Earlier I posted this story asking for your help in responding to an email my father received regarding a particularly virulent anti-immigration screed attributed to former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm. Thanks to your gracious assistance and a little digging of my own, here is the response I prepared for him (which incorporates many of your own comments to my earlier post):
(cont.)
Dear Dad,
Here are specific arguments against the points raised by Dick Lamm in the email you received. Some of them are from people from whom I requested information about the immigration issue. Others I found on the internet. A few are from me off the top of my head. I’ve categorized them for you in the order they appear in the email you received.
Lamm: “First, to destroy America, turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. … Second, to destroy America , “Invent ‘multiculturalism’ and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture.”
From a friend of mine:
“Thing is, the US has never been a bi-lingual nation. It is a MULTI-lingual nation. It is probably the only nation on the planet in which all languages are spoken (and published), and all religions are practiced. And this is not new; the US has always had immigration, and immigrants have always tended to form little linguistic and cultural communities that maintain and hand down traditions and practices from one generation to the next, even as those later generations assimilate into the broader American culture. This is why so many cities have a Chinatown, Greektown or Little Italy, and (highly successful, I might add) hundreds of ethnic restaurants and grocery stores. This is why any sizable list of Americans (from a metropolitan area phone book or school roster to the list of Members of Congress) yields such a rich and varied collection of ethnic surnames.
The US has absorbed many waves of immigrants — Germans, Dutch, Irish, Italians, Poles, Russians and other Eastern Europeans (particularly Jews), who came here to escape poverty or persecution and to work and build better lives for themselves. The Chinese workers who were brought in to build the railroads in the west. The Africans who were brought here as slaves, but whose descendants are a vital and integral part of American history and culture. We’ve had more Chinese, along with Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Indonesians, Filipinos, Bangladeshi, Thai. We’ve had more from former Communist countries. And we’ve always had immigrants from Central and South American — some of whom are themselves the descendants of immigrants, and some descended from native ethnic peoples.
And the US is still standing.
There was a time when certain people ranted and said pretty much the EXACT SAME THINGS Lamm is saying about the Mexicans about the Irish, and the Poles, and the Chinese. But factories and slaughterhouses and cross-country construction projects needed a large labor force; without huge numbers of immigrant workers, those businesses could not have even existed, much less been profitable. Those businesses also liked having a surplus of workers, because it meant they could treat theirs like crap — and they did — just like many employers hiring Hispanic immigrants (especially “off the books”) do today.”
Lamm: “Third, ‘We could make the United States an ‘Hispanic Quebec’ without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity.”
Where? Who is proposing this? This sounds like the “Reconquista” or “Aztlan” myth that some radical right commentators and Lou Dobbs have been hyping, with little if any proof of any such conspiracy.
This is from Dave Neiwert, (LINK) a journalist who writes about many issues, including immigration:
Stepping into line with the reconquista theory this weekend was the Washington Times, which ran a long profile describing the theory rather credulously:
La reconquista, a radical movement calling for Mexico to “reconquer” America’s Southwest, has stepped out of the shadows at recent immigration-reform protests nationwide as marchers held signs saying, “Uncle Sam Stole Our Land!” and waved Mexico’s flag.
Even as organizers urged marchers to display U.S. flags, the theme of reclaiming “stolen” land remained strong. One popular banner read: “If you think I’m illegal because I’m a Mexican, learn the true history because I’m in my homeland.”
“We need to change direction,” said Jose Lugo, an instructor in Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder at a campus march last week. “And by allowing these 50,000, 50 million [immigrants] to come in here, we can do that.”
The revolutionary tone has surprised even longtime immigration watchers such as Ira Mehlman, the Los Angeles-based spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
“I’ve always been skeptical myself about this [reconquista], but what I’ve seen over the last few weeks leads me to believe that there’s more there than I thought,” Mr. Mehlman said.
“You’re seeing people marching with Mexican flags chanting, ‘This is our country.’ I don’t think that we can dismiss this as youthful exuberance or a bunch of hotheads,” he said.
The reporter, to her credit, does include at least a touch of reality-based stuff:
Hispanic rights leaders insist there’s nothing to the so-called reconquista, sometimes referred to as Aztlan, the mythical ancestral homeland of the Aztecs that reportedly stretches from the border to southern Oregon and Colorado.
Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Association in Los Angeles, one of the march organizers, was infuriated when a reporter asked him about the reconquista.
“I can’t believe you’re bothering me with questions about this. You’re not serious,” Mr. Lopez said. “I can’t believe you’re bothering with such a minuscule, fringe element that has no resonance with this populace.”
