Wasn't it
Howard Dean who predicted last year that 2006 would be the year that
conservatives would use the issue of immigration as a subterfuge to distract
the nation from focusing on the administration's incompetence and immoral and
illegal behavior.
Wasn't he
again deemed deranged for making such a suggestion?
Yet, could
even he have predicted the current nationwide protests involving millions in
the entire state of California, Chicago, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Denver, Houston,
Dallas, Atlanta & Washington D.C.?
These
protests -- which are actually just beginning -- are not simply in response
to draconian immigration bills that would treat migrants as felons and that
would put up hundreds of miles of Berlin-style walls. They are actually about
rejecting the codification of not simply apartheid laws, but an apartheid form
of government.
This is not
hyperbole or a misspelling; A*P*A*R*T*H*E*I*D is a legal system that produces
two types of human beings. Those with rights and those without. Under this
system, as a society, we have grown comfortable with creating a two-tiered
society of citizens and non-citizens. Or better yet, with full-fledged
citizens and dehumanized, expendable illegal aliens.
Even the
allies of undocumented workers remand them to occupying a position in society
to “the jobs no one wants.” In other words, they are being consigned either as
a permanent illegal criminal alien caste… or to simply occupying a permanent
subhuman caste.
They're
already treated as criminal aliens. They already live in shadows. (Even in
protest, they're supposed to hide their flags).
But it's not
about race, right? Yet, who would have predicted that in the land touted as
the pinnacle of democracy that a society would remand millions of red-brown
human beings to such a status, to such a caste?
And they
wonder why we're outraged and why we protest?
The reason is
called apartheid. All under the guise of the Sensenbrenner subterfuge. His
proposals are so outrageous (where even good Samaritans become criminals),
that apartheid has become the moderate and sensible alternative.
Apartheid
goes by another name; B*R*A*C*E*R*O. The workers take the work that employers
claim no one else wants. They are prohibited from unionizing. They work under
subhuman wages and conditions. They cannot switch jobs. They cannot bring
their families with them. And when their labor is used up, they are sent home.
(They can clean up and manicure the homes of the middle class; they just can't
live in the same neighborhoods, or the same country.)
What if
braceros decide to change occupations and attend community college? No,
braceros cannot go to college, though they may be given the right to go to
school to forget their language and to reject their culture. Will they be
permitted to fall in love and get married?
BRACERO is
coolie labor. It is racialized indentured servitude. It is modern-day slave
labor. Bracero labor is millions of red-brown workers consigned to a
semi-permanent, subhuman status. It is semi-permanent only because when their
labor is used up, they must go back to where they came from. Congress has a
different name for them: Guest workers. Not workers, not citizens, not full
human beings. Just guests. Unwanted guests.
And people
wonder why we protest?
And what of
those that remain outside of this generous apartheid scheme? Congress has
figured that one out too; hunter battalions and internal checkpoints, charged
with finding 12 million red-brown peoples. Soon, we will see mass deportation
raids. Or perhaps we will not be permitted to see them on television.
How did this
all come about? The Minutemen? Lou Dobbs? Congressman Tancredo? Sen.
Sensenbrenner? The war on terror? Fear of brown hordes?
All
subterfuge. All part of the strategy to create a nation of fear. Designed to
bring about a militarized apartheid state.
Rather than
actually solving this issue - by incorporating them as full members of
society, as was the promise of NAFTA -- let's instead give this apartheid
labor scheme another, more palatable name. That'll fix everything.
