Sociologist John Krinsky contributes to discussion about Welfare "Reform" (more like dismantling) in England at the Guardian.co.uk Article reproduced bellow.



Welfare: the 18th Brumaire of Iain Duncan Smith

"In copying the failed US 90s model for getting people off welfare into work, IDS is playing out his own farcical repetition of tragedy.

It is the 18th Brumaire. On 9 November, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directorate, replacing it with the French Consulate, signalling the end of the French revolution and the beginnings of French imperialism. Karl Marx, writing of the coup engineered by Napoleon's nephew, Louis Bonaparte, 52 years later, was full of scorn: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Marx then writes about the conditions that enabled the coup: a series of compromises that weakened political parties and progressively marginalised the working class and its interests, and subordinated them to the craven, but divided, bourgeois and petty bourgeois of France.

On this 18th Brumaire, a different kind of farcical repetition of tragedy is playing itself out in Britain. I know the tragedy because it unfolded in the United States 15 years ago: it went by the name of "welfare reform". The raft of proposals put on the table by the government for reforming welfare in the United Kingdom is so close to those that unfolded in New York City in the mid-1990s that reading about them feels like the repetition of a bad meal. The lack of energetic opposition from the Labour party compounds the feeling of gastric reflux.

Shortly after taking back Congress in the mid-term elections of 1994, the Republicans moved to cut funding to the Legal Services Corporation whose offices often represented poor people in legal proceedings against the government. Legal Services lawyers had been crucial, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in establishing basic rights of benefit recipients against loss of benefits without cause, and against intrusions on their privacy by fraud-suspicious government agents. As a condition of keeping some funding, Congress barred Legal Services from taking on class-action lawsuits against the government. Similarly, the Labour government cut funding for law centres, and more cuts are threatened.

New York City – a centre of welfare reform under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani even before the federal welfare reform law passed with Bill Clinton's signature in 1996 – bears all of the hallmarks of Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms. In New York City's "Work Experience Program" or "WEP", welfare recipients were compelled to work for their benefits with their hours set by dividing the total value of their cash and housing allowances by the minimum wage. Because financial strain had earlier forced New York City to reduce its staff by more than 16,000 positions (many in lower-skilled clerical and maintenance work), the new WEP workforce – 38,000 strong at its height in 1999 – supplanted the work of relatively well-paid public employees. They would not be hired back. And, indeed, there were quite a few cases of former public employees compelled to "work off" their benefits in the same work they had done earlier.

Giuliani was also aggressive about being sure that anyone who could work, did work. New York hired Health Solutions Services, a private firm like Atos in Britain, whose doctors' judgments about the fitness of many benefits recipients to work were at odds with those of other medical professionals, and whose judgments were often successfully challenged. In other words, the medical screening process was baldly a way to harass people off the dole, rather than to meet their actual needs.

The Giuliani administration, with the help of a new welfare commissioner, Jason Turner, who had, like Duncan Smith, thought long and hard about how to help the poor break the cycle of dependency, also curtailed access to benefits. By making the application process more onerous, cuts were made at the front end as well. A successful lawsuit changed some of these practices because they illegally denied applicants access to benefits that were not governed by state and local government.

Once on the job, however, workfare workers rarely got training and rarely got access to available jobs. In a sleight of hand, the Giuliani administration claimed that anyone who had got off the benefits rolls (kicked off or otherwise) had presumably found work. So they claimed enormous success for their workfare program, as the rolls fell to half their levels before the reforms began. Even at worksites, there were problems. Regular public-sector workers resented WEP workers' presence and sometimes mistreated them, while public-sector managers found it difficult to assign, supervise and keep track of WEP workers' schedules.

It is, perhaps, instructive, that WEP no longer exists in the ways that it did under Giuliani. And it isn't because his successor, Michael Bloomberg, is a leftwing bleeding heart. Rather, WEP created all manner of administrative burdens; increased the city's exposure to lawsuits for sexual and racial harassment, illegal displacement of public workers, and a host of other violations; and did nothing to alleviate poverty. To the extent that people who had been on benefit found work in this period, they did so because the local job market was expanding (albeit with worse jobs than before) relative to its pre-reform recessionary lows. No longstanding study of intergenerational cycles of poverty by Duncan Smith will create jobs. No parenting classes will, either.

The failures of welfare reform – still viewed as a great success by some – are increasingly well known, even if public discussion of these flaws is muted. The only way a hard workfare program like the one in New York "worked" was through public relations and half-truths (and not-even-half truths!). It reduced benefit levels. But it did little else. Its proponents, however, fled its consequences into thinktanks and consultancies. This group have apparently convinced the British counterparts of the Republican class of 1994 that American-style welfare reform is a good idea. As with welfare reform in the US, we may not see the worst predictions of the left come to pass. But we will see a deterioration in the conditions of work for "regular" workers as workfare becomes generalised and part of the everyday political fabric; and we will see private trusts and charities drawn into support programs they find repellent because they want to be charitable. We will see a weakening of a well-meaning opposition, and a sea-change in the politics of welfare, even with no improvement in joblessness and poverty. If it weren't so tragic, it might be farce."

Mexican Immigrants in New York

Video from a great series from Canal 11 Mexico (in Spanish). Incluye entrevista con una "Estudiante Mexicana en Nueva York" (Columbia University).

Increased Attacks Against Mexicans in New York Area

Increased Attacks Against Mexicans in New York Area

Opinion Piece on Hate Crimes against Mexican Immigrants

GUEST POST BY Brad Powell

In New York City there have been no less than ten hate crimes committed against human beings of Mexican descent this year. Many of these vicious attacks took place in a neighborhood quaintly named Port Richmond in the borough of Staten Island. The most recent attack occurred over the weekend when a seventeen year old was beaten and subjected to racist slurs for $10 out of his wallet. The local media has continued to bow in deference to the NYPD classification of the attacks as "bias crimes" instead of "hate crimes;" the latter of course qualifies the perpetrators for harsher punishment.

New York City is largely off the radar in terms of the national discourse on immigration, especially in light of the inhumane laws being passed in more overtly racist places like Virginia (yes, Virginia), and of course most recently Arizona. New Yorkers have an obligation and a stake in protecting their Mexican brethren. The time has come to stand up for those who are duly oppressed because of their skin color and their legal status, which make them both targets for abuse by intolerant xenophobes and less likely to receive the full protection of the NYPD.

In one recent news account a citizen of Staten Island proffered an explanation for the attacks as grounded in the high unemployment of natives, "The average Mexican immigrant is working five days a week. There's young men here who can't get a job (http://wcbstv.com/topstories/staten.island.violence.2.1837529.html)." There is even a vernacular term for the attacks, "knockouts," defined as robbing a Mexican on their way home from work. The conflation of unemployment with immigration perpetuates the falsity that immigrants are stealing jobs out from under Americans. In fact, most immigrants are working long hours in below minimum wage jobs like dishwashing and meat packing that Americans brashly turn up their nose to.

In my own research for a class on immigration at Columbia University I have spoken with several immigrants of varying legal status. Time and again the story is one of very hard work with very little reward; many of these individuals work 11-12 hour days 6 days per week. These are hard workers often far from their families only searching for some way to improve their lot in life for both themselves and posterity. To blame them for our economic problems adds salt to untreated wounds. A more accurate account of high unemployment rates would look to the recent thieveries of Wall Street and the corporate downsizing justified in its wake, not to those at the absolute bottom of the capitalist hierarchy.

Perhaps it is a sad bit of irony that Port Richmond sits directly across from Wall Street, only obscured by one of our nation's most iconic monuments: the Statue of Liberty. This goddess of freedom stands ready to accept "the poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Nowhere is it inscribed either on the statue or in our collective consciousness that this freedom does not apply to Mexicans. All New Yorkers, indeed all Americans should be ashamed and outraged every time a hate crime is perpetrated against a human being, and that outrage should be doubled when the victim is a duly oppressed immigrant falsely blamed for our economic problems and lacking the full protection of the state.