More to the point, the reporter — as well as Malkin, and most of the other reconquista theorists — seem confused about a very basic point: The belief that the Southwest is part of their historical homeland is a legitimate belief for most Latinos, and the marchers they cite seem to be expressing that point. They’re also expressing the belief that this historical claim overrides the latter-day borders that would deny them their heritage. What’s utterly absent is any claim that they intend to retake the Southwest for Mexico, which is what the reconquista theory is all about. On the contrary, they seem intent on becoming American — but they also are claiming they have a right, by virtue of their heritage, to become one.
That doesn’t sound like an invasion to me.
Of course, when I think of invasions, I usually think of armed forces crossing borders and attempting to defeat the other nation’s military and ultimately depose its government. You know, what we did in Iraq. Planes, tanks, bombs, the works. Shock and awe.
I don’t think of poor people trekking across the desert, looking to land some hard labor in our farm fields and on construction sites, quite the same way. But maybe that’s just me.
Listening to the reconquista theories, I am taken back, back, back — back to those halcyon days when conspiracy theories were the entire raison d’etre of the far right of America’s conservative movement. Which is to say, every day of the past half-century.
After all, the far right can’t really exist for long without a scapegoat, an Enemy, on whom it can blame all the world’s ills. It has always been so, and will always be.
In the post-Civil War period, it was the omnipotent threat of “black rape” that inspired the American far right into a decades-long orgy of lynching whose effects remain with us today.
In the first half of the 20th century, it was the “Yellow Peril.” This was a conspiracy theory which held that the Japanese emperor intended to invade the Pacific Coast, and that he was sending immigrants to American shores as shock troops to prepare the way for just such a military action. James Phelan, one of the “peril” theory’s chief advocates, explained in 1907 that the Japanese immigrants represented an “enemy within our gates.” Advocates frequently cited a 1909 book promoting this theory, Homer Lea’s The Valor of Ignorance, which detailed the invasion to come and its aftermath. Moreover, the larger “Yellow Peril” was framed as simply a wave of nonwhite immigrants who would swamp the existing white population if left unchecked. (See more here.)
Then, for most of the post-World War II period, the Enemy was those dirty Communists. This, of course, inspired an entire universe of right-wing conspiracy theorizing, particularly embodied by the McCarthy witch hunts and their offspring, the John Birch Society.
With the demise of the Communist threat in the late ’80s and early ’90s, right-wingers were left with no one to scapegoat in elaborate conspiracy-theory fashion — except, of course, for Bill “New World Order” Clinton. But he was only good for an eight-year stint (though if Hillary resurfaces in 2008, hey, they’ve got another eight more years’ worth).
They’ve really been in need of a more permanent conspiracy-theory scapegoat, and the foreignness of radical Islam makes it difficult to successfully concoct any theories that stick, other than Hannityesque smears identifying liberalism with terrorism.
But reconquista? Woo-hoo! Made to order!
Already, it’s a theory that’s being endorsed by supposedly mainstream Republicans, even in non-border states like Connecticut, where one of the GOP candidates for Lieberman’s seat, Paul Streitz, weighed in:
“It is time to get the troops out of Iraq and put them on the Mexican border. Thousands of Mexicans and other illegal aliens from other countries come into this country every day. This is an invasion, not immigration,” Streitz said in a press release.
“The Mexicans are serious about their Reconquista claims to Aztlan. The Senate is headed toward surrendering the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas,” the press release continued.
In case anyone’s wondering, this latest conspiracy theory in fact originated on the far right — specifically, with Glenn Spencer, leader of American Patrol:
The so-called reconquista, an alleged plot to turn several American states into a Mexican state or some kind of puppet government controlled by Mexico, has been a top concern for Spencer for years. Back in 1999, he put it like this: “The consul general says Mexico is reconquering California. A Mexican intellectual suggests that anyone who doesn’t like Mexicans should leave California. What else do you need to hear? RECONQUISTA IS REAL… . EVERY ILLEGAL ALIEN IN OUR NATION MUST BE DEPORTED IMMEDIATELY. … IF WE CAN BOMB THE TV STATION IN BELGRADE [in the former Yugoslavia] WE CAN SHUT DOWN [U.S. Spanish-language stations] TELEMUNDO AND UNIVISION.”
Spencer got involved in the anti-immigration movement in 1992, when he formed Voice of Citizens Together, also known as American Patrol, in California. In 2002, saying the battle was lost in that state, he moved to the “front lines” of the Arizona border, where he formed American Border Patrol. He was one of the first to call for border citizens’ patrols and pioneered the use of surveillance technology.
He also was one of the first well-known anti-immigration activists to more or less openly court white supremacists and anti-Semites. He has attended conferences of American Renaissance magazine, which specializes in racist theories about blacks and others. He interviewed the magazine’s editor, Jared Taylor, on his syndicated radio show. Another guest was California State Professor Kevin MacDonald, who is the architect of an elaborate anti-Semitic theory dressed up as evolutionary biology.
