ProudVeteran69 Loc: Seattle,Washington

The 2016 US election and the scapegoating of immigrants
6, September 2015

New Jersey Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie proposed over the weekend that Washington institute a system of control over foreigners entering the country akin to the methods used by the express shipping company Fedex to track its packages. This Orwellian scheme, evoking the branding and police-state hounding of everyone visiting the US, is one more contribution to a 2016 US presidential debate that expresses complete contempt for democratic rights and a seething hatred within ruling circles for workers of every nationality.

Christie’s appeal to anti-immigrant chauvinism and xenophobia came in the same week that his rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, raised the need for not only sealing off the US southern border with Mexico, but constructing a wall along the 5,525-mile-long border with Canada to the north.

Meanwhile, a phony furor has been whipped up over the use by both Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, a candidate for the Republican nomination, of the word “boxcar” in referring to proposals for the mass deportation of over 11 million undocumented immigrants who live and work in the US. Clinton’s press aide was compelled to issue a statement affirming that she did not intend any allusion to the trains the Nazis used to send Jews to Auschwitz and other death camps.

This strained disavowal only draws attention to the fact that campaign stump speeches in the US in 2015 are echoing the rhetoric of 1930s-style fascism.

Donald Trump, the bloated, bullying billionaire and current Republican front-runner, has set the tone for this rabid scapegoating of immigrant workers. Slandering immigrants, who do the most grinding and ill-paid work, from the agricultural fields to the slaughterhouses, as “rapists” and “murderers,” Trump has demanded that they be rounded up and deported en masse.

He also advocates the building of a wall along the US-Mexican border—paid for by seizing the remittances sent by immigrants working in the US to support their families—and the revocation of citizenship for immigrants’ children born on US soil.

This last measure has either been endorsed or sidestepped by virtually the entire Republican pack. Jeb Bush, who has attacked Trump’s plan based on its cost rather than its gross inhumanity, vowed that his own plan would effectively seal the border “so that you don’t have these, you know, ‘anchor babies’, as they’re described, coming into the country.”

With all of the arrogance, raw prejudice and stupidity that he brings to every subject, Trump has described the citizenship of these children as “illegal.”

In reality, citizenship rights for everyone born in the US, no matter what the status of their parents, has stood as a foundation of American bourgeois democracy for nearly a century and a half. Enshrined in the 14th Amendment, this right was a product of the Civil War and the overturning of the Supreme Court’s hated Dred Scott decision of 1857, which found that African-Americans were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

The first sentence of the first section of this article of the US Constitution, establishing the bedrock for the assertion of equal rights, reads: “ All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The determination of citizenship based on “soil,” or place of birth, rather than “blood,” or the nationality of one’s parents, was rooted in the principles of the American and French Revolutions and was what distinguished the US from Europe’s old monarchies and empires.

Attempts by the Democratic presidential candidates to exploit the Republicans’ anti-immigrant tirade for their own electoral purposes are as hollow as they are hypocritical.

In her speech last week to the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton denounced the Republicans for saying “hateful things about immigrants and their babies,” while her contender for the presidential nomination, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, insisted that the symbol of the US must be “the Statue of Liberty, not a barbed wire fence.”

In the real world, however, both support the current Democratic administration, which has driven deportations to record levels, expelling close to 3 million undocumented immigrants since Obama came to office promising immigration reform within 100 days. This deportation rate is nine times higher than 20 years ago.

Over the course of the past month, the administration has sent its lawyers into federal court to defend an illegal and inhuman system of jailing behind barbed wire fences thousands of children and their mothers who fled to the US to escape rampant violence in Central America.

The White House and Department of Homeland Security want to maintain this system, which reproduces the methods of Guantanamo and is described by some who worked in it as tantamount to torture. It is a means of deterring others from attempting to flee the horrific conditions created by decades of US-backed dictatorships, dirty wars and military coups, and of denying those who reach the US border their right to asylum.

The rhetoric of the Republicans and the deeds of the Democratic administration are of a piece with the attempts by governments across the Atlantic to erect a “Fortress Europe” to repel by force the hundreds of thousands of defenseless refugees fleeing for their lives from the devastation and bloodshed wrought by the succession of US-led wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. On both continents, the mistreatment and witch-hunting of immigrants is one of the rawest and most tragic expressions of the incompatibility of world economy with the outmoded and reactionary capitalist nation-state system.

Capitalism can provide no answer to the reality of mass global migration outside of violent repression, detention camps and mass deportations. The big-business politicians and media attempt to generate support for these odious methods by scapegoating immigrants for the loss of jobs, wages and vital social services that are produced by the crisis of the profit system.

These claims, made by candidates ranging from Trump to the Democratic “socialist” Bernie Sanders, are deserving only of contempt. There are resources to provide for all—native born and immigrant alike—but they are monopolized by a financial oligarchy that has enriched itself off of the destruction of the living standards of working people.

The defense of the democratic right of immigration and opposition to the police-state measures advocated by Trump and employed by Obama is a vital task of the working class as a whole, which is the ultimate target of the methods being honed in the crusade against immigrant workers.

Bill Van Auken

http://www.wsws.org



:roll: We should be looking out for America and it's People, not those who trespass into our country, and steal us blind and ruin this country. I pray that this 2016 election rewards us with a faithful and trusting Leader, who will back up their words, and seal our borders forever!!! The 1930's was the best ever for America, and it's people. They Threw out the Garbage( Illegals) and closed the Door( Borders). This government today SUCKS!!!! they want what they want, and to Hell, with what is good for America and it's people. They could care less about us!!!!. Now folks what is your thought on this post?