Related notes:

3 NJ teens charged with videotaped immigrant death

By SAMANTHA HENRY, Associated Press Writer Samantha Henry, Associated Press Writer Wed Jul 28, 4:15 am ET

SUMMIT, N.J. – Dusk fell around Salvadoran immigrant Abelino Mazaniego as he sat on a bench on a promenade in an upscale New York suburb after finishing his restaurant shift. As night encroached, so did a group of teenagers, including one with a cell phone videocamera at the ready.

Then, authorities say, they beat him unconscious, with the camera rolling.

Days later, the 47-year-old father of four was dead — but not before the video had been circulated among teenagers in Summit, N.J., authorities say. And not before a nurse in the emergency room where he was taken the night of July 17 was accused of pilfering several hundred dollars from his wallet.

The attacks on Mazaniego's body and dignity resulted in days of escalating court actions that culminated Tuesday in murder charges against three young men, ages 17, 18 and 19. A fourth teenager believed to have videotaped the attack hasn't been charged, but authorities weren't divulging details on the teen's involvement or potential culpability.

In Summit on Tuesday evening, a young girl sobbed, trembled, and clutched the waist of an older woman as they stood in a group of five people in front of a shrine of sunflowers, votive prayer candles, handwritten notes and a photo of Mazaniego that had been placed on the bench where he was attacked. Speaking quietly in Spanish, a woman with red-rimmed eyes said she was Mazaniego's wife of 29 years, and the rest were family members. She declined to give her name, saying she was too upset and scared to speak about the attack.

Mazaniego was "a hardworking, punctual, friendly employee," said Colin Crasto, manager and chef at Dabbawalla Indian restaurant, across the street from where the attack took place, and where the victim had worked for three years as a cook's assistant. A photo of Mazaniego was taped to the front window, with a message saying he had been the sole supporter of his family and asking patrons to donate money to help his family.

Along Summit's main thoroughfare, a place of upscale clothing and jewelry stores, real-estate brokerages advertising million-dollar homes, and luxury SUVS parked along the street, merchants and residents said the attack was an anomaly for the town, a vibrant mix of nationalities that considers itself welcoming of immigrants.

"I know bad things happen all the time, everywhere, but it's unusual here," said Neil Rodriguez, the manager of The Wine List, who knew Mazaniego, as he worked a few doors down. Recalling Mazaniego as a "genial, really nice gentlemen," Rodriguez said that, as a Hispanic, he was bothered that the incident was being portrayed by some as racially motivated.

"It's a random act of violence, there's not a lot of racial strife in this town," he said. "I'd like to see the parents that produced such monsters," he added, referring to the alleged attackers.

Khayri Williams-Clark, 18, and an unidentified 17-year-old, both of Summit, were arrested Wednesday on manslaughter charges. Williams-Clark pleaded not guilty to the charge Friday.

Now they're charged with murder, along with Nigel Dumas, 19, of Morristown. A spokesman for the public defender's office, which is representing Williams-Clark and the 17-year-old, declined to comment Tuesday and said the office hadn't yet received an application to represent Dumas.

The 17-year-old is being held in the Union County juvenile detention center, while Williams-Clark is being held at the Union County jail on $100,000 bail, prosecutors said. Bail for Dumas, at the same jail, has been set at $250,000. Authorities wouldn't say how many teens were in the group or whether there would be more charges. They also weren't discussing theories on the motive for the beating — whether it was Mazaniego's background, a thrill killing or some other reason.

But it apparently wasn't an attempt to get the $640 in cash that Mazaniego was carrying.

Police found the victim after the beating and took him to the hospital, where, officials say, nurse Stephan Randolph, 39, of Flemington, took the money out of the unconscious victim's wallet.

Family members noticed the missing money and told authorities, who charged Randolph with third-degree theft Monday, six days after Mazaniego died.

Randolph could not be reached for comment by The Associated Press this week; a phone listed in his name rang unanswered.

From the New York Times

July 30, 2010

Attacks on Mexicans Leave Neighborhood in Turmoil

By KIRK SEMPLE

Police officers patrolling by foot, car and helicopter have turned Port Richmond Avenue, a busy commercial strip on Staten Island, into something like an armed encampment. Reporters have descended en masse. Community leaders dash from crisis meeting to crisis meeting.

A spate of attacks in the past four months on Mexican immigrants has upended Port Richmond, a working-class neighborhood on the borough’s north shore that is more accustomed to being ignored.

But amid the show of force by the Police Department, which deployed teams of officers to the area this week in what it described as a temporary move to protect residents and defuse tensions, local leaders are taking a longer view.

“The question is, what happens when everybody pulls up the tents and leaves?” said the Rev. Terry Troia, an activist and Staten Island native who has been at the center of the hour-by-hour civic response to the unrest.

This is not the first time Latinos in Port Richmond have been victimized in bias attacks. Ms. Troia, executive director of Project Hospitality, an interfaith organization that serves the poor of Staten Island, said the violence dates back to 2003. In one attack, a Mexican immigrant who worked as a cook at an IHOP restaurant was killed by three assailants in 2006, according to local activists and the Mexican Consulate in New York.

Some of those earlier episodes attracted news coverage, but then the neighborhood fell back into its usual fraught rhythms. Now its Mexican population, Ms. Troia said, is particularly concerned about what might happen next. “They’re worried that as soon as the police leave, they’re going to be set upon,” she said.

The Rev. Dr. Tony Baker, pastor of St. Philip’s Baptist Church in the neighborhood’s heart, said the attacks pointed to deep-seated problems. “I think we’ve gone to sleep on the conditions we find ourselves in,” he said. “And we woke up in the midst of a racial war.”

The police said Friday that nine men — all of them Mexican immigrants — had been attacked since early April, all by young black men. Six suspects have been arrested in connection with three of the beatings, but a grand jury turned down prosecutors’ requests to indict them on hate-crime charges. Two men have pleaded guilty to robbery in two of the cases; the third case is pending.

The most recent attack was on July 23. Fidel González, a 31-year-old Mexican immigrant walking home after playing soccer in a park, was set upon by several men yelling anti-Mexican epithets, the police said. The men punched Mr. González and hit him with a scooter, breaking his jaw and cutting open his head, then stole his backpack, which contained an iPod and two cellphones, the police said.

On Tuesday night, after appeals by the consulate and local leaders, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced he was sending an emergency contingent to Port Richmond, including about 130 additional officers, a 15-member hate crimes investigative team, horse patrols, helicopter flyovers and mobile observation towers at key intersections.

Mexico’s consul general, Rúben Beltrán, sent a representative on Monday to set up a neighborhood office and directly assist the Mexican population. The representative drives around in a car emblazoned with the phone number for a 24-hour, toll-free hot line and a message in Spanish that begins, “Mexican, know your rights.”

Since the representative arrived, several more Mexicans have told consulate officials that they, too, were victims of attacks but had been too fearful of deportation or retribution to come forward sooner, consulate officials said.

“There are all kinds of beatings that aren’t recorded,” Ms. Troia said. “People talk casually about this: ‘Oh, I got a dislocated shoulder’; ‘I lost my eye.’ ”

Civic leaders and police officials say they are exploring many possible reasons for the violence: anti-immigrant fervor, racism, gangs, the boredom of idle youth during the summer, joblessness, overcrowding and even the notion that attacking Latinos acquired a cachet in the neighborhood this year, prompting copycat assaults. But in the past few days, all conversations about motive have eventually turned to a dynamic familiar to many neighborhoods in New York: demographic change.

In the mid-20th century, Port Richmond was heavily populated with Eastern European Jews and Irish immigrants, who owned many of the businesses along Port Richmond Avenue. But after the Staten Island Mall opened in 1973, stores closed, property values fell and many longtime residents moved away.

Blacks became the dominant population in the 1980s and ’90s, but the number of Latinos also grew. After 9/11 and the imposition of tougher immigration and travel rules that impeded the flow of migrant laborers around the country and across borders, the Mexican population planted deeper roots in Port Richmond and grew quickly.

In 1990, according to census statistics, 950 people of Mexican descent lived in the 120th Police Precinct, which includes Port Richmond. By 2008, that number had grown to 8,400. Before 9/11, there were only three Mexican-owned businesses in Port Richmond, Ms. Troia said; now there are more than 50.

