The Senate has agreed to build The Great Wall of America.
On the border fence, the Senate by an 83-16 vote backed fences on 370 miles of the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border, focusing on areas where there is a high volume of illegal crossings. About 70 miles already exist, although some of the fence is in disrepair, and the Department of Homeland Security already has plans to build the rest.
The fence amendment by Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions would also require vehicle barriers to be placed along 500 miles of the southwest border.
Continued below…
Senators Sessions and Durbin had an exchange today that made me stop and re-realize the difference of worldview that exists between myself and many of my fellow Americans.
“What we have here has become a symbol for the right wing in American politics,” countered Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. He said if the proposal passed, “our relationship with Mexico would come down to a barrier between our two countries.”
For someone like Senator Sessions, his stability is hinged on the notion that anyone that differs from him in any way has a clear line of boundary. It is a worldview that denounces diversity as the watering down of his identity rather than an enrichment. He tolerates the existence of Others (barely) but you better make damn sure the neighborhood knows that there are two separate yards.
I would argue that Senator Sessions’ viewpoint is in the mainstream, especially nowadays in the political climate engineered by Karl Rove and other Bush government officials. Feelings of distrust and hostility abound in plentitude. There is a sizeable crowd of Americans that still have a healthy dose of adrenaline flowing in their veins from the 9/11 attacks and will do anything it takes to “protect the homeland”. They (we?) are kept in a state of outrage and alertness by groups such as Let Freedom Ring, Inc. who ran television ads last year that used the imagery of the World Trade Center attacks to incite fear and xenophobia, calling for the building of the wall that was approved today by the U.S. Senate.
The problem with the National Security argument is this: if it was really about terrorism and security then why the focus on the southern border? FactCheck.org had this to say regarding the message of the commercials:
But, according to the 9/11 Commission, none of the 9/11 hijackers entered the United States by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and all of them had visas issued by the US State Department. According to a staff report from the commission, some of the 19 hijackers entered the US several times, always through US airports. The report said, on pages 7 and 8, that the first hijacker flew in through Los Angeles International Airport on Jan. 15, 2000.” All others entered through 8 airports on the East Coast, including 11 entries through New York area airports and 12 through Florida airports.” One would-be hijacker, Mohamed al Kahtani, tried to fly in through Orlando but was turned away when he aroused suspicions of an alert Immigration official and later became hostile and gave evasive answers when interrogated.
In summary, the best evidence available, as well as the evidence cited by the sponsors of the ad, makes a better case for building a fence at the Canadian border than it does at the Mexican border – that is, if Let Freedom Ring’s object is truly to stop illegal immigration from Muslim countries rather than from Mexico and Central America.
So there’s the skinny, it really is about keeping certain groups out of the United States. The media moguls who control the national dialogue perpetuate this message of hate. It’s obvious who the targets are when you have Anderson Cooper, Larry King and Lou Dobbs of CNN broadcasting from the Mexican border; Fox News….well, their tactics of division are legendary; and from MSNBC I was appalled to hear Chris Matthews make these remarks on Monday night after primetime speechifying by Bush.
Keith, I think a lot of Americans are aware of this issue. They find the boring, for the reason that they don`t think there`ll ever really be a real tightening of the screws on this border. They`ve heard it since they were born. They`re going to turn to the other channel tonight. A lot of them, you talked bout this–those who are intensely interested are obviously Hispanic people, people who have come to the country illegally, as well as their relatives who came here centuries before. They care about it, because it is in fact an ethnic issue to a lot of Americans.
On the other side you have people who live in the southwest or in communities which are changing culturally from Anglo to Hispanic rather quickly, who don`t like this cultural shock who are going to be watching tonight. But we`ll see. I don`t think this is as exciting as say, the war in Iraq or gas prices or security or the NSA story or even the CIA story. I think people are very concerned right now about this country`s security. I`m not sure they`re on the top of their game when it comes to interest in ethnicity, and I think that`s what this issue is about.
Changing culturally from Anglo to Hispanic?!?
It’s that type of ignorance of the history of the American Southwest that galls me to no end. I would think it would be obvious to the American public that places like El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula (Los Angeles), San Diego, San Ysidro, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Escondido, San Francisco, Temecula, El Centro, Las Vegas, Yuma, Casa Grande, Mesa, Tucson, San Manuel, San Luis, Sierra Vista, Nogales, Las Cruces, Albuquerque, Alamogordo, Socorro, Santa Rosa, Tucumcari, Española, Santa Fe, Los Alamos, San Antonio, Amarillo, Odessa, Seminole, Presidio and El Paso were not cities sprouted from the roots of the New England pilgrims.
The news that the Senate has decided to “get tough” on border enforcement will cause a lot of cheering and back-slapping in many American homes tonight, most of them too far from la frontera to realize the impact the Great Wall will actually have in the areas where it will be built. This latest move by the American government is a defiling of our history as a nation of immigrants as well as a further deepening of the divide between our country and the rest of the world. The only difference is, this time the walls will be real.
Crossposted from my humble blog
I have Corky Gonzalez on my mind today. Rest in peace, hermano.
When I saw the title, I thought you were talking about a proposed new monument in Washington to remember the Nixon administration, the Reagan administration, the Bush 41 administration, and the Bush 43 administration.
But I see that you envision President Putin’s trip to Mexico where he stands in Matamoros or Nuevo Laredo or Tijuana and says, “Senor Jorge Bush, tear down this wall (fence).”
Surely there will be concrete something or others that we can use to set in plaques to remember and (dis)honor Rove, Libby, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales (especially Gonzales), Rice, Bolton, Duke Cunningham, Abramoff, Tom DeLay,… I do believe there are enough to put a plaque every five miles or so and still cover the length of the border. An honest-to-goodness wall of shame.
