[News] Of Immigrants and "Real Amurkans"

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

May 30, 2006


Reflections on the Rage of the Ridiculous


Of Immigrants and "Real Amurkans"

By TIM WISE

According to a recent survey, more Americans can name the characters 
from The Simpsons, than can recall the rights protected by the First 
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, while roughly one in 
five Americans could name the Simpsons characters, only one-tenth of 
one percent could name all five freedoms protected by the First 
Amendment. Only one in four could name more than one of the protected 
rights therein, and more people could name the three American Idol 
judges than could name three First Amendment rights. Even freedom of 
religion--one of the better known freedoms guaranteed at the outset 
of the Bill of Rights--was only recognized by twenty-four percent: 
just slightly higher than the percentage who could name Homer, Bart, 
and the rest of the gang. Even more embarrassing, one in five 
actually believed that the "right to own a pet" was part of the First 
Amendment (1).

In and of itself, this survey may not be of much interest, seeing as 
how it is just one more in a litany of such studies, demonstrating 
the woeful ignorance of the American public on all kinds of important 
matters: science, geography, you name it, and the odds are we'll get 
it wrong. After all, in a society that values its people more as 
consumers of products than as civic-minded citizens, the fact that 
the masses have been kept in a state of suspended intellectual 
animation is hardly surprising.

But what makes this kind of thing truly fascinating is to consider it 
within the context of the currently raging debates over immigration. 
After all, from the anti-immigrant camp one regularly hears yelps and 
screams about how Mexicans, in particular (and especially 
undocumented migrants) refuse to learn "our ways," or assimilate to 
"our culture." We are bombarded with hateful vitriol about their 
contempt for USAmerican culture, and the English language, and warned 
that if immigration continues at current levels, the culture of our 
nation will be forever changed.

To which one can only ask--given how intellectually bankrupt that 
culture is at present--so the hell what? If being a good American 
means having a deep appreciation for the institutions of the United 
States (and assuming that one recognizes the Constitution as such an 
institution, over and above Nick at Nite, Nancy Grace or MTV) then 
it's pretty clear that those currently residing here fail the test of 
good citizenship. How many times do we have to watch Jay Leno go out 
on the streets of New York and ask "real Americans" to identify the 
Attorney General, or Secretary of Defense (which of course, they 
routinely cannot do) before we stop all the silliness about how 
outsiders are bringing the country down? And speaking of the Attorney 
General--a legal Latino in the parlance of the times--despite being a 
citizen in good standing with the right, one might wonder just how 
committed he is to the Constitution, given his own past musings on 
the legality of torture, wiretaps and electronic monitoring of others.

Are these the persons to whom undocumented migrants are being 
compared unfavorably? Are these the persons to whom we would rather 
entrust our nation's future, just because they were born here? Are 
you kidding me? These are folks for whom the test administered to 
persons seeking to become citizens legally, through the 
naturalization process, would prove too difficult. Most of us 
couldn't answer half the questions put to persons seeking to join us, 
yet we deign to critique others as not being sufficiently committed 
to Americanism, whatever that means?

Well, if Americanism means not being able to identify members of the 
highest court in your land, or know how many amendments to the 
Constitution there are, let alone what they say, or know who becomes 
President in the event of the death of both the President and 
Vice-President, then perhaps we need less Americanism, and more of 
whatever might replace it. If being an American means knowing who won 
each season of Survivor, or who the host of Fear Factor is, but not 
knowing what the Federal Reserve Board does, then we should do away 
with Americanism, and quickly.

If being an American means a greater likelihood of recognizing 
Britney Spears, than being able to point out Great Britain on a map, 
or being more likely to know what sex acts Paris Hilton engaged in on 
her home video, than being able to name the most famous museum in 
Paris, France, then we might as well blow up this God-forsaken place 
now and start over from scratch, because we are in serious trouble.

Hell, an influx of immigrants could only improve the extent to which 
the U.S. public knew U.S. history, since those elsewhere almost 
always seem to know more about it than we do. Surely, they would be 
smarter (or at least less gullible) than the eighty-five percent of 
American soldiers who apparently still believe they are in Iraq to 
"avenge Saddam Hussein's role in the 9/11 attacks"(2). And surely 
they could be of no worse character than the deceptive and 
duplicitous "Real Amurkans" who sent those soldiers there, under 
false pretenses, in the first place.

In fact, when it comes to character and behavioral tendencies, 
Mexicans often look quite a bit better than the rest of us. According 
to numerous studies, immigrants from Mexico and other points South, 
actually have lower crime rates than their U.S.-born counterparts, 
and are more likely to abuse illegal narcotics the longer they stay 
in the United States--which is to say the more they become like us 
(3). If anything then, it is "Americanism" that is the problem.

And as for "learning to speak English," who are we to lecture others? 
In a nation where citizens have made a comedic superstar out of a 
hayseed like Larry the Cable Guy--whose tag line, "Git 'er done," 
suggests a fan base in desperate need of going back and finishing 
high school--demanding that others learn to speak the mother tongue 
seems a bit silly. In a land where the President regularly mangles 
simple sentences in ways that would make a third grade grammar 
teacher palpitate, can we really do worse by having several million 
Mexicans join us?

