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“Would the French accept people singing the ‘La Marseillaise’ in English as a sign of French patriotism? Of course not,” said Mark Krikorian, head of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports tighter immigration controls.

The quote goes with a story about a Spanish recording of the Star Spangled Banner, which we think is a cool idea. What’s really funny about the quote is the way the French are suddenly back in style as models of American patriotism. Without any prejudice to the French people, this is surely a sign of right-wing desperation.
When the French refused to follow us to war, the redneck right insisted on having “freedom fries” (instead of French fries). But now that red-white-and- blue bigotry is busy turning the war machine homeward, well golly, French patriotism (or some ideologist’s projection of it) is invoked as the gold standard of nationalist purity. In either case, what the yokels need most from the French is support for all-American instincts to violence and intolerance.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once explained that confronting social evil is a lot like treating a big blister. At some point, you have to let the bad juices flow. If it’s the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish that serves as the needle in this case, then so be it. It is a sign of coming health to watch these poisonous attitudes flow.

As for the French, let us be clear. On the bus ride down Mirabeau B. Lamar Boulevard this morning, I was very much enjoying my Cambridge Companion to Foucault, a philosopher who would no doubt have delighted in the contemplation of bilingual liberation, and who would have most probably joined in.

“But that’s so gay”? Oui, exactement.–gm

4/26/2006 6:51 PM
By: Allie Rasmus
News 8 Austin

Manuel Mendez was working at a construction site Wednesday morning in Round Rock with dozens of others when two immigration enforcement cars pulled up. People have heard stories about it, but until now there have been few eyewitness accounts of immigration raids taking place in Central Texas.

Mendez said the officers asked him for proof of U.S. citizenship.

“I told them no, because I had left it in my wife’s car this morning when she dropped me off,” he said.

That’s when Mendez said the uniformed men told him he’d have to leave his work site — in handcuffs. But there’s one problem. Mendez is a U.S. citizen born and raised in Austin.

“They told me to put my hands behind my back because they didn’t have proof I was a citizen. But then I gave them my Social Security number,” he said.

A U.S. citizen says he was questioned and suspected of being an undocumented worker.

Mendez said the officers cleared him once they double checked his Social Security number. The incident comes on the heels of dozens of unconfirmed reports of immigration raids in Central Texas. But Mendez said he can’t believe he was questioned simply because of his ethnicity.

“They singled me out because I was Hispanic, and they thought I was not from here, they thought I was from Mexico,” he said.

Barbara Hines of UT’s Immigration Law Clinic said stopping someone solely on race is illegal, but others say it’s legal for immigration officers to stop and question someone based on their race and other factors, such as where they work, their manner of dress and language ability.

While immigration officers have the right to approach you, everyone has the right to refuse to answer questions. Hines said it’s difficult to get people to understand that.

“It’s very hard to teach people that you have the right to say, ‘no,’ because the general instinct is that if someone comes up to you you’re going to answer those questions,” she said.

It was clear the encounter had a chilling effect on workers at the Round Rock site. By the afternoon only a handful were still there. Mendez said he can’t blame them; he’s just surprised it happened at all.

The U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Department will not return calls to confirm or deny they’re responsible for the immigration raids.

But a press release issued last week on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Web site said the agency has launched a “comprehensive immigration enforcement strategy” that includes enforcement on worksites.

http://www.news8austin.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=160728

By Jose Angel Gutierrez

Originally published en espanol in La Estrella newspaper of Fort Worth, reprinted by permission of author.

The idea of an economic boycott by immigrants in the US on May 1st is a good one. The economic might of immigrants, legal or not, in the United States is two-fold: labor power and consumer power. California Gov. Pete Wilson proposed and supported Proposition 187 which contained the basic anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant provisioins of the current James Sensenbrenner bill that passed the US House of Representatives last December 2005. In both cases persons of Mexican ancestry in the US rose in opposition and organized massive protests.
The idea of a national boycott was discussed by various leaders and attempted. I know some of us put up signs on our doors then: No Compro/No Trabajo. The media then like now said our boycott was ineffective. Employers then like now told employees they would be fired if they did not show up for work or participated in protests. Nothing much has changed.

If you want to change public policy and law, you must challenge it and be prepared to pay the consequences. In this case who is really needed? Is it our labor that is more important or is it that we have a job that is more important?

