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.