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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/santos04052006.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/santos04052006.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>April 5,
2006<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000"><i>A
Nation of Colonists ... and Race Laws<br><br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>The Politics of
Immigration<br><br>
</b>By JUAN SANTOS<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">Y</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>ou hear it everywhere. Even from Congressman
Jim Sensenbrenner, author of the vicious anti-migrant legislation that
has polarized the US.<br><br>
"We are a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws," he
says.<br><br>
And like almost everyone else, he's got it wrong.<br><br>
The original Europeans in what is now the US were not immigrants, but
colonists. And the US is not a nation of immigrants - it is a white
colonial settler state, like South Africa under Apartheid, the former
Rhodesia, Australia and Israel.<br><br>
And like those states the US has always operated on a sometimes hidden,
sometimes overt system of Apartheid.<br><br>
Like those places, the US is a nation of colonists and race
laws.<br><br>
It is a place where white colonists arrived, seized the land, and
dispossessed, exterminated or attempted to exclude the original
"non-white" peoples all of them.<br><br>
They did so at the point of a gun - by open terror and genocide, which
was the precursor and the necessary pre-condition of European
"immigration." And, of course, they didn't only use guns and
overt terror. Where "necessary," they operated by
"law."<br><br>
Let me prove the point. It's simple. We all know the facts.<br><br>
In the US, Native Americans were dispossessed, subjected to mass murder,
and locked on separate, Apartheid-style "reservations." So it
stands today.<br><br>
Africans were enslaved, and once "freed," they were subjected
first to Jim Crow, then, when that proved no longer advisable, Jim Crow
was transformed into the mass terror of mass incarceration and permanent
Apartheid-style ghetto-ization. So it stands today.<br><br>
The Indian nation of Mexico was conquered in a racist war of aggression
by the US in 1848. The only debate in the days of "Manifest
Destiny" was not whether to seize Mexican / Indian land, only how
much of it to seize, and what to do to keep the Mexicans out of what had
been stolen.<br><br>
Two choices were before them. These were the terms of the debate: take
the whole nation and lock the people on reservations, or take as much
land with as few Mexicans as possible. Thus the border was
established through a race war, through brute and overtly racist
violence. The border is an Apartheid Wall. So it stands today.<br><br>
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law
restricting immigration into the United States.<br><br>
The Act claimed that "the coming of Chinese laborers to this country
endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory"
of the US the same racist rhetoric used today against other Brown
people. Like HR4377, the current notorious immigration bill, the Chinese
Exclusion Act made it illegal for "any Chinese laborer to come, or
to remain within the United States." So it stands today. Only the
immediate target of the law has changed.<br><br>
Every group the US has sought to eliminate or exclude has been a people
of color.<br><br>
The logic is simple. Allow entry or citizenship for those who can be
"assimilated" into the colonists' culture those who can
become loyal colonists themselves and exclude the "Other" -
those who are the targets of colonialism those whose land, cultures,
bodies and souls must be sacrificed for the colonists to remain dominant
and for their system to function.<br><br>
Immigration law has always been race law in the US.<br><br>
As far back as 1790 the Federal government ruled that the right to become
a naturalized citizen was reserved to "free white
persons."<br><br>
So it remained until 1952. Until then the Supreme Court repeatedly
determined exactly which migrants might be considered "free"
and "white," as applicants of various ethnic backgrounds sought
to become citizens.<br><br>
Today, "The Nation of Immigrants" theme is struck to avoid the
historical and cultural truth. Europeans who could be assimilated to
colonial culture were allowed entrance en masse.<br><br>
But there was a "stark division," as Haney Lopez reminds us,
based on skin color.<br><br>
"This stark division necessarily also carried important connotations
regarding, for example, agency, moral authority, intelligence, and
belonging," he writes. "To be unfit for naturalization--that
is, to be non-White--implied a certain degeneracy of intellect, morals,
self-restraint, and political values; to be suited for citizenship--to be
White--suggested moral maturity, self assurance, personal independence,
and political sophistication."<br><br>
In other words, those "unfit" for citizenship were the
colonized. The description Lopez offers for the "unfit" matches
precisely the characteristics ascribed to colonized peoples by European
imperialists and settlers for hundreds of years.<br><br>
It also matches the racist stereotypes offered today of immigrants from
areas south of the US border with Mexico, who Congressman Sensenbrenner
has referred to as degenerate "<i>alien gang members terrorizing
communities</i>."<br><br>
But the racial subtext around immigration is not a subtext. It is the
text itself.<br><br>
Before Europe could "immigrate," someone else had to be
removed. Before there was land to settle it must be stolen. Before anyone
could be "free and white" someone else had to be
"non-white" and enslaved. Before "Americans" could
become "Americans," "Latin Americans" who are
overwhelmingly Original Americans had to become something else
"Latinos," "Hispanic," the not-Native the
Alien.<br><br>
The Illegal Alien.<br><br>
In a stunning bit of triple think the Natives, who knew no borders,
became "Aliens," while Europeans became "Americans,"
and "Americans" became "Natives," while the Original
Americans became "foreign" infiltrators and lawbreakers bent on
who-knows-what brand of "terrorism" against
"innocent" colonists, or if you prefer, "Americans."