Spencer’s voice has been particularly strident in pushing the reconquista theory as a Minuteman Project promoter:
Glen Spencer’s Voices of Citizens Together (VCT) almost makes AICF look tame by comparison. A Mexican invasion, Spencer warns in his own videotape, is racing across America “like wildfire.” There are drugs in Iowa, gang takeovers in Nevada, and “traitors” in the Democratic Party, the Catholic Church and among the “corporate globalists.”
Bringing crime, drugs, squalor and “immigration via the birth canal,” Mexicans are a “cultural cancer” from which Western civilization “must be rescued.” They are threatening the birthright left by the white colonists who “earned the right to stewardship of the land.” And this invasion is no accident.
Working in league with communist Chicano activists and their allies in America, Spencer warns, Mexico is using a little-known but highly effective plan ý a scheme already successful in “seizing power” in California ý “to defeat America.”
The name of the conspiracy is the “Plan de Aztlan.”
“Some scoff at the idea of a Mexican plan of conquest,” says Spencer’s video (which also features a scuffle between VCT and antiracist activists). The video then answers with an assortment of sound bites from Latino activists and Mexican officials — including references to “la reconquista” (the reconquest) — that “prove” that there is a Mexican plot to break the Southwestern states away.
A “hostile force on our border,” the narrator warns, is engaging in “demographic war” against the United States. “Mexico is moving to capture the American Southwest.”
Variations on this Aztlan conspiracy theory are now widespread on the American radical right. Columnists like Francis and Joseph E. Fallon, who has written on the subject for journals including American Renaissance and Mankind Quarterly, a publication specializing in race “science,” have helped to publicize variations of the theory.
The theory was also heavily promoted by the Barnes Review, which otherwise prefers to occupy itself with Holocaust revisionism.
“Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50% dropout rate from high school.”
Dad, I think the stuff I sent you about Victor Davis Hanson earlier addresses the point about education gains over generations among Hispanic populations in the US. I don’t know where Lamm is getting his statistics.
Lamm: “My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of ‘Victimology.’ I would get all minorities to think that their lack of success was the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.”
Dad, this is my response:
What major corporations and foundations are investing “lots of money” in this policy? I can send you lists of major conservative foundations and charitable organizations (including Richard Mellon Scaife, the Coors family, the DeVos family, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, etc). who are “investing” and “promoting” anti-immigrant policies and causes to the tune of millions of dollars. I know of no comparable effort in terms of money or influence that is promoting immigration., or a “grievance industry” on behalf of Latinos.
Indeed, the biggest “grievance industry” I see is among those who oppose immigrants for everything and anything that is wrong with America.
Every night you can watch new personalities such as Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck and Lou Dobbs preach about the dangers of immigration and how it is victimizing non-immigrants (I see no counterbalance of prominent “liberal” news anchors with pro-immigration sympathies, by the way). Often they get their information from conservative organizations, some with ties to white supremacists. A good example of the latter is the “Minutemen” whose founders have white supremacist backgrounds and whose “good works” Lou Dobbs has heavily promoted on his CNN show.
Lamm: “My sixth plan for America ‘s downfall would include dual citizenship, and promote divided loyalties.”
Dad, I’ll also handle this one myself by providing you a few historical examples.
Many second generation Japanese Americans held “dual citizenship” because their immigrant parents came from Japan, when war with Japan broke out after Pearl Harbor. This led to many of them being rounded up and interned in relocation camps, and the loss of their businesses and properties, especially in California. Nonetheless it was the young Japanese-American men who had the highest enlistment rate among Americans and their units were the most highly decorated in WWII, and suffered some of the highest rates of casualties despite their so-called “divided loyalties.” In fact, the famed 442nd Regiment comprised of Japanese Americans was awarded 21 Medals of Honor, 53 Distinguished Service Crosses, 588 Silver Stars, 5,200 Bronze Star Medals, 9,486 Purple Hearts, and eight Presidential Unit Citations (the nation’s top award for combat units).
The same charges of dual loyalties were made against German Americans in WWI and WWII as well, but at least they weren’t interned, and they also served honorably in the military.
We have reservations for Native Americans, who presumably have a “divided loyalty” between their “tribal nations” and the US, yet some of the most important soldiers in WWII were native speaking Navajo soldiers who were used to send coded messages their enemy (the Japanese in this case) couldn’t break because their language was so unknown. Despite the discrimination and poverty experienced by many Native Americans they also served honorably in our nation’s wars. In fact, if you read “Flags of Our Fathers” one of the men famously captured on film raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima was a Navajo.
