sure that the pros of housing illegal immigrants do not outweigh the cons.
I’ve worked hard for what I have. I’ve seen the effects of illegal immigrants first hand from the eyes of a welfare caseworker, police officer, and teacher. Americans, of the legal kind, are suffering the consequences in the form of higher taxes, higher crime rates, and higher classroom sizes all at the expense of people, whom do not have a legal right to be here.
It has become evident through legislation and active lobbying that illegal aliens are no longer accepted by society.
For lent I’ll give up grapes.
-Ramona Dobbler
Let's take a step back:
I'm not pissed at anyone. This is just a friendly debate. In fact the point I agreed with Kenny is that, yes, there should be background checks. You pointed out what you believe and I made an analogy. The analogy was to illustrate a general term regarding your comment about this phrasing: "We're Illegal, not criminals". I think I made my point very well, by illustrating that illegal doesn't always mean illegal as you indicated... but depends on perspective. That was the point: that illegal depends on perspective: defense, prosecution, judge, laws, time period, and so on. Because, if illegal always means illegal, then fictitious Joey would be found guilty for sure, regardless of his heroics.
And so goes my overall point, that when illegal immigrants are no longer illegal and given amnesty or whatever, then what's the deal? How can you say illegal always means illegal if the state of being an illegal immigrant can change? Illegal immigrants have been given amnesty in the past in many many cases... and since that has happened in the past, your point is null that illegal always means illegal.
Kenny tosses out some stats but doesn't link where he got them, which to me makes them suspect. If your going to post stats, link where you got them..simple..and it gives credibility to them..that way we know your not full of shit and pulling them out of your ass.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 63 percent of Americans now support legalization of immigrants who have lived here for a certain number of years. A new CBS News poll found that 74 percent of Americans favor letting illegal immigrants who have been in the country at least five years stay and work in the United States, provided that they pay a fine, pay any back taxes they owe, speak English and have no criminal record.
The conflicted nature of the acceptance comes in other poll findings that show that Americans still believe immigrants are a major drain on national resources. A Time magazine poll found that 84 percent of Americans were "very" concerned (61 percent) or "somewhat" concerned (23 percent) that it costs taxpayers too much to provide health care and education to immigrants. A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll found that 87 percent of Americans say they are concerned that immigrants "overburden government services and programs."
But the evidence is becoming clear that it is justified that immigrants give us more than a grain a day. They give their dollars. They are an inseparable and indivisible part of the economy.
In articles in The Tax Lawyer, a publication of the American Bar Association, and in the upcoming issue of the Harvard Latino Law Review, Francine Lipman, a professor at Chapman University's law school in Orange, Calif., writes that the widespread belief that undocumented immigrants cost us more than they give us is "demonstrably false."
In her review article, Lipman wrote that there are 7 million undocumented workers, which is 1 out of every 20 in the United States. Such undocumented workers live in households in which the average annual income is $27,400, compared with nearly $48,000 for legal immigrant families.
They cannot access or easily access many public services, yet in 2003 alone the labor of undocumented workers poured $7 billion in taxes into Social Security, even though they cannot legally claim those benefits. Lipman calls this "an abyss in federal relief for hard-working, poor families. Undocumented working-poor families have higher effective income tax rates than their neighbors who enjoy higher income levels."
They perform jobs that are inseparable from our standard of living. Undocumented workers are about 5 percent of our overall labor force, but according to the Pew Hispanic Center's analysis of Census data, they are between 22 percent and 36 percent of America's insulation workers, miscellaneous agricultural workers, meat-processing workers, construction workers, dishwashers and maids. The American Farm Bureau, the lobbying group for agricultural interests, says that without guest workers, the United States would lose $5 billion to $9 billion per year in fruit, vegetable and flower production and as much as 20 percent of production would go overseas.
Often ignored by anti-immigration forces is the fact that undocumented workers pay sales taxes and real estate taxes--directly if they are homeowners, indirectly if they are renters. Analysts at Standard & Poor's wrote recently that there is no clear correlation between undocumented families and local costs, as the states with the highest numbers of such families also have relatively low unemployment rates, high property values and strong income growth, "all of which contribute to stable financial performance."
Except, of course, for the undocumented families themselves.