Or "Settlers."<br><br>
Or is it "Afrikaners."<br><br>
Take your pick.<br><br>
The Six Nations Confederation - the Iroquois, or Hau De No Sau Nee -
wrote in their classic<i> Basic Call to Consciousness</i> that
colonialism means "to be controlled from afar," that
"colonialism is the process by which we are systematically
confused," and that confusion is "an agent of
control."<br><br>
Like this.<br><br>
"We are a nation of immigrants, and laws."<br><br>
But sometimes someone slips, forgets the double talk, and makes the
agenda clear. They don't mean for us to overhear, but they can't help
themselves.<br><br>
In his mercilessly racist article<i> Are We Really a Nation of
Immigrants?,</i> Lawrence Auster slips. He writes, "throughout its
history the United States has been a member of Western civilization-in
religion overwhelmingly Christian in race overwhelmingly white, in
language English. Why shouldn't those little historical facts be at least
as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact
that we're all 'descended from immigrants?'"
(FrontPagemagazine.com).<br><br>
Auster, and David Horowitz' Front Page Magazine, want one thing; they
know what it is, and they're willing to tell you. They want a white
nation. They slipped.<br><br>
The many who write diatribes and hate mail on the theme of "What
part of ILLEGAL don't you UNDERSTAND?!" also slip.<br><br>
We understand "illegal" perfectly well.<br><br>
Conquest of territory in wars of aggression is illegal under
international law. The US occupation of most Native land and all of the
occupied sections of Mexico is illegal. The presence of the conquering
people, the usurpation of the land itself is illegal. The colonists
themselves are illegal aliens.<br><br>
But, for the Right, it's not really about some imaginary adherence to a
just, neutral system of "law."<br><br>
It's about race law and white privilege.<br><br>
And race law, codified on paper or not, is deeply codified in white
people's expectations about their place in society, and some of them are
getting dangerously edgy about having "their" land their turf
stepped on by Brown people.<br><br>
On the web site of the anti-Mexican hate group<i> Save Our State</i>, a
correspondent calling themselves "USA Today" writes:<br><br>
"To be honest we are heading for a Balkinization and a racial
cleansing<br><br>
"I know its not politicly correct to say so but I think lots of
folks see it coming and I'll bet the vast majority of Americans would
have no problem with genocide as a last resort to save this country ,
Usually when you back somebody into a corner they will defend themselves
by any means ........get it ?<br><br>
"Does this sound like something you would hear the nazis say? sure
it is but I spend lots of time scanning the forums and blogs and its
coming from normal , everyday people that are just about fed up with the
whole mess.<br><br>
"I know a large number of Germans didn't agree with hitler but they
didn't exactly act against him either.<br><br>
"Just keep pushing and pretty soon you'll find the American people
in a corner.<br><br>
"On that day, Beware."<br><br>
People who think like this are the social, cultural and political base of
politicians like Jim Sensenbrenner.<br><br>
They are classic colonists, with the colonizer's outlook. For them, mere
"immigration" is impossible. Their "forefathers"
conquered the land, so those coming here must be out to
"re-conquer" the land to take it back from them.<br><br>
These are the true inheritors of the American Dream, a dream which, for
the colonized, has been nothing but a nightmare.<br><br>
They intend to defend that nightmare no matter what it takes.<br><br>
That's what "immigration reform" and "immigration
control" are really all about.<br><br>
Colonialism.<br><br>
And the race laws that defend it.<br><br>
<b>Juan Santos</b> is editor of Mexica Tlahtolli, a Chicana/o - Native
American newspaper in Los Angeles. He can be reached at
<a href="mailto:JuanSantos@Mexica.com">JuanSantos@Mexica.com</a><br><br>
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