The student body of Public School 20, once mostly black, is now nearly all Latino and predominantly Mexican.

That growth among Mexicans has unsettled members of some other minority groups, including Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, and especially blacks, many residents say. Black religious leaders and community activists say they often hear constituents complain that Mexicans and other Latinos have taken jobs that should have been theirs. “That’s a conversation that’s been going on,” Dr. Baker said. But, he added, some who have complained “are not going out to get jobs.”

Rogelio Vasquez, 48, the victim in one case that has been resolved, said he feared that he might be attacked again for cooperating with the authorities. Still, he said he harbored no ill will toward his assailants; the attacks, he said, were “the errors of young people.”

Port Richmond’s leaders are searching for solutions. Some want to address the lack of community resources, including jobs, housing and recreation. Others are looking for ways to bridge racial, cultural and even generational divides through initiatives like a gathering of mothers from different ethnic groups, or a midnight basketball league.

“What it calls for is work,” Dr. Baker said. “The Latino community, the African-American community, the Caucasian community, coming together and saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”

Al Baker contributed reporting.

I thought it worth to re-post an editorial from Tomas Jimenez from the LA Times April 29, 2010.

Legalization must be part of immigration reform

Tomás R. Jiménez

Opponents of comprehensive immigration reform argue that legalization rewards bad behavior. They contend that illegal immigration is a crime that merits punishment and expulsion, not amnesty. The logic is that if we respond with tough enforcement, illegal immigrants will finally get that they aren't welcome here and go back to their home countries. This kind of reasoning is what's behind laws like the one recently passed in Arizona, which requires law enforcement personnel to determine whenever possible the immigration status of suspected illegal immigrants.

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But immigrants aren't going home. We know this from experience. Despite high-profile raids, beefed-up border enforcement and the worst economy since the Depression, the size of the illegal immigrant population has declined by only a small fraction. At this pace, the time it would take to realize the pipe dream of removing illegal immigrants through forced and voluntary deportations could be measured in light-years.

Given that immigrants are here to stay, it is in everyone's interest for them to assimilate — to learn English, embrace U.S. social and civic customs and become part of the economic fabric. And if that is the goal, we need to have immigration reform that goes beyond fences, high-tech surveillance, more Border Patrol officers and a guest worker program. We need a path to legalization for those who have built lives here.

Why? Because illegal status inhibits not only the assimilation of those who are here illegally but of future generations who are U.S.-born citizens. Research has consistently found that illegal immigrants and their descendants have a much tougher time gaining a social and economic foothold.

On the other hand, we know that legalization has a positive effect on assimilation. The legalization program contained in the last major immigration overhaul, the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, facilitated the assimilation of millions of immigrants and their children. A 2007 Merage Foundation report written by UC Irvine sociologists shows that the children of formerly illegal immigrants who obtain green cards face a brighter future and stand to contribute much more than those whose parents remain undocumented.

According to the study, U.S.-born Mexican Americans whose fathers came illegally but later obtained legal permanent residency were 25% less likely to drop out of high school, 70% more likely to graduate from college, 13% more likely to prefer English at home, and their earnings were 30% higher than those whose fathers were illegal at the time of the survey.

Part of what holds the children of illegal immigrants back is that they can never quite look forward. Parents cannot fully participate in their children's lives in ways that help them realize their full potential. As children enter adulthood, many have to take care of the financial needs of their immigrant parents, whose illegal status makes them extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of the job market, the healthcare system and housing. The situation is worse for those who were brought as young children to the United States without documentation. They suffer from the double penalty of their parents' and their own illegality.

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As Congress drags its feet on immigration reform, illegal immigrants continue to put down roots and the ranks of children who suffer the penalties of their parents illegal status swells. According to a recent Pew Hispanic Center report, almost half of all illegal immigrant households are couples with children, and the overwhelming majority of the children — 73% — are U.S. citizens. The number of U.S.-born children with at least one illegal immigrant parent grew to 4 million in 2008 from 2.7 million in 2003, a 48% increase. Another 1.5 million children with at least one illegal immigrant parent are themselves illegal.

Withholding legalization imposes slow social and economic death on illegal immigrants and their children. Failure to implement comprehensive immigration reform leaves thousands of people who consider the United States their home in the shadows. It also deprives us of the opportunity to develop a better-trained workforce and to realize all the benefits, both social and economic, that a fully assimilated immigrant population can contribute. Legalization is the most crucial component of what Americans need and what they deserve: comprehensive immigration reform.

Tomás R. Jiménez is an assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University and an Irvine Fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the author of "Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity."

París no es como lo pintan

París no es como lo pintan

Por Mónica Delgado

From Reforma blog

París.- Las maravillas de París pueden ser tan traicioneras como una pasión amorosa y cada año una decena de personas, en particular jóvenes mujeres, lo comprueban.

El llamado Síndrome de París, del que muchos son víctima, es un misterioso mal que tiene la característica de afectar casi únicamente a los japoneses.

"Los japoneses tienen una verdadera fascinación por París, pero a veces la prensa japonesa les vende un París idílico que no siempre corresponde a la realidad", explicó a Reforma una periodista japonesa.

La periodista agregó que el trato poco ameno que tienen los franceses hacia los extranjeros aumenta el malestar de los japoneses acostumbrados a una mayor amabilidad en sus relaciones.

"Los japoneses se quejan de los pocos esfuerzos que hacen los franceses por entender a los extranjeros cuando no se burlan de su acento", precisó la periodista.

Como resultado la Embajada de Japón registra turistas, estudiantes y otros ciudadanos del país del sol naciente con depresiones, angustias o neurosis que en algunos casos ha llegado hasta delirios o tentativas de suicidios.

Para los incrédulos sería una simple nostalgia que en cualquier momento puede afectar a todo frágil viajero, pero en la Embajada de Japón el problema se toma muy en serio, y cada año hay que repatriar a varios compatriotas.

El fenómeno ha inspirado a novelistas y cineastas como el escritor Philippe Adam que publicó un pequeño relato con el nombre de "Le Syndrome de Paris" y afirma que las más afectadas son las japonesas de entre 20 y 25 años, en lo particular las estudiantes de arte, que se han imaginado un París poblado de jóvenes hombres, esteta y atentos.

"Me decía la manera en la que se imaginaba las cosas antes del viaje y como eran distintas ya de cerca, lo decepcionante que era París, el Sena, Francia y los franceses", señala en la novela de Adam el narrador que trabaja en la Embajada japonesa y trata de ayudar a una chica, víctima del extraño mal parisino.

El trastorno ha sido estudiado y diagnosticado por un médico japonés, Hiroaki Ota, que lo atribuye principalmente al desfase entre el París soñado y el París real, al choque cultural entre la educación japonesa tan regulada y el estilo más directo y franco de los franceses.

Otro especialista japonés que ha atendido algunos de estos casos, Fuyo Matsushita, dijo que en París los japoneses llegan a sentirse agredidos por un entorno que les parece hostil, ya que está muy alejado de lo que conocen y de lo que esperaban.

"Surge en estas personas un síndrome de persecución, la mínima mirada parece amenazadora sobre todo para gente que viene de una cultura donde no se mira uno a los ojos", explicó el especialista.

"Los pacientes desarrollan también síntomas de agorafobia, alucinaciones auditivas, miedo a salir, no se sienten en seguridad en Francia, sin embargo un regreso a Japón sería señal de fracaso", agregó.

Según el especialista una tercera parte de las personas afectadas se recupera sin ayuda y rápidamente, otra tercera parte reincide y a veces pide ayuda, y la última parte cae en psicosis.

Si los especialistas han detectado males similares en otras ciudades como Londres o Florencia donde las víctimas no serían solamente japonesas, parece que el fenómeno en París es mayor y persistente, a tal grado que en la pasada legislatura un diputado galo había sugerido, sin que pasara a mayores, organizar acciones preventivas para ayudar a los japoneses a enfrentar el París real.

Arizona New Draconian Law in Effect

Xenophobia Editorials of the New York Times

August 5, 2010

Xenophobia: Casting Out the Un-French

France has no equivalent to the 14th Amendment, but the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who likes to be known as Sarko the American, also is fanning dangerous anti-immigrant passions for short-term political gain.