Hell, "real Amurkans" don't even know what it means to be a member of 
their little club in the first place. So consider a recent survey, 
conducted by researchers at Purdue University, in which fifty-four 
percent said that one needed to be a Christian in order to be a real 
American (with four in ten believing this strongly), and nearly 
eighty percent said that military service is what makes one "truly 
American": a requirement that would exclude most males, and virtually 
all women in the country (4). With such an ignorant conception of 
national citizenship, why should anyone listen to the views of such 
persons when it comes to who should, and should not be able to enter 
the nation and gain membership on equal terms with others?

To make the point even clearer, my great-grandfather was one of those 
who came to this country "legally," though the fine upstanding "real 
Amurkans" of his time certainly didn't make it easy. In fact, at 
first, they turned him away and sent him home. Just so happens, the 
ship he was on entered New York harbor in 1901, shortly after 
President McKinley had been assassinated. Unluckily for him, 
McKinley's killer was the son of Eastern European immigrants, and 
being a ship filled with Russians, officials decided those aboard 
were undesirables and should be made--at least for the 
moment--illegal. After being forced back to Russia, it would take him 
nine more years before he would be able to save the money to make the 
journey again.

That "real Amurkans" felt they knew best who should and shouldn't be 
allowed into the U.S.--and that he didn't qualify, irrespective of 
his personal character, about which they could have known nothing at 
the time--tells me all I need to know about this bunch: those who 
insist that they and they alone are the best arbiters of who should 
be allowed into their country. Their judgment in this regard has 
always been lousy. It was lousy when they turned that boat around 105 
years ago; it was lousy when they passed Asian exclusion laws that 
remained in effect for roughly eighty years, and it is lousy today. 
These "real Amurkans" are among the most dangerous and deluded 
persons on the planet, and persons whose beliefs about damned near 
anything should be questioned as a matter of course: the kind of 
people whose judgment is so notoriously shitty, that if one of them 
tells you the sun is shining, you'd do well to glance upward just to make sure.

And yes, I know, these real Amurkans, however uninformed they may be 
about the culture they seek to "defend" from others, will insist they 
are only asking for adherence to the rule of law: one institution 
that they insist must be respected above all others. It's not that 
they dislike Mexicans. Goodness no! It's just that so many of them 
are coming illegally, and we are a law-abiding people who believe in 
playing by the rules.

Somewhere, the spirit of an Arapaho mother is laughing its ghostly 
ass off at that one, joined in her chorus of amusement by tens of 
millions more: Narragansett, Pequot, Lakota, you name it--all pissing 
themselves at the irony right about now.

There is, as the saying has long held, honor among thieves, be they 
bank robbers, one supposes, or those who steal whole continents. Like 
the descendants of those who confiscated North America, and who now, 
without any sense of misgiving or just plain old fashioned 
embarrassment, think nothing of saying how their ancestors came here 
legally, and that this is what makes them different, and one assumes, 
better, than those who come now from Mexico without adequate papers.

Of course, those who insist their ancestors came to America legally 
ignore a crucial point: namely, if one was of European descent, there 
were no real limitations on immigrating to the U.S. blocking your 
way. In other words, all white folks could come legally, and, in 
keeping with the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1790, become 
citizens within one year of entry, making the need for illegal 
subterfuge remote. To say that one's great-great whatever followed 
the law, when in truth there was no law to follow (or to break) is 
more than a bit disingenuous.

To be honest, the entire argument about the illegality of many 
migrants coming across the border is equally absurd. After all, forty 
percent of those in the country illegally didn't come that way, but 
rather, entered in full accordance with the nation's laws, and simply 
overstayed work or educational visas. The Minutemen and others in the 
anti-immigration movement who claim their only concern is for those 
breaking the law, pay almost no attention to this group, for reasons 
that can only be ones of convenience (in other words, the border is a 
more visible target for garnering publicity), or racism, since large 
numbers of visa violators are European or Canadian, and frankly, 
aren't seen as a threat to the so-called "American way of life," the 
way brown skinned, non-English speaking folks are.

That racism motivates much of the backlash should be obvious. 
Certainly no one can truly believe that the Minutemen would be camped 
out on the Canadian border if the bulk of illegal immigration were 
coming from the North, or that undocumented migrants from Nova Scotia 
would be met with the kind of hostility being meted out to those from Oaxaca?

If it were only illegality that bothered the anti crowd, they could 
just advocate for a streamlining of the process by which one can 
become a U.S. citizen in the first place. That, after all, would most 
certainly reduce the flow of "illegals" entering the country, by 
definition. But they will never advocate for such a thing, as they 
don't want Mexicans and others from the global south entering the 
U.S., whether by the letter of the law or not.