EL Loc: Massachusetts

We should be looking out for America and it's People, not those who trespass into our country, and steal us blind and ruin this country. I pray that this 2016 election rewards us with a faithful and trusting Leader, who will back up their words, and seal our borders forever!!! The 1930's was the best ever for America, and it's people. They Threw out the Garbage( Illegals) and closed the Door( Borders). This government today SUCKS!!!! they want what they want, and to Hell, with what is good for America and it's people. They could care less about us!!!!. Now folks what is your thought on this post?[/quote]



:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

reconreb Loc: America / Inglis Fla.

Screw Bill Van Auken , I don't know this hack , but my concern is with a sovren nation ! Just googled this guy pulled up a socilist/marxist web site. screw him!!

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

We are constantly allowing ourselves to be sidetracked and manipulated by the knotheaded politicians and media talking heads. The problem isn't immigration, this a country FOUNDED by immigrants and much has been accomplished as a result. The problem isn't really ILLEGAL immigration, as the word illegal and immigration don't go together, illegal means crime, pure and simple.

The problem is - anybody can walk, swim or fly across the border into our country on a whim. Discussing what to do with them once they are HERE, is moronic at best. The ONLY discussion we should be having, is how to SECURE the borders, to prevent anymore illegal entries and how to PAY for that solution.

Every other conversation about illegal immigrants, undocumented workers, or whatever other euphemism there is for the invaders - is ridiculous - and designed to get attention - not solve a problem.

We should be listening to folks who offer realistic solutions to real problems - and ignore the rest.

Loki Loc: Georgia

The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868. It's sole purpose, according to Senator Jacob Howard of MI, who WROTE the citizenship clause, was to provide full citizenship for former slaves. in his comments on the Amendments, he assured fellow lawmakers that this legislation in no way granted citizenship to Indians, or to the children of foreigners IN THE COUNTRY ILLEGALLY, or diplomatic personnel, or anyone else NOT subject to the jurisdiction of the US. I am getting tired of having to repeat myself.
In 1884, in Elk v Wilkins, the Supreme Court ruled that John Elk was not a citizen of the US,in spite of being born here, because his parents were not citizens and therefore NOT SUBJECT TO THE JURISDICTION of the US. It was not until 1924 that Indians were given citizenship status.
In US v Wong Kim Ark the Court ruled that Mr. Wong Kim was a citizen, because he had been born in this country to LEGAL IMMIGRANTS. The only time any peep about children of wetbacks having citizenship has come out of the Court was in 1982, when Justice Warren Burger expressed a personal opinion that the children of wetbacks had birthright citizenship.
While Harry Reid was Minority Leader, he introduced legislation to deny birthright citizenship to children of illegals. (Actually, it was simply to clear up the misconception ). Curiously, when he was Majority Leader, he blocked all such legislation. Mitch McConnell has done the same thing.

All of the bullshit legal theorizing aside, the intent of the authors of the 14th Amendment is clear from their own statements. The Amendment was NEVER intended to provide birthright citizenship to anyone but former slaves. Period.
I suppose that this has not been addressed earlier because, until the last few years, there were not enough of these Faux citizens to be a problem. The facts are that there has never been a clear cut legal determination on this matter, but every case which has touched on the subject, and the statements of the authors of the amendment, all indicate that birthright citizenship only applies to children who have at least one parent who is in this country legally. Bear in mind, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" doesn't mean "born here," it means born to parents at least one of whom is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" and the clear intent of the authors, and both Supreme Court decisions which have touched this issue show, beyond doubt, that birthright citizenship applies only to children born to at least one legal parent. If a child is born to parents here legally, then the child is a citizen, even if the parents overstay their visa and become illegals. It the parents are illegal at the time of the child's birth, so is the child.

I would like to address one more lie in this article: The claim that the Obama Administration has deported record numbers of wetbacks. Simply a lie. The Obama Administration counts turnbacks at the border as "deportations." No other Administration has done this. Using the same criteria for deportation as all other Administrations, the Obama Administration has deported fewer than Bush or Clinton.

reconreb Loc: America / Inglis Fla.

The oboma admin. has a contorted way of reporting deportations and unemployment and so many other failuers or acomplishments it impossible to decifer truth from reality with this scumbag.

BigMike Loc: yerington nv

I work in a company that employes a lot of people on work visas from all over the world. Had a discussion with one of them last night. He's from Mexico and knows lots of people who live in Mexico and get unemployment from America by using the address of friends who are resident aliens. He told me it's easy to get a fake ID, green card, social security number.

America has turned into the queen of patsys.

Liberals tend to liken our immigrants (illegal or otherwise) with refugees...which is idiotic. :?

Loki Loc: Georgia

No Administration since Eisenhower has actually dealt with the problem, other than Reagan, who made the mistake of amnestying several million wetbacks. The next election, Hispanics showed their gratitude by voting 70% Democratic.

ProudVeteran69 Loc: Seattle,Washington

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:[/quote]

:thumbup: Right On!!!!!

ProudVeteran69 Loc: Seattle,Washington

:roll: These are the Liberal's puppets, and they like it!!!

ProudVeteran69 Loc: Seattle,Washington

:roll: You sure got that right!! 100%