Last week, he proposed stripping foreign-born French citizens of their citizenship if they are convicted of threatening the life of a police officer or other serious crimes. Lest any voter miss the point that such a law would be particularly aimed at Muslim immigrants, Mr. Sarkozy’s interior minister, in charge of the police force, helpfully added polygamy and female circumcision to the list of offenses that could bring loss of citizenship.

Days earlier, Mr. Sarkozy promised to destroy the camps of the Roma and send them back to where they came from, mainly Romania and Bulgaria. Both countries are members of the European Union. Hundreds of thousands of their residents, in France legally, now risk being swept up and expelled in police raids.

And Mr. Sarkozy proposes denying automatic French citizenship to people born in France if their parents are foreign and they have a record of juvenile delinquency.

All of this in a country that has long proudly upheld the principle that all French citizens — native-born or naturalized — are entitled to equal treatment under the law. That applies to Mr. Sarkozy’s Hungarian-born father and Italian-born wife, both naturalized French citizens, and should apply to everyone else.

But immigrant-bashing is popular among nonimmigrant French voters and Mr. Sarkozy has never been shy about doing it. He built his 2007 presidential campaign around his tough record (and inflammatory words) as interior minister. Earlier this year, he ran a divisive campaign to define French national identity because he wanted to fend off the far right anti-immigrant National Front in regional elections. It didn’t work.

Now, with his political fortunes at a new low and the National Front resurgent under younger leadership, he has gone further, worrying traditional conservatives who still believe in the rights of man and the equality of all French citizens. They are right to be concerned, and he is recklessly wrong to ignore their cautionary advice.

August 5, 2010

Xenophobia: Fear-Mongering for American Votes

Leading Republicans have gotten chilly toward the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to people born in the United States. Senators Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl have been suggesting that the country should take a look at it, re-examine it, think it over, hold hearings. They seem worried that maybe we got something wrong nearly 150 years ago, after fighting the Civil War, freeing enslaved Africans and declaring that they and their descendants were not property or partial persons, but free and full Americans.

As statements of core values go, the 14th Amendment is a keeper. It decreed, belatedly, that citizenship is not a question of race, color, beliefs, wealth, political status or bloodline. It cannot fall prey to political whims or debates over who is worthy to be an American. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” it says, “are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

People like Mr. Sessions, who pride themselves on getting the Constitution just right (on, say, guns), are finding this language too confusing. “I’m not sure exactly what the drafters of the amendment had in mind,” said Mr. Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, “but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen.”

It’s true that air travel was not a big focus in 1868, but this is not about a horde of pregnant jet-setting Brazilians, if, indeed, such a thing even exists. The targets are Mexicans, and the other mostly Spanish-speaking people who are the subjects of a spurious campaign against “anchor babies” — children of illegal immigrants supposedly brought forth to invade and occupy.

Usually alarms about scary foreign infants are made by one-note zealots like Tom Tancredo of Colorado. But it’s a bipartisan temptation. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who berated Republicans this week about abandoning their principles over birthright citizenship, did so himself in a 1993 bill for which he later apologized.

Thankfully, the Constitution is sturdy. The birthright-deniers will not easily rewrite it or legislate around it. More than a century of jurisprudence stands against their claim that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” (an exception for diplomats’ children and members of sovereign Indian tribes) also alienates undocumented children.

The proponents of changing the 14th Amendment also would have to acknowledge the big-government colossus that new rules would require, burdening all parents to prove their children’s status. New battalions of attorneys would gain full employment to fight over thousands of newborns rendered stateless each year, an instant, permanent underclass. Then there’s the obsolescence of all those civics texts, old movies, patriotic picture books and red-white-and-blue songs.

The United States has never had a neat, painless way to add newcomers. But our most shameful moments have involved the exclusion of groups, often those that do our hardest labor: Indians, African-Americans, Chinese, Irish, Italians, Catholics, Jews, Poles, Japanese-Americans, Hispanics. America has stood proudest when it dared to stretch the definition of who “we” are.

As a result, this is still the most welcoming country for immigrants. A few politicians chumming for votes in an off-year election cannot be allowed to destroy that.

Video of French policemen dispersing women and children asking for housing on BBC

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Wray Herbert for the Huffington Post

Cognitive Dissonance: Why we Rationalize our Life Circumstances

The right to move around is a universal human right. Back in 1948, in the wake of World War II, the United Nations declared that all men and women have the right to roam freely in their homeland, to leave, to return if they choose, and to exit again. That political vision recognized a basic psychological truth -- that it is a violation of human nature to fence people in.

Even so, the global reality never matched the ideal. Citizens of many nations are still denied the basic liberty to pack up and leave for a better place. What are the psychological consequences when this human liberty is violated? When borders are closed and exit papers withheld?

One would think that being penned in would spark resentment at the least, and perhaps even rebelliousness and political unrest. But some new psychological research is suggesting this may not be the case, that indeed the opposite may be true: Denying citizens their fundamental freedom of movement may ironically transform those citizens into passionate defenders of the status quo -- including unfair policies totally unrelated to emigration.

A team of psychological scientists at the University of Waterloo -- Kristin Laurin, Steven Shepherd and Aaron Kay -- wanted to see the lengths to which people will go to rationalize such political repression. They suspected, because restrictions on emigration often come hand-in-hand with all sorts of other punitive policies, that trapped citizens will rationalize the existence of a repressive regime and all its practices. They tested this idea in some interesting laboratory experiments.

In one study, for example, the scientists primed volunteers' thoughts about either unfettered movement or confinement by having them read futuristic depictions of Canada. Some read of a future with unrestricted travel beyond Canada's borders, while others read that authorities were tightening up on emigration -- and that it would be increasingly difficult to leave and settle elsewhere. Afterward, all the volunteers read an account of gender inequality in their country -- including the fact that men earn much more than equally qualified women for the same work. The volunteers were given the option of explaining such unfairness by either blaming the system or by attributing it to genuine differences between men and women.

The researchers studied only women in this experiment, on the assumption that the gender issue would hit closer to home for them. They wanted to see if women who felt confined would be more likely to rationalize the negative aspects of their lives at home, even something as intolerable as institutionalized sexism. And that's exactly what they found. As reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, the women who felt free to leave home were much more critical of their lives at home, blaming gender inequality on unfair government policies. Those who felt "stuck" were much less likely to acknowledge the hypothetical Canada's flaws; they were more tolerant of their underclass status, viewing it as a legitimate result of natural differences.

This is cognitive dissonance writ large. Cognitive dissonance is the theory that humans will rationalize even the most aversive conditions -- if they are forced to live with them. These results go even further, suggesting that denial of one liberty can lead victims to rationalize another kind another rights violation altogether -- even something as basic as equality under the law -- and indeed an entire system. Interestingly, when the scientists reran this experiment with a depiction of Germany rather than Canada, the rationalization of the repressive system vanished. That is to say, the volunteers were motivated not by some abstract belief in freedom, but by the prospect of very personal restrictions on their liberty, at home in Canada. The researchers ran another version of the study, this one involving both men and women, and found the same phenomenon at work.

So how much repression will citizens "make okay"? There may be limits, the Waterloo scientists say. When the former Soviet Union refused to grant exit visas to its Jewish citizens, many of them did the opposite of what these lab results suggest: They formed dissident groups and unrelentingly attacked the repressive regime -- not just the Soviet emigration policy but the entire system. Despite the remarkable human ability to rationalize, it may be that Soviet repression was simply too dreadful and immoral to justify.

What is an Amnesty?

An Amnesty - Is That Legal?

by Charles Kuck

from ILW.com

I was driving to court recently down a highway in Atlanta when I drove past a toll booth with a HUGE sign on it. The sign read "AMNESTY." I thought: "wait a second! Amnesty" is a dirty word, literally unmentionable in polite company. How could there be an "Amnesty?"