Standard & Poor's wrote that the least we could consider in this debate is to redistribute the $7 billion contributed by undocumented workers into Social Security. It said, for instance, that the money could go toward the estimated $11.2 billion it takes to educate the nation's 1.8 million undocumented children. Better still is to take the people who give us a grain a day in the shadows and let them flower in the sunlight of legalization.
Ramona, nice opinion. But I already made my point. A clear point as well. The issue is a humanitarian issue regardless of how illegals come into the country. If you don't side with Joey's heroics to save your relative in the burning house analogy, then you are just plain inhumane and an isolationist toward people of other countries. It's America and you have a right to your opinion. As for me, I take the humanitarian side.
So..don't tell me the illegals don't contribute..do not tell me they don't pay taxes and do not tell me they take more than they give..any asshat w/half a brain that can read the stats I just tossed out along with where I got them, should be able to do the math.
Ramona, I'm so glad you brought up police officers as a credible perspective on the idea that illegal means illegal. If illegal means illegal, then how come I always see cops not use their signal lights when turning, and speeding when not headed to emergencies? Who gives them tickets?
If illegal means illegal "INFRINGED UPON A LAW SET FORTH BY THAT COMMUNITY" as you have stated, then how can America even think to tell Iran to stop with the nuclear activity when it isn't illegal in their community?
Hey Dobblers, if illegal means illegal, then how can America launch a war on Iraq in Operation Freedom, spend billions of dollars doing so, then not allow open borders between America and Iraq? Because if illegal means illegal, then shouldn't free mean free?
My point is clear, words are complex, with diverse meanings. Study history, law, political sciene, international relations, cultural studies, etc., and you will learn many many definitions and interpretations for the term, "freedom".
You know, Freedom to someone might just mean two feet of leash.
I wonder how many illegals are in Iraq or working in all the global oilfields that supply America with petroleum products used in make-up, gas, plastics, and so on... might as well get angry at the entire world for there being dislocated peoples employed in companies everywhere that make products that Americans use. Oh, you mind paying taxes, but don't mind people being exploited globally for the products you use on a daily basis?
More people should be non-humanitarians, don't you think?
Hey NL..I think the Dobblers are in the minority opinion regarding illegals becoming citizens. THey are also part of the group polled that hasn't got a clue about the contributions made to our economy by the illegals..damn shame aint it?
That was from City Journal winter 2004. here's the link http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_alien.html
Careful though! I just pulled it out of my ass so it might be slippery.....
You guys can whine about this crap all you want, but the bottom line is this. Reform is coming. You might not approve of all of it's components, but it will come and it is very much needed. You guys won't understand no matter how much your crybaby whiney asses argue. March to friggen Guam! There will be reform in this country. love Kenny, the Patriot
Dusty, NL...A SI ES! LOS DEJARON CON LA BOCA CERADA!
NL the burning building example is right on point. You are doing a hell of a good job out here. You will he remembered.
This is a human rights issue.
"Illegals have certain ianlienable rights."
Kenny, you must of pulled it out of your ass..because your link doesn't work..
Kenny and his resources appear to be nothing more than "DAVID IRVING" and his misleading, doctored, unfounded studies on Hitler and WWII (See Richard J. Evans, "Lying About Hitler, to know more about bullshit reports, biased researchers, and and unfounded evidence and resources with no credibility).
Ramona, I'm pretty sure you would feel completely different if your ancestors hadn't made their way into the USA by any means necessary. And it's unfortunate that you can't appreciate that.
I guess that is what happens though. A few generations later you forget what your grandparents did to make you sure their grandchildren had a better life. And it's so sad when the younger generations can't appreciate that.
I am here legally because of the Amnesty. My daughter wishes those illegals would just go back to their own country. I told her "Ok, well, then you better get to packing. But only the essentials, just like I did when I made my way illegally into this country."
This issue has stirred up a lot of conversation between me and my teenagers. And for that I am grateful.
If your relatives did not risk everything to ensure you had a better life than the one they could provide in Mexico, or wherever it is they migrated from... then I can understand your resentment towards us.
I can understand how you feel we are trespassing on your land. But when you freely admit that you wouldn't be here if it weren't for your illegal ancestors, then your stand on this issue confuses me.
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