Lady Liberty's Welcoming Message

Huffington Post blogger Ian Gurvitz thinks we need a new motto for the plaque affixed to the Statue Of Liberty. Here are a few of his suggestions:

"Thank you for your interest in the United States of America. Unfortunately, at the moment we're not seeing any new people. Leave your resume with the receptionist and we'll get back to you should our staffing needs change."

"Keep your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Send us your supermodels and soccer players. Ok, keep the soccer players."

"Light of freedom, my ass. It's a blowtorch. So just turn the boat around..."

My suggestion:

"America, the land of the manipulated and the home of the yahoos. Enter at your own risk."

Jim

America: Great No More

Here is our current domestic policy on "illegal" immigrants, according to the New York Times:

Catch the few you can, and harass and frighten the rest. Treat the entire
group as a de facto class of criminals, and disrupt or shout down anyone or any
plan seen as abetting their evildoing.

Not only are we engaged in an illegal war and occupation abroad and torturing prisoners, but here at home we are demonizing millions of people who came here seeking the promise of a better life that has always been what America has stood for, that is, until recently.

What has happened to our country?

PHOTO: Abe Lincoln memorial statue...what would he think about what we have become?

Jim

Nativist Senators Kill The Immigration Bill

I've seen a few interesting short videos on the net lately. Did you see the one of the UK rugby team acting up on a Saturday night out drinking spree? Take a look here.

I also enjoyed the video of hunky singer Enrique Iglesias serenading a gay fan at a gay pub in London last Saturday. You can view that one here.

38 Republicans joined 11 Democrats in scuttling the immigration bill that was hammered out by a bi-partisan group of senators over a period of months. The New York Times sums up the aftermath pretty well:

The anti-immigrant hard-core — no amnesty today, no amnesty tomorrow, no
amnesty ever — must not be allowed to hold the nation hostage. Like nativists of generations
past, they think the country is being Latinized, and they fear it. The country is changing,
but the way it always has, absorbing newcomers, shaping and being shaped by
them, inexorably turning them, their children and grandchildren into
Americans.

Bad-boy Republican right wing fanatic senators were particularly noteworthy for their obstructionism. Jim De Mint, a name that we should recognize as one of the Senate's worst homophobic bigots, said plainly that he was in favor of anything that would kill the bill. He joined two other Republican homophobes, Jeff sessions and John Cornyn, in helping to kill the bill. It may not have been a perfect bill, but it seems like the right wing prefers to do nothing rather than enact anything with humane provisions recognizing that it's people that we're talking about, not "illegals."

Photo: a new addition to our garden this year, a variety of Peace rose.

Jim

Immigration Compromise

8:00 AM: On Fire Island we have a shrub called the Beach Plum covering the dunes. In mid Spring the Beach Plum produces a beautiful white flower. For a week or so it looks like winter has returned because the dunes look like they have a covering of light snow. Eventually, the flowers turn pink before withering. In the late summer the Beach Plum produces fruit that is edible. Some people collect the fruit and make jam. I'd like to try that sometime.

The immigration compromise legislation hammered out by a bipartisan group of senators and the White House seems to have merit. Anything that the rabid right immediately attacks must have some good points. It will be interesting to see how the senate debate unf0lds on this one. The right wing nut cases are opposed to anything humane, such as a plan to allow undocumented aliens to stay and work toward citizenship, which they consider "amnesty." They conveniently forget that undocumented workers do the work that few others would do for wages that few others would accept. The businesses that have hired these workers for so many years and profited from their cheap labor will suffer no penalty, so why should the workers themselves pay a heavy penalty?

Jim

Immigration: Just Throw Them Into The Streets!

7:00 AM: Happy Mother's Day to my own mother and to all the Moms out there!

The good citizens of Farmer's Branch, Texas just voted overwhelmingly to make it illegal to rent living quarters to undocumented aliens. It seems as though property values in the town were not keeping pace with surrounding communities. The blame for this, of course, is the high number of undocumented workers and their families living in the town. If the new ordinance ever takes effect (it has been challenged in court,) landlords will be forced to evict undocumented workers and their families, or face fines.

The issue of undocumented immigration is a problem to be sure. We do need to find solutions that will enable us to address the problem in a humane fashion. However, throwing entire poor families out into the street is not the answer. The right wing has made this one of their red meat, hot button issues. This is pure and simple, a resurgence of nativism, another disgraced ideology, like Social Darwinism, that extremists on the right are using to create a new bogeyman and yes, once again, distract the public. Combine nativism, add a dose of xenophobia and throw in a little racism, and there you have it: the right wing's answer to undocumented immigration. Throw "them" into the streets!

How cruel can some of these people on the right be? Take a family like the one I saw interviewed on TV yesterday, a father who does construction work, his wife, and their two kids. They live modestly in a sparse but clean small apartment in Farmer's Branch. The father is working hard to make a living for his family. He can do better for them in Farmer's Branch than he can in Mexico, thanks in no small measure to U.S. trade policies which make it lucrative for our businesses to exploit foreign workers by keeping wages low in Mexico and elsewhere. What father would not do whatever he could for his wife and his children? No matter, we have to throw them out of their living quarters so that our property values recover, say the good Texans of Farmer's Branch.

This is a bad law that demonstrates, once again, that fundamental human rights for all people, whether they are "documented" or not, should never be put to a popular vote. The Founders understood this, and that's why we have a Constitution. The good citizens of Farmer's Branch need to read it. They also need to stop being cruel and heartless.

Photo: Red fox cub peers out from under the walk where her den is located.

Jim