On my way back to the office, I passed the toll booth again. Again, the sign was there. This time I slowed down (a little), and noticed it was a "Toll Amnesty." This toll "Amnesty" is apparently a regular event in Georgia. I explored a little more about this "Amnesty," trying to understand how a toll "Amnesty," turning illegal drivers into legal ones is permitted, but an "Amnesty" that would turn "illegal" people into legal people is not. I dug around a little on the Internet and found some information about the reason for and the goal of this toll "Amnesty:"

What is the toll violation amnesty program?

Normally, the State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA) charges a $25 administrative fee, as provided by Georgia law, each time someone fails to pay the toll to travel on the tolled section of Georgia 400. During the limited time of this amnesty program, SRTA is willing to reduce a portion of the $25 administrative fee to $15 per violation. During amnesty, the Customer will be responsible for the $15 administrative fee plus the toll per violation.

Why is SRTA offering its customers an opportunity to compromise their violations?

SRTA's primary goal is to collect all tolls due. We believe one way we can accelerate the collection of unpaid tolls is to offer a temporary financial incentive to our customers - namely, a partial waiver of the normal $25 per violation administrative fee-if the tolls are voluntarily paid now.

So, the toll "Amnesty" is designed to FORGIVE people for breaking a law (a misdemeanor in Georgia), bring people out of the shadows of toll illegality, and, as an incentive to do so, have people pay LESS of a fine than if the agents of the state went out and rounded up everyone who is a toll violator. Does the State of Georgia know who these "illegals" are? Sure they do! If you fail to pay a toll, a photo of your car and license plate is taken, so the State of Georgia knows exactly who broke the law and where they live! (If only those Utah state employees lived here, they could have put their "hit" list out for the Georgia State Patrol to go out and arrest these illegal drivers.)

Let's compare a proposed national "Amnesty" (or for those of you with sensitive ears-legalization) with this Georgia "Amnesty." An immigration "Amnesty" would FORGIVE people for breaking the law (a misdemeanor if they came in illegally and a civil violation if they overstayed their visas), bring people out of the shadows and into our mainstream economy, and lessen the penalties currently in place (a 10 year bar in the home country) to encourage people to come forward right away and become "legal."

Wow, that is the same rationale for both programs. One run effectively by the State of Georgia and one denied a chance at being effective by national politicians. Why can we do one and not the other? Why can we give "amnesty" to illegal drivers but not to "illegal" people? Simple-A lack of leadership and a lack of political courage.

Once we can convince our national political leadership that immigration reform is GOOD for America (and it would be very good for America) and that the example set by the Georgia State Road and Tollway Authority is a good one to follow, we can end this divisive debate over immigration, calm racial tensions in America and get back to work fixing our economy. My only question is - which national politician has the courage to stand up and lead on this key issue?

---

About The Author

Charles Kuck is the Managing Partner of Kuck Immigration Partners LLC-The Immigration Law Firm, and oversees its nationwide immigration practice. His practice focuses on U.S. Immigration and Nationality Law and international migration matters. Mr. Kuck assists employers and employees with business and professional visas, labor certifications, immigrant visas, consular representation, and citizenship matters. Mr. Kuck also maintains an active Federal Court practice focusing on immigration issues.

Carlos Fuentes on Mexico

-Thoughts on Mexico’s Political System & Loss of Territory-
Jose Luis Sanchez

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes illustrates an amazing picture of Mexico in his book “A New Time for Mexico.” His honesty in his writing is shocking to the reader because it is not expected, especially when he speaks of Mexico’s political system and its loss of territory during the Texas Revolution and Mexican-American War. On page sixty-two he names Mexicans as “The children of Caesar and Saint Thomas Aquinas,” which is a statement that I wondered about for a long time. After a while I began to see the meaning of the quote, it describes the connection the proud yet humble people of Mexico would have had if they did descend from the benevolent yet autocratic ruler and theologian. Mexicans are eternally searching in their quest for a savior, their hearts and minds scream for one to lead them out of poverty, shield them from corruption and violence and all the other ills the nation faces and or has faced; and that is the reason the people of Mexico invest God-like powers into the executive branch, regardless if the executive really will lead them as their promised savior.
The PRI ruled Mexico for about seventy years (1929-2000), and some commenter’s say they may return to power in the next presidential election. This is more than just a political party; it is an institution that stood in the way of democracy and justice in favor of security and economic growth. I would say that the PRI has always capitalized on Mexicans quest for a savior, promising every six years a new direction for the nation, a light at the end of the tunnel. Fuentes points out frequently that there are two Mexico’s, one a modern industrialized nation of 100 million people whose economy is ranked 13th largest in the world, and the other whose people live in a caste system in “prehistoric” conditions, where rates of poverty, illiteracy, and infant mortality rates even shock experts who study statistics on the “third world.” Fuentes makes the argument that Mexico must adopt democracy and respect for the law in order to unite these two Mexico’s. He mentions that Mexico should follow Spain’s example of Accords that were signed after General Franco’s death, that paved the way for a peaceful transfer of power, and from despot to democratic tendencies in that nation.
I agree with Fuentes in promoting democracy in Mexico, but I dare him to question why is there so much power centralized in the presidency. The presidents of Mexico have in the past exploited the nation and reaped the benefits, whether by owning stock in Telemex (A telecommunication conglomerate whose major shareholder and founder Carlos Slim is the world’s richest man) and resisting calls for that monopoly’s separation, or owing massive tracts of land that after a series of bill and initiatives would create another mega resort like Cancun or Baja, or sending the army to shoot University students and wage a “Vietnam” styled war in Chiapas and damning not only the army’s prestige but also the last rainforest in all of Mexico. These are actions that the presidents of Mexico have done with no oversight from the Mexican legislature and Supreme Court, the nation in my opinion is only a democracy when its time to look for a new savior every six years.
It is not with ineptitude that Mexicans face the corruption, violence, and just sheer depression of certain parts of their nation, it is with profound humility which stems from as Fuentes puts it, “mutilations of her territories.” Mexicans will never forget their great loss in the Mexican-American War. Not only was Mexico City the capital captured but the president Santa Anna was as well…it was during his imprisonment that he signed the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidelgo which gave the United States 40% of what was then Mexico. Even today speaking with my family I notice that while everyone is extremely proud of their “Mexicaness,” they always sort of bow their head in shame and eyes always lose contact when the subject of the past war comes up. It was and in many ways still is a shock that after fighting the Spaniards, French and Germans to preserve their nation, Mexico only ended up being shattered by the one nation it had hoped to emulate, the United States. It is a shock that still and most likely will always live on with Mexico’s peoples. My grandfather owned a landscaping business in California and it was truly remarkable to see him work the land. His sweat and often his blood went into the land, and he was always quick to tell me what could have been Mexico if she had kept her land intact. He says that “Mexico would be equal to or greater than the United States in terms of power, or that Mexico would have wiped out extreme poverty.” Funny enough I always respond that they will because as Fuentes points out, the character of Mexico is not to give in, described on page 81, “Mexico seems to be able to survive it all- earthquakes and hurricanes, wars and revolutions, territorial mutilation, crime, and corruption. A marvelous country of tender and hardworking people, intelligent, modest, hospitable, and secret people, prideful and resentful as well.” And that is why Mexicans regardless of their demi-God overlord and the rape of their lands, always are ready and able to proclaim loudly and with pride, “Qué Viva Mexico!”

book review by Jose Sanchez

To the Memory of Carlos Monsivais

June 21, 2010

Carlos Monsiváis, Mexican Who Wrote of the Great and the Humble, Dies at 72

By ANTHONY DePALMA

From the NYT

Carlos Monsiváis, Mexican Who Wrote of the Great and the Humble, Dies at 72

Carlos Monsiváis, the Mexican writer and cultural critic whose trenchant literary chronicles laid bare the foibles of political power brokers and gave everyday Mexican life a surreal majesty, died Saturday in Mexico City. He was 72.

Officials of the National Health Secretariat said he died of lung disease and had been hospitalized since April.

Mr. Monsiváis was not well known outside Mexico, and he never achieved the literary fame or commercial success of such contemporaries as Octavio Paz or Carlos Fuentes. But within Mexico, in newspapers, magazines and books, his five decades of observations about politics, popular culture, liberalism, and the highs and lows of the Mexican character made his voice more recognizable than that of Mexican presidents.