I think it is unfair and gross bigotry to suggest that American citizens of Hispanic descent whether naturalized or citizens by birth (some for many generations) are less loyal to America than others. In fact, the number of Latinos in our military far exceeds their percentage in the population at large. They have fought for our country in every war of the 20th and 21st Centuries, including those currently ongoing in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Surprisingly, the only large scale case of “divided loyalties” in American History is rarely mentioned as such, because it primarily involved white men living in the Southern States who chose to secede from the Union when Abraham Lincoln was elected President because they didn’t like his anti-slavery politics. Those men chose loyalty to their home states over loyalty to the United States of America itself and their disloyalty to our country brought about the bloodiest and most tragic war in our history. There is no other comparable example of “dual loyalties” leading to such mass violence or separatist movements in our history, and certainly not among immigrant communities.
Lamm: “Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits; make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of ‘diversity.’ I would find a word similar to ‘heretic’ in the 16th century – that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobe’ halt discussion and debate. Having made America a bilingual/bicultural country, having established multi-culturism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of ‘Victimology,’ I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra: That because immigration has been good for America , it must always be good. I would make every individual immigrant symmetric and ignore the cumulative impact of millions of them.”
Dad, so far as I know, no one has rescinded the First Amendment. I hear all sorts of people debating the immigration issue, loudly, profanely and yes, xenophobically, yet I see no wave of repression to “shut them up” or prevent them expressing their views.
Indeed, as my references to many news media personalities earlier makes clear, many of them are firmly in the anti-immigration camp and more than happy to broadcast their beliefs to millions of Americans each day. Let me name just a few of the more well known conservative media personalities who hold and promote anti-immigration and anti-Latino views on television and radio:
Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Joe Scarborough, Josh Gibson, Tucker Carlson, Glen Beck, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and every local right wing talk show host I come across.
I think Lamm is being delusional here, frankly.
Here are some common myths about immigration they spread, and a response from a friend of mine:
Myth #1: A path to citizenship for the current population of illegal immigrants would hurt our economy.
The fact is that right now, truly illegal citizens can’t open bank accounts. Nor can they invest in property. They can’t save in any way. So the money goes home–some $100 billion a year, mostly pre-tax–and with the help of the federal government. A federal program designed to help legal immigrant Mexican workers wire their earnings back to families in Mexico also is providing a “fast, safe, and low-cost way” for illegal workers without Social Security cards to funnel money out of the U.S.
Myth #2: Putting these workers into the social security system would hurt our citizens’ retirement.
The biggest problem with social security, of course, is demographics. The government (GAO) estimates that every 250,000 young workers added to the system would alleviate 5% of the future problem. (There are many different kinds of estimates and models.) But it’s clear that bringing young immigrant workers into the system will help. They are mostly young, so they will be paying social security rather than collecting.
Myth #3: Creating a path to citizenship will hurt wages in this country.
Right now, illegal immigrants live in fear. Yes, they accept lower wages and lack rights to even the most basic accommodations. Suppose these workers suddenly got some legal status? The most likely immediate effect would be a rise in union membership along with demands for basic employment rights. This has been recognized by unions. In February 2000, the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor — Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) announced that it was changing its historic position. It would now support expanded immigration, lenient enforcement of immigration laws, and the legislative agenda of immigrants.
Myth #4: Legalizing immigrants will cost you money.
They are costing money now! The majority of illegal males in this country have no insurance. When they hit your car, you have no coverage. When they are very ill, they end up in emergency rooms and the cost is distributed to your insurances and your employer. According to the Census Bureau, since 1989 the population without health insurance has grown by 7.8 million and stood at 41.2 million in 2001. (Figures for 2001 are based on the March 2002 CPS.) This growth has been driven largely by immigration. Immigrants who arrived after 1989 account for 6.9 million or 77 percent of the growth in the uninsured. Moreover, there where nearly 600,000 children born to post-1990 immigrants who lack insurance, meaning that new immigrants and their U.S.-born children accounted for over 95 percent of the growth in the uninsured population. Thus, it is reasonable to say that the nation’s health insurance crisis is being caused [in part] by our immigration policy.
Myth #5: The government is enforcing the current immigration laws.
An employer can still enter 000-00-0000 as an employee’s social security number and get away with it. In the recent draft of the “immigration compromise” the Bush administration took repayment of back employment (FICA) taxes “off the table.” That’s because both employees and employers owe back taxes; the employee has committed (and would be admitting to) a civil infraction (like a parking ticket) but the employer would be admitting to a felony when it went to pay the back taxes. Who is Bush protecting?
Myth #6: Illegal Immigration is a terrorism risk.
First, the 9/11 hijackers were almost all here legally. Second, drug dealers and terrorists won’t be stopped by a wall. They buy Cessnas with pin money.
Lamm: “Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis’s book “Mexifornia.” His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy America . If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don’t read that book.”
No one has censored any of Hanson’s books. Or prevented libraries from carrying them. Or people from reading them. As for a critique of Hanson’s book I already sent that to you (LINK).
Hope this is what you were looking for Dad. If you need more, or have other questions let me know, and I’ll do my best to provide you answers from “the other side” of the immigration issue.
Love,
Steve