Am I reading this right? The bill is SB 1159, which looks like it passed to me when I look it up on the California legislature website -- with the following language:
Or, to quote a bumper sticker from years ago: Indians had lousy immigration policies.
Maybe that's one of the roots of the intense rhetoric around immigration: fear that some 500 year old chickens might come home to roost.
I would just point out that the "intense rhetoric" you note is not so much about "immigration" per se -- it's about illegal immigration. I have no problem or objection to people from anywhere in the world immigrating here legally -- I welcome them. I do object strenuously to people coming and living here in violation of our laws, the same as I object to anyone systematically flouting our laws.
One of the most basic characteristics of a sovreign nation is the right to control its borders and who comes and goes across them. You're right -- if the native Americans had had immigration policies and the ability to enforce them in a meaningful way, things would have turned out a lot differently for all of us. To me, that's a object lesson, not a cause of fear that "500 year old chickens might come home to roost."
And my grandparents did as well, and their family took care of themselves.
The thought of taking charity was unthinkable. When my great grandmother had a stroke, my grandmother, with a new baby (my uncle), and two other young children, took care of her mother, paid cash for the doctor, the hospital, and the physical therapy for her mother. All without help from the government.
My family did not come to this country until the Indian wars were over, during WW1. While I feel tremendous sadness for what happened to the Native Americans, no one in my family had anything to do with it. Furthermore, I wonder if the Native American really thought that an entire continent would continue to remain undiscovered forever. Hence, their displaced anger against Christopher Columbus.
The present day trend to re-write history is ridiculous. So is the comparison to hordes of illegal aliens flooding our country the same as the controlled legal immigration of the 19th and 20th century. Not even close. The immigrants who came through Ellis Island, were examined by a doctor when they arrived, and quarantined if there was disease found. Illegal aliens are coming to this country with who knows what diseases. And no one seems to care until it it too late.
Nothing revisionist about the genocide and theft of this continent, the stolen people on whose backs our early economic power was built, nor the racist motivation for many of the quotas passed over the years. I'm glad for you that your ancestors belonged to the politically correct demographic of the time(s) during which they immigrated.
But it was an accident of birth ... nothing there to suggest any particular respect for law. The argument from superior virtue just doesn't resonate with me. And, since your family thrived on the benefits that resulted from that genocide, the whole "we weren't even there" doesn't hold much water, either ... but that's another discussion, I think.
The stereotype of dirty immigrants importing diseases has been around since Victorian times. The most recent iteration being the silliness around Ebola being brought in by Mexican wetbacks or ISIS infiltrators.
And the "hordes" of illegals? Really? Sorry, but the overheated rhetoric reeks of panic.
... In the 19th century, Irish immigrants were called many of the things you hear hurled at Central American immigrants today: a scourge on public health, a drain on the economy, a threat to American culture.
One thing they weren't called, though, was illegal,†because that term hadn't been conceived yet.
People are shocked when I say before World War I, there were no green cards, no visas, no quotas, no passports, even. Really, you just showed up. And if you could walk without a limp, and you had $30 in your pocket, you walked right in,†said Mae Ngai, a legal and political historian at Columbia University, whose studies focus on immigration.
It's worth remembering how malleable the rules of immigration have been, as each successive wave of foreigners has come across the border, drawing resistance from those who came before. And that mid-19th-century wave is especially noteworthy, because of the role Massachusetts played.
At the time, white Protestants made up the local majority, said Mark Hubbard, a historian at Eastern Illinois University who wrote a book about Massachusetts nativism. After 1845, a huge wave of Irish came in, fleeing the famine. So did a wave of Germans, escaping political unrest.
That these Irish were more than desperate,†Hubbard said, barely mattered to the public at large.