The current president, Felipe Calderón — with whom Mr. Monsiváis did not see eye to eye — paid tribute over the weekend. “His literary and journalistic work is a necessary reference for understanding the richness and cultural diversity of Mexico,” Mr. Calderón said in a statement. “He was a chronicler and witness for his era.”

Mr. Monsiváis’s writings helped shape Mexico’s contemporary political and cultural life. With Mr. Fuentes and others he was an exponent of the Latin American “boom” of the 1960s, a flowering of literary expression that brought Latin American writers to the attention of the wider world.

But while Mr. Fuentes and the others embraced universal themes, Mr. Monsiváis is best known for exploring the ordinary problems of common people to create extraordinarily moving sagas of the street.

His writing was often laced with irony and sarcasm. In “Mexican Postcards” (Verso, 1997), one of his few books to be translated into English, he wrote of his homeland: “A decent society with noble sentiments loves the home as if it were the nation, and venerates the nation as if it were a mother: there is no such thing as virtue outside of official engagements, no true love outside marriage, and no civic pride that is far removed from the respectful laying of bouquets and wreaths.”

Mr. Monsiváis wrote about some of the great social issues and political events of his time, often as a participant. He supported gay rights and embraced most leftist causes, starting with the 1968 student protests in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Plaza. Shortly before the start of the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, scores of students were killed in a confrontation with security forces. The killings were a turning point for Mexico’s pro-democracy movement.

In 1999, Mr. Monsiváis, along with the crusading Mexican journalist Julio Scherer García, returned to the Tlatelolco episode and published a book called “War Report.” In the book they revealed documents showing that the snipers who killed the students were plainclothes members of an elite army unit assigned to the president’s office, directly implicating Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Mexico’s president in 1968.

Mr. Monsiváis also supported the Zapatista guerrilla uprising in 1994 and the 2006 presidential campaign of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who narrowly lost to Mr. Calderón. He condemned the long rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which governed Mexico for more than seven decades. But when a member of the National Action Party finally won in 2000, Mr. Monsiváis criticized that party’s leaders and their conservative views.

Mr. Monsiváis was beloved as much for his curmudgeonly image as for his wrinkled Everyman appearance. He was often pictured holding one of the many household cats he kept in his overstuffed apartment in Mexico City.

He once referred to himself as a mix of Albert Camus and Ringo Starr, as a kind of fun-loving figure with the mind of a philosopher, and he was one of the few Mexican intellectuals who would be instantly recognized on the crowded streets of his city.

At a public viewing in Mexico City over the weekend, thousands passed by his coffin, which was draped in the national flag, the flag of his alma mater, the National Autonomous University, and the gay rights rainbow flag. In a public tribute, the writer Elena Poniatowska said, “What are we going to do without you, Monsi?” using the nickname by which Mr. Monsiváis was universally known.

Carlos Monsiváis (pronounced mohn-see-VICE) was born in Mexico City on May 4, 1938. After studying philosophy and literature at the national university, he began writing literary chronicles that have been compared to the novelistic New Journalism of the late 1960s practiced in the United States.

Those articles have been gathered into a series of books, including “Days to Remember” (1970), “Scenes of Modesty and Frivolity” (1981) and “The Rituals of Chaos” (1995), that were hugely popular in Mexico. He won many literary awards, including Mexico’s National Journalism Award. His column, “For My Mother Bohemians,” ran in the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada for many years.

Mr. Monsiváis had cousins but left no immediate survivors. His ashes will be kept in Mexico City at the Estanquillo Museum, which is devoted to popular culture and which Mr. Monsiváis helped create in 2006, drawing from his own collection of objects from everyday life.

Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting from Mexico City.

Strangly similar and previous review from the LA Times here.

The Spanglish of Los Suns

The Spanglish of Los Suns

May 17, 2010

Post by Steve Wilson, published at Beacon's Press Blog

On May 5, the Phoenix Suns wore jerseys with a Spanish word on them and everybody got excited because the team was making a political statement, as seen here, and here, and here, and even here.

But wait, didn't those jerseys exist because of an NBA marketing scheme called Noche Latina? Didn't the Suns wear them on March 21 and 26? Yes and yes.

Noche Latina, which this year lasted a couple of semanas, is an outreach program to Hispanic fans, and features Spanglish uniforms (more on that later) and other Latino-themed entertainment, as well as basketball analysts breaking out their high school Spanish phrasebooks. It was a token gesture to the 15% of NBA fans who have Hispanic heritage, and nobody took it seriously.

Which is why the Suns' decision to use the uniforms a second time, in protest of Arizona's new immigration enforcement law, is even more interesting than most columnists have given it credit for. The uniforms were a marketing gimmick—in fact, the NBA didn't even fully translate the team names. Los Suns? That's about as Hispanic as Taco Bell.

The fact that the team names were left in a weird Spanglish version—a version that would still be recognizable to the English-speaking majority of NBA fans—tells me that the league wanted to reach out to their Latino viewers with as little effort as possible. It was the equivalent of putting a stripe down the side of a car and calling it a performance package.

The Los Suns uniforms meant nothing. Back in March they had no power. They were cute. But those same uniforms worn in protest on May 5 meant something because there were no mariachi bands, no joking on TNT and ESPN about bad accents, and no Chihuahua-themed t-shirts shot into the stands. On May 5, the Los Suns shirts meant something because the team made the decision to wear the shirts by themselves, rather than doing it as part of a league mandate.

However, as powerful a statement as the Los Suns shirts were in the playoffs, the subtext of the shirts—the half English and half Spanish team names of the Suns and the other teams that participated in Noche Latina—unknowingly says volumes about our country today. Without even meaning to, the Noche Latina uniforms captured the essence of Hispanic-American assimilation, and went unnoticed because we are all so used to it. We're used to seeing Spanglish. We're used to half-assed efforts by teams to get more Latino viewers. We are so used to these things that we have internalized them.

Anti-immigrant protesters complain that Latinos are not assimilating into mainstream (i.e., white) American culture. And yet all around us, every day, we see evidence to the contrary. Hispanic players are in the NBA, MLB, and NFL. Hispanic performers are on TV shows, movies, and singing on our iPods. Hispanic governors run our states. Taco carts have replaced Chinese noodle shops as the most common ethnic restaurants in America.

What the NBA has taught us, not through the Los Suns protest, but through our unconscious acceptance of the Noche Latina shirts, is that the U.S. is not waiting for Hispanic assimilation to happen at some point in the future. It's already here. We just get so excited about seeing a sports team stand for something that we forget that all of us already speak Spanglish.

Spanish Coverage of Arizona Law

Interesting report on how the media in Spain sees the situation in Arizona calling it a "migratory conflict;" below extracts in Spanish.

REPORTAJE: EL CONFLICTO MIGRATORIO EN EE UU

El futuro acaba en Arizona

La ley antiinmigración está levantando en la comunidad hispana de Estados Unidos un sentimiento muy fuerte de agravio que inspira corridos y alienta reivindicaciones de identidad

PABLO ORDAZ 09/05/2010

La juez, una mujer negra de mediana edad, va leyendo sus nombres. Ellos, obedientes como escolares, responden con voz firme:

-Sergio Pérez Galán.

-¡Presente!

-Jesús de la Cruz.

-¡Presente!

-Cristina López Ramos.

-¡Presente...!

De fondo se oye un rumor metálico que sobrecoge. Porque Sergio y Jesús y Cristina y los 49 hombres y 10 mujeres que este lunes 3 de mayo están sentados en el banquillo de los acusados de esta sala de juicios de la segunda planta de la Corte de Tucson (Arizona) están encadenados. Sus tobillos y sus muñecas están unidos entre sí por una cadena que va y viene de la cintura y que limita todos sus gestos. Hace unas horas, estos hombres y estas mujeres sobrevivieron a los peligros del desierto de El Sásabe -el calor y la sed, las víboras y los alacranes- y lograron traspasar la línea fronteriza que separa el Estado mexicano de Sonora y el estadounidense de Arizona, pero allí estaban, esperándolos, los agentes de la Border Patrol. La patrulla fronteriza los presentó ante esta juez de Tucson que, como cada día de lunes a viernes, invariablemente a las 13.30, pone en marcha la representación de un juicio. Todos los aquí presentes -la propia juez, el fiscal calvo y de anchas espaldas, los aburridos abogados que juguetean con sus blackberrys o leen correspondencia atrasada- saben qué va a pasar cuando, dentro de dos horas, se levante la sesión.