Several so called “leaders” are flying off to Mexico to discuss how to stop the boycott. President Fox is not interested in upsetting the dialogue and relations between him and Bush. Mexico is the largest trading partner of the US in the Americas.

Immigrants of all types, Cuban, Indian, Vietnamese, Dominican, Mexican, Salvadoran, Polish, Greek, etc. earn money in the US and send some to their homeland. These remittances save the US government lots of money in foreign assistance they do not have to send those governments. And these government get this money “free” without any effort. They enjoy the benefits of these immigrants working outside their country.

I do not know how effective the boycott will be but two things are sure. First, US workers will once again join the rest of the world in celebrating May 1st as the Day of the Worker internationally. The US government broke away from that tradition to split US workers from the international community and allows Labor Day on the first Monday in September. The US government shot and killed labor protestors during the Haymarket Riots in 1896. Thereafter, organized labor in the US chose to celebrate on another day not in May.

Second, economic boycotts work best when you have a specific target. A target in 1987 was Disney Corporation because they gave money to the advocates of Proposition 187. In 2006 the target some boycott organizers suggest ought to be is James Sensenbrenner. He is the heir to the Kimberly Clark fortune. They make Kleenex, Kotex, Depends, Scott tissue, Pull-ups, Huggies, Little Swimmers, Viva, and Cottonelle products. We all use them at sometime.

There is also Kimberly Clark de Mexico, SA. If Sensenbrenner does not want Mexicans in his midst then why should Mexicans buy his products?
Third, some of us will pay the price and boycott. I will not work that day. I will show a movie during a lunch hour at the university where I work about the greatest tennis player of all time, Pancho Gonzalez. Come visit, it is free on May 1, noon, University Hall Room 121 (University of Texas – Arlington).

By Jose Angel Gutierrez

Originally published en espanol in La Estrella newspaper of Fort Worth, reprinted by permission of author.

I read several newspapers recently and pieced together a growing pattern across the country: deportation raids against Mexicans are with us again. The Border Patrol is not raiding plants and employers looking for illegal Asians or Africans or Canadians. The Border Patrol is only hunting for Mexicans. It is the hot topic.

This is nothing new but it is alarming as always. The human cost is terrible on the person deported, family, relatives, and especially children. The US has recruited Mexicans with one hand dating back to the beginning of 1910s. The US welcomed Mexican labor coming across fleeing the Revolution of 1910. The Border Patrol was not even in existence then. It came about in 1925.
In the 1920’s Mexicans were deported because they were forming labor unions in the US. Labor organizing in the US means communism to the business people and their hired politicians. US Attorney General Palmer deported many Mexicans in what he called the Palmer Raids.

During the Depression of the 1930s Mexicans were once again deported because we were taking jobs from “Americans” and asking for welfare. Everyone was looking for a job and welfare then but we were the scapegoats. When World War II broke out, the US needed labor and the Bracero Program began in 1942. We were welcomed then provided we worked like slaves for cheap wages and no benefits. The program lasted until 1964.

In the middle of the Bracero Program, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the deportation of Mexicans once again in the 1950s. The program was a military excercise called Operation Wetback. In the 1960s President Kennedy created the Alliance for Progress for Latin America and recognized all of us as Americans. In the US, white people believe they are the only Americans. But the Cuban Revolution broke out and again Mexicans were pushed out in favor of Cubans coming to the US.

In the 1970s President Reagan sent troops in to Central America and many refugees came to the US. In 1986 the US Congress attempted to legalize some immigrants and deport those that were not eligible. Since then, the Border Patrol has been on constant raid posture.

I am alarmed not at the deportations but at the new contract to build detention centers given to Halliburton Corporation, the company Vice President Cheney worked for before this position. The Halliburton subsidiary, KBR has received $385 million dollars to build more detention centers.

The press release from http://www.Halliburton.com reads: “the contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment exisiting ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S. or to support the rapid deployment of new programs.”

In the middle of World War II, the US government ordered the arrest and detention of thousands Americans of Japanese ancestry because they might be disloyal to the US. The US government did not arrest Italians, Spaniards, or Germans and they were at war also. I wonder if the “rapid deployment of new programs” is an election plan before November to conduct massive raids and roundup thousands of Mexicans in a get-tough display of power?