The law isn't the point, and everyone knows it. After all, just 
because something is illegal, doesn't mean it should be. Likewise, 
just because something is given cover of law, doesn't automatically 
indicate its legitimacy. Laws reflect the wishes of any society's 
ruling elite, at a given time, since they are the ones who make them. 
To that extent, laws are neither just nor unjust, in and of 
themselves. The law has, over time, enshrined slavery, theft of 
indigenous land, segregation, male-only voting and property owning, 
internment of Japanese Americans, and--since we're on the 
subject--immigration restrictions based on race and nationality, 
predicated on the biases of the dominant group. That certain among 
those migrating to the United States break the law in order to do so 
is a matter of irrelevance, morally speaking, unless one starts with 
the absurd proposition that laws are by definition legitimate, simply 
because they exist.

To complain about the illegality of many current migrants is to beg 
the ultimate question: namely, what makes someone illegal? Is it 
something essential to them as human beings, or does it have more to 
do with the decisions made by policy makers in the nation to which 
they migrate? To ask the question is to answer it, and yet to hear 
the nativists tell it, those who come to the U.S. "illegally" are by 
definition of bad character, precisely because of their decision to 
break the law: the law, in this case, of a country whose laws (until 
they get here) they are not bound to follow in the first place.

Others will insist that their opposition to an influx of low-wage, 
semi and low-skilled labor is purely economic. In other words, it's 
nothing personal, but to have such a flood of folks enter the nation 
will drag down the wage base of all working people, especially those 
in the lower tier of the labor force. But while it is true that 
"illegals" likely do bid down labor costs, at least in some 
industries, this is hardly their fault, and it surely can't be 
remedied by immigration crackdowns, After all, so long as trade 
agreements allow and even encourage companies to flee to other 
nations to take advantage of low wage labor, the mere existence of 
such persons on the planet, as breathing, working humans, will bid 
down the costs of labor. The answer, of course, is to regulate wages 
globally and ensure the right of all working people, in whatever 
nation, to organize collectively within labor unions, protected in 
this right by international law. Only by doing so can the comparative 
advantage gained by the super-exploitation of workers be eliminated, 
or significantly undermined.

To the extent "real Amurkans" would prefer to limit the entry of 
low-wage workers into "our" nation, than to limit high profit 
companies from fleeing to theirs, we reveal our racial and ethnic 
chauvinism, and make it hard to accept that all the upset over 
immigration is merely about concern over declining wages and job opportunities.

After all, the only reason Mexicans are willing to work for such low 
wages is that we have supported and helped to maintain a global 
economic system predicated on the lowest possible wages per unit of 
productivity--in other words, because we have sanctified as if it 
were holy, the notion of free market capitalism. If, having done so, 
we come to realize that the fruits of this tree are considerably less 
tasty than we imagined, and were led to believe by the supporters of 
such a system, it hardly makes sense to blame those who pick the 
fruit. Rather, the blame lies with those who planted the trees and 
who profit from their cultivation.

Bottom line, so long as capital is free to cross borders in search of 
the highest return on investment, and goods are free to cross borders 
in search of the highest price, to chain labor to its country of 
origin is to inherently tilt the economic game in favor of the haves 
and to the detriment of workers everywhere. It is not workers who 
hurt other workers, in this regard, but capital that does so. 
Restricting the prerogatives of capital and capitalists is the only 
way to boost the well being of workers in the long run.

But few if any of the voices in the anti-immigrant movement are 
saying anything about that. They are so busy pushing their white 
nationalist vision of the U.S. that they can't be bothered to examine 
the ways in which it is corporate citizens who are damaging the well 
being of America: folks who share their skin color and legal status, 
if not their bank account size. Unless and until working people in 
the U.S. come to see workers of color in the global South as their 
brothers and sisters in a common struggle for economic justice and 
human dignity--and the owners of capital as their implacable economic 
enemies--nothing will change, or at least, not for the better.

In other words, until and unless "real Amurkans" start reflecting on 
the rich white folks who are truly to blame for their immiseration 
and insecurity, and stop scapegoating poor brown folks for the same, 
the pockets of white, black and brown alike will continue to be 
picked by a hand that, though "invisible," is all too real.

Tim Wise is the author of two new books: 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932360689/counterpunchmaga>White 
Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 
2005), and 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/041595049X/counterpunchmaga>Affirmative 
Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He 
lived in New Orleans from 1986-1996. He can be reached at: 
<mailto:timjwise at msn.com>timjwise at msn.com

NOTES:

1. "Few Americans Know First Amendment, Poll Shows," Church and 
State, 59:4, April, 2006: 3.

2. <http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075>Zogby 
International, 2/28/06 (http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075)

3. Marilyn Elias, "Sports means sex for boys, not girls," USA Today. 
August 26, 1998: 1D; William A. Vega, et.al., "Lifetime Prevalence of 
DSM-III Psychiatric Disorders Among Urban and Rural Mexican Americans 
in California," Archives of General Psychiatry, 1998, Volume 55: 771-78.

4. Diverse Staff Reports, "Study: Ninety-Four percent say U.S. 
Citizenship Defines Being an American," Diverse Online, May 8, 2006.


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