-Silvano Escalante, ¿entiende la acusación en su contra?

-Sí.

-¿Entiende su derecho a tener un juicio?

-Sí.

-¿Está dispuesto a renunciar a ese derecho y declararse culpable?

-Sí.

-¿De qué país es ciudadano?

-De México.

-¿Entró en Estados Unidos por una garita de entrada?

-No.

-¿Cómo se declara?

-Culpable.

La juez repite el mismo formulario 59 veces. Las mismas preguntas. Idénticas respuestas. Los acusados -en su mayoría, mexicanos del sur, de Chiapas, de Oaxaca, trabajadores en busca de un jornal- serán declarados culpables y condenados al mismo tiempo de prisión que ya llevan entre rejas, dos o tres días a lo sumo. De tal forma, una vez terminada la sesión, un autobús de la Border Patrol los llevará hasta la frontera de Nogales y se los entregará a las autoridades mexicanas. Sólo en el caso de que los migrantes hayan intentado cruzar ilegalmente en otras ocasiones, su condena alcanzará 60 o 120 días de prisión. Pero, aun en esos supuestos, la condena será fruto de un acuerdo entre el acusado y el fiscal. El objetivo es no alargar el proceso. La razón está muy clara. Si los 60 o 70 inmigrantes que diariamente son atrapados y llevados a juicio en Tucson se declarasen inocentes y pidieran un juicio con todas las de la ley, el sistema -que ya cuesta al contribuyente entre 7 y 10 millones de dólares al mes (entre 5,5 y 7,8 millones de euros)- se colapsaría. Hay que tener en cuenta que sólo en 2009 fueron 15.000 los inmigrantes que pasaron por esta sala de la Corte de Tucson.

-Se levanta la sesión.

Los inmigrantes van saliendo de la sala trabajosamente, sus pies trabados por las cadenas, sus muñecas juntas, con barba de tres días ellos y sin peinar ellas, hombres y mujeres de piel oscura y baja estatura, rasgos que de por sí ya se han convertido en su peor fiscal, en su estigma. La ley firmada por la gobernadora de Arizona, Jan Brewer, para que la policía actúe contra los ilegales ya está surtiendo efecto. Ahí afuera, en las calles de Tucson, apenas se ven hombres y mujeres con esos rasgos, tengan papeles o no.

Hasta ahora, la policía no podía pedir la documentación a ninguna persona que no fuese sospechosa de haber cometido algún delito. A partir de ahora, sí. Cualquier latino es sospechoso. Aunque, como en el caso de José Rascón, lleve aquí 40 años y tenga ya todos los papeles en regla: "Nos sentimos vigilados. Todos. El miedo está a flor de piel. Los inmigrantes, tengan documentación o no, intentan ahora no salir de sus casas para evitar ser parados por la policía, humillados delante de sus hijos. Tenga usted en cuenta que rara es la familia en la que todos tienen documentación. Hay hijos nacionalizados con padres ilegales. Y al revés. Hay miedo, mucho miedo, créame. La gobernadora Brewer ha sembrado la semilla del odio y esa semilla crece rápido, necesita poca agua".

De hecho, la gobernadora no está sola. Su brazo armado es el sheriff del condado de Maricopa, Joe Arpaio, pero no es conveniente olvidar que el 60% de la población de Arizona -un Estado con un 30% de población hispana- está a favor de endurecer las medidas contra los inmigrantes ilegales. Aunque muchos, con el escritor Carlos Fuentes a la cabeza, van más allá. No se trata tanto de cazar al ilegal, sino de criminalizar al mestizo: "La nueva ley racista del Estado de Arizona", escribe Fuentes, "daña a individuos inocentes. Tal es el pecado de todo racismo. Entrevistados en la televisión norteamericana, varios oficiales de la policía de Arizona se quedaron sin argumentos. ¿Por qué detener a una persona de aspecto latino? Para asegurarse de que sus papeles estén en orden, creando la obligación de que todo moreno (bigotudo o no) lleve siempre consigo documentos de identidad. Como todos los grupos perseguidos. Como los judíos de la Alemania nazi".

José Rascón fue un inmigrante ilegal. Llegó a Estados Unidos con 16 años. Vivió dos décadas en California y el resto aquí en Arizona. Ahora es el orgulloso dueño de Muebles Sonora, un negocio instalado al sur de Tucson y cuyos clientes son -o eran- mayoritariamente mexicanos.

-Mire esas carpetas. Son pedidos anulados. Desde que se empezó a hablar de la ley antiinmigrante, el negocio ya no es ni el 10% de lo que era. Estamos ahorcados. Y todo es porque los güeros -los rubios- siempre nos han mirado mal. Tal vez porque nosotros estábamos aquí antes que ellos. Esto era tierra mexicana. Ellos llegaron huyendo de guerras, de religiones. Nos pidieron que les hiciéramos un lugar y se lo hicimos. Pero como en el cuento de la serpiente y el conejo, cuando estuvieron dentro de la madriguera, ya nos quisieron echar. No pararán hasta que lo logren. Tal vez porque nosotros somos más americanos que ellos...

-Es lo que dicen las canciones de Los Tigres del Norte...

-Sí, señor. Lo cantan ellos y es la pura verdad.

Dicen Los Tigres del Norte en su canción Somos más americanos: "Ya me gritaron mil veces que me regrese a mi tierra porque aquí no quepo yo. Quiero recordarle al gringo: yo no crucé la frontera, la frontera me cruzó. América nació libre. El hombre la dividió. Ellos pintaron la raya para que yo la brincara y me llaman invasor. Es un error bien marcado. Nos quitaron ocho Estados. ¿Quién es aquí el invasor? Soy extranjero en mi tierra. Y no vengo a darles guerra. Soy hombre trabajador. Nos compraron sin dinero las aguas del río Bravo y nos quitaron Tejas, Nuevo México, Arizona y Colorado... Yo soy la sangre del indio. Soy latino. Soy mestizo. Indios de dos continentes, mezclados con español. ¡Somos más americanos que el hijo de anglosajón!".

Como dijo en una ocasión el escritor Arturo Pérez-Reverte, los cantantes de corridos consiguen contar en tres minutos lo que los escritores apenas logran en 500 páginas. Durante un recorrido de varios días por Nogales, Tucson y Phoenix, queda patente que la ley antiinmigrante está levantando entre la comunidad latina un sentimiento muy fuerte de agravio. Tanto o más que el que refleja la canción. Los mexicanos que viven al norte del Río Grande no entienden la desconfianza, cuando no la criminalización, que sufren sistemáticamente por parte de sus vecinos del Norte. Se desprecia al migrante -"cuando su economía florece gracias a nuestra mano de obra barata"-, se acusa a los mexicanos del problema de la droga -"cuando la principal demanda está en Estados Unidos"-. A juicio de muchos, la ley auspiciada por la gobernadora Brewer no es sino una vuelta de tuerca más. Dolorosa, por un lado. Pero también esperanzadora. Lo explican de forma muy gráfica la activista Isabel García, en Tucson, y el sindicalista Roberto de la Cruz, en Phoenix: "La gobernadora ha conseguido algo que jamás hubiese pensado. Unir a los hispanos. A los que no tienen papeles, el miedo los tiene agazapados en sus casas, pero a los que sí tenemos, la injusticia contra nuestros hermanos nos ha hecho despertarnos, unirnos, salir a la calle juntos para pedir a voz en grito que no se discrimine a los de nuestra raza". Tímidamente al principio, pero como un clamor después, cientos de miles de personas salieron a las calles de las principales ciudades de Estados Unidos el pasado sábado para exigir que los inmigrantes sin papeles puedan permanecer en el país en condiciones dignas. Las manifestaciones contra la xenofobia se siguen produciendo y, junto al Capitolio de Phoenix, todos los días, desde las cinco de la tarde hasta la medianoche, un grupo de personas encienden unas candelas, plantan unas imágenes religiosas al pie de un árbol y rezan, charlan o comparten unos tacos para dar fe pública de su firme rechazo a la ley. Una de esas personas, puntual a su cita, es Andrea:

-Discúlpeme, pero prefiero no decirle el apellido.