They (were) fleeing a terrible situation. But there just wasn't much empathy for that,†he said. It was more about how this wave of foreigners is going to irrevocably change America.â€
And yet they could come — with no paperwork issues or quotas or restrictions or immigration courts. Political backlash followed, in the form of secret societies that coalesced into the Know Nothing Party. The Know Nothings grew so popular that, in 1854, they overwhelmingly took over the Massachusetts Legislature — where they pushed for prohibition laws, aimed squarely at Irish and German culture.
Once again, I agree that we desperately need a rational and enforceable immigration policy. What I object to is formulating those laws on non-facts and hidden agendas.
So ... what would y'all like to see instead of current policy and practice?
So is the comparison to hordes of illegal aliens flooding our country the same as the controlled legal immigration of the 19th and 20th century. Not even close. The immigrants who came through Ellis Island, were examined by a doctor when they arrived, and quarantined if there was disease found. Illegal aliens are coming to this country with who knows what diseases. And no one seems to care until it it too late.
I call BS. Do you really think no one came through Ellis Island with fake papers or lied about relationships to get in? Do you really think people only came through Ellis Island? Do you really think no immigrant groups formed and stayed in enclaves in their country of adoption?
Additionally, where is your evidence that the undocumented are bringing all kinds of terrifying diseases? I worked in a clinic whose overwhelming majority of patients were undocumented. Whatever else you think about Mexico and Central American governments - and my husband is Mexican, we will be the first to criticize how that government flubs things up - their children's vaccine records were almost always up to date. Same 'disease-ridden immigrant' trope that's been out there since well before Ellis Island, fears unfounded. Unless you count the smallpox blankets, and......well, it wasn't Mexico who did that.
Some of our forebears may not have necessarily been all that "legal" either.
After the passage of the severely restrictive National Origins Act of 1924, which cut annual admissions of immigrants to the United States by 85 percent of pre-World War I levels, many Europeans, wishing to join family members in America, entered the country unlawfully. In the 1930s and 1940s, tens of thousands of people, overwhelmingly Europeans and Canadians, were legalized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Labor Department and the Justice Department through various administrative programs. In each case, the adjustment to legal status came with permanent residency.
Even the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, known mostly as a conservative immigration measure, included provisions for suspending deportation orders in cases in which deportation would separate families or otherwise result in hardship. These provisions also included adjustment to permanent resident status. The most recent legalization program, under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, granted permanent residency, or green cards, to 2.7 million people.
Yes, entering the USA and or overstaying certain visas is "against the law" however it is a civil matter not criminal. Federal criminal statues do not speak to entering the country without proper papers nor remaining without. Because it is a civil/administrative matter is why Obama and previous presidents/administrations have been able to play creative games with who is or is not deported and when.
On another note regarding the matter of illegals paying taxes; so what of it? Paying taxes is *NOT* pre se anything to do with being a citizen or legal resident, but rather what is expected from earned, unearned and other sorts of income and or economic activity. Now we can argue six ways from Sunday about working illegally/off the books; but two wrongs don't make one right. Prostitutes and others engaging in *illegal* activity are required to pay taxes on their income. For all the horrible things he did/caused Al Capone was finally convicted and imprisoned for tax evasion.
Taxes go to support government services that all persons use, especially illegals. Their children attend public schools, themselves and or their children obtain ER and often other health services, they drive on federal and local roads/highways, expect LE, fire and other services if they require aid and so forth. Here in NYC illegals benefit further from a bewildering and vast array of services including free legal assistance (in certain instances) at deportation proceedings. So yes, they darn well should be paying taxes.
I agree ... which makes the whole "leeching off the taxpayer" rant pretty moot, since, as you point out, they do pay taxes. Ethically speaking, they have as much right to access taxpayer-supported services as anyone else.
Considering my ancestors were slaves dragged against their freewill and kept in chains for hundreds of years...that meme doesn't apply to me nor the other 30 or so million black Americans.
I am for immigration...legal immigration. This law is a terrible idea and just feeds into the sense of entitlement too many people have. There are millions of people here on work visas and are under going the process of citizenship. This law is just a slap in their faces and rewards illegal activities.
TheGooch
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