Andrea lleva 25 años en Arizona. Llegó de ilegal. Pero ya no lo es. Al principio trabajó limpiando casas, pero luego logró crear una pequeña empresa para dar trabajo a las mujeres que, como ella, sólo tienen sus manos para labrarse el futuro. Cuenta Andrea que "los rubios" -también los llama "gringos" o "gabachos"- viven atrapados en la contradicción: "Por un lado, a muchos les gustaría que desapareciéramos de las calles, que no compartiéramos con ellos la fila del supermercado. Pero, por otro lado, están felices de poder confiar la limpieza de sus casas, o el cuidado de sus personas mayores, a nosotros los inmigrantes. A ellos les gusta el cariño que ponemos en el trabajo. Y, sobre todo, que cobramos menos...".

-¿Por qué viene aquí cada noche?

-Por mi hermana. O, mejor dicho, por los hijos de mi hermana.

Cuenta Andrea que su hermana tiene tres hijos. De tres, de cinco, de siete años. Niños nacidos aquí y por tanto ciudadanos estadounidenses. Pero su hermana María sigue siendo ilegal. "Si un día", cuenta Andrea con el miedo pintado en la cara, "la paran por la calle, la detendrán. La llevarán a juicio y en menos de 24 o 48 horas la deportarán a México. Pero, como los niños son americanos, no podrán expulsarlos y se los llevarán a un centro de acogida. Tal vez intenten entregarlos en adopción. Ha sucedido en otros casos...". Ante ese temor, Andrea y su familia han organizado un complejo sistema para estar siempre alerta, comunicados, escondidos. "Hemos ido a un notario", confiesa Andrea, "para acreditar que yo soy la tía de los niños. Para que, en el caso de que detengan a María, yo pueda quedarme con sus hijos...". Andrea no es víctima de ninguna paranoia. Hay diplomáticos mexicanos que han sido testigos de historias terribles. Detienen a los inmigrantes, explica el empleado de un consulado, en distintos lugares, luego los concentran en un centro de detención y de ahí los llevan a juicio o directamente los deportan. Durante ese tiempo, en algún lugar del Estado, un niño está asistiendo a clase convencido de que su madre va a esperarlo a la salida, cuando realmente ya va camino de México, con las manos y los pies esposados. Para atender a ese niño, nosotros tenemos que saber que existe, y a veces no tenemos los datos para llegar hasta él. Es terrible. Yo he visto muchas veces cómo las mamás llegan a las escuelas y dos o tres cuadras antes dejan ir a los chiquitos caminando solos. Los ves y te rompen el alma. Ves a las señoras vigilando a que el chiquito entre a la escuela, pero desde lejos, porque les han dicho que estaban deteniendo en las entradas de las escuelas. A los niñitos no los detienen, pero si una mamá llega a dejar a su hijo, le piden sus documentos. Y si no los tiene, la deportan y se quedan con el niño... Tal vez no esté sucediendo mucho, pero con que haya pasado una vez es suficiente para que el pánico se apodere de toda la comunidad. Hay miedo, sí. Mucho miedo.

Basta darse una vuelta por Altar, una pequeña localidad situada junto al desierto de El Sásabe, en el Estado de Sonora, el lugar elegido por muchos migrantes para intentar cruzar a Estados Unidos. Es difícil encontrar a alguien en Altar que, de una u otra manera, no esté ligado al negocio de la emigración ilegal. Por sus calles polvorientas se ve a niños de la mano de hombres que dicen ser sus tíos, pero que en realidad son coyotes o polleros, tipos sin escrúpulos, traficantes de personas que pueden llegar a cobrar más de 3.000 dólares por cada intento -tenga éxito o no- de cruzar la frontera. Para saber de verdad lo que sucede en ese trozo de desierto entre Altar y la línea fronteriza con Estados Unidos, lo mejor es darse una vuelta por el refugio de menores que el Gobierno mexicano tiene instalado en Nogales, a sólo unos metros de la frontera. Aquí llegan los muchachos que sobrevivieron al desierto, pero fracasaron a la hora de burlar a la policía fronteriza. Los agentes de la Border Patrol los atraparon ya en territorio norteamericano y se los entregaron a las autoridades mexicanas. A razón de 30 o 40 cada día. A veces 700 u 800 al mes. Algunos con los pies destrozados. Otros con el surco del llanto marcado en la tez polvorienta. Todos con una historia triste que contar. Isabel Arvizu, la responsable del albergue, relata una que jamás podrá olvidar: "Un día nos entregaron a un muchacho que iba con su madre y otros migrantes por el desierto, guiados por un coyote. De pronto, la madre se desplomó y murió. El pollero le tiró un teléfono al muchacho y le dijo que esperara unas horas, para darle tiempo a ellos a poner tierra de por medio, y que luego llamara a un número de emergencias. Cuando los agentes llegaron se encontraron al muchacho sentado junto a su madre. Les dijo que estaba dormida. Una vez aquí, lo seguía diciendo: mi madre se ha quedado dormida en el desierto".

Hay veces que Isabel, o cualquiera de los animosos trabajadores del albergue, lo tienen fácil. Entrevistan al muchacho deportado, localizan a su familia y lo envían de regreso a casa. Otras veces, muchas veces, no es tan fácil. "Muchos de estos críos", cuenta Isabel, "están en tierra de nadie. Su padre se fue un día a buscar fortuna a Estados Unidos y, como muchos años después sigue sin tener papeles, no puede regresar. El chaval crece al cuidado de la madre o de los abuelos, con el dinero que el padre a duras penas consigue mandarles. Un día, el padre reúne los dólares necesarios para pagar a un pollero y pide que le manden al niño. El muchacho, de los Estados sureños de Chiapas o de Oaxaca, cruza la República, se pone en manos del pollero, atraviesa el desierto de El Sásabe en busca de un padre al que jamás conoció y que ahora vive en Chicago o en Los Ángeles... Y, cuando está a punto de conseguir un sueño, la migra lo detiene...". Es el caso de Julio, de 14 años, que pasea descalzo por el albergue, esperando una llamada de su madre. O el de Jennyfer, una muchacha salvadoreña de 15 años que dio a luz cuando intentaba cruzar la frontera...

Para intentar mitigar tanto dolor, el que ya existe y el que sobrevendrá si la ley de Arizona finalmente entra en vigor, el embajador de México en Estados Unidos, Arturo Sarukhán, ha viajado esta semana a Phoenix para reunirse con sus cónsules -tiene cinco en Arizona- y con líderes de las organizaciones civiles. "Hemos estado organizando", explica el embajador, "la estrategia de protección a los migrantes. Hemos activado todos los mecanismos de alerta. Y he constatado una enorme preocupación entre nuestras comunidades. Hay que tener en cuenta que, con ley o sin ella, en Arizona ya hace tiempo que se le está haciendo la vida muy difícil a los migrantes de origen hispano. Y esto, lógicamente, está generando tensiones y un rechazo cierto de la opinión pública de mi país hacia Estados Unidos". A Sarukhán le corresponde la difícil tarea de apoyar sin reservas a los suyos en su litigio con las autoridades de Arizona y velar al tiempo porque las relaciones de los dos países no se deterioren. "No hay que olvidar", añade, "que Estados Unidos se ha hecho grande por su capacidad de integrar a las diferentes oleadas de inmigrantes. Ellos siguen necesitando nuestra mano de obra y nosotros seguimos necesitando una reforma migratoria que haga más fácil la vida a los que cruzan la frontera buscando un futuro...".

A los muchachos que viajan en el techo de los trenes buscando a un padre que tal vez viva en Chicago. A los niños que todavía esperan a una madre dormida en el desierto.

From El Pais