I hear alot of progressives/liberals denounce walls like the one being built by Israel and the former Berlin Wall, yet they support this one. Makes no sense to me.
A woman I once knew… middle aged, mom, grandmom, regular churchgoer (i’m not sure which denomination… possibly Baptist or Pentecostal) and so on, had this saying… Whenever she was really, really upset about something, she’d say “Well, I’m a good Christian woman, but sometimes I’ve just gotta put Jesus on the shelf”, and then off she would rant, cursing like a longshoreman about whatever it was that had gotten on her last nerve. (I thought it was hilarious, but she apparently sometimes felt bad about it later.)
Anyway, though… your comment brought that to mind… I think there are a some people who consider themselves liberals or progressives, but then they find something that, for whatever reason, brings them to the point where they have to put “liberalism/progressivism on the shelf” and move over to a different place for a time.
I happen to think this is the wrong thing to do, as I feel that whenever you find yourself standing shoulder to shoulder with the rightwing (especially with the far rightwing), it’s time to take stock of your situation and see what you can do to rectify it. There are many concerns people have about immigration, jobs, and the related issues of education, healthcare, security et al, but (as I always say 😉 when the discussion starts from within the rightwing frame on these issues, there really is no where to go but wrong.
We obviously need a way stronger theme from the left, that encompasses all these matters, and presents them in a humane and sensible way. There is some of that going on, of course… you and Duke and XP and others do a great job, but there obviously needs to be more voices. Or something.
overseas, I wondered too, why were people so incensed about immigrants when our jobs were really taken by people who don’t even live in this country or pay taxes. (Or at least MY job, since I don’t or didn’t drive a taxi or pick fruit or do construction work.)
Then I wondered too, why farmers would rather have mexicans doing farm labor rather than youth from the inner city where unemployment is at least 30%. Was it the inherent stereotype that keeps them from giving jobs to folks here in the states legally? Or is it that the mexican lives closer to the land and is more adaptive to farm processes? Why are illegal aliens contruction workers when we have people here who need jobs? Is it drugs? Or are drugs used because there are no jobs?
Republicans pushed this issue to the front as a wedge issue to split labor from Latinos in the Democratic Party. For labor, it is among other things a labor standards issue; employers are able to dodge the law by hiring illegals. Take away the illegals and there are more jobs for labor. This is the way the issue appears to some blacks as well, but is offset by the amount of racism that has come to the fore in the issue.
I get it. I disagree with those progressives, but I understand where it is coming from.
The fundamental underlying issue is international labor standards. And nobody outside the blogosphere is talking much about that.
Maybe old news to you, but I just heard on NPR that it was approved in the senate: 83 – 19. Obviously, a long list of d’s voted for this shameless pandering.
A sad day.
Peace
linkage is here
Voting Nay:
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Didn’t vote: Rockefeller (D-WV)
The rest, including a sizeable number of Democrats, voted Yea.
I knew he’d vote for it. What a waste of space that dickhead has turned out to be.
Another DINO, ‘chosen’ by the d hierarchy to ‘take back the senate’ for the people…what a sick, pathetic, fucking joke.
He’s turning his back on his heritage. I can not fathom what distorted rationale could lie behind this. Jezeus, he doesn’t have to run for re-election until 2010. What happened to integrity and honor?
Off to his website to let him know…not that it’ll do any good. I’m sure I’m blacklisted by now…don’t even get automated responses anymore.
Peace
I feel sick.
My country is a disgrace.
Let both of their offices know that I considered this bill a racist affront to both the people of CA and the people of Mexico.
I am ashamed of my Senators today – particularly Sen. Boxer. I am so sorry to our brothers and sisters here and across the border.
Maybe the names of those who voted to erect the wall should be chiseled into it? Turn it into a true wall of shame.
Driving home from work today I heard an interview on NPR with a Sheriff from a Texas county on the Mexican border. When he was asked about building a wall there – he laughed.
Maybe the wall they approved today would be built somewhere else, but he was laughing because their border is the Rio Grande River – where do you build the wall? And he said that if any local politician locally supported building a wall – s/he would be in BIG trouble because the people who owned the property would not want to loose their “views.” This has really gone from the ridiculous to the absurd. Oh well, what political issue hasn’t lately.
the border fence wasn’t the only thing debated by the Senate today, they’ve also authorized more “vehicle barriers” which includes an increase in the police-state environment down in this part of the country. This comes on the heels of Bush’s call for National Guard troops to be fanned out across the southwest. Halliburton is salivating at their bid to build more prisons.
Our state senate and assembly are Dem controlled…totally opposed to the use of CA Natl Guard at the border. This may become a huge state fight…against the Feds.
here in Az our state legislature is controlled by the rabid of the rabid wingers, fortunately our Dem Governor has a veto stamp and knows how to use it. The biggest problem I see is that she called for a similar plan in January wrt Nat’l Guard troops. We’ll have to see how things go, Shrubzilla is in Yuma at the moment touring the area for the best setting for today’s photo-op.
can we afford a wall..because I think it is going cost a lot of money. Personally, Sen. Sessions should worry more about being a Senator from a state that ranks 44 out of 50 states in public education. All that money being spent on the wall could go to “shore-up” Alabama’s faltering education system.
http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm
they are window-dressing this issue as long as economic policies are ignored. We have passed trade “negotiations” like NAFTA and CAFTA that have devastated the economies of Mexico and other latin american countries. That’s why the flow of migrants is steady. The money changers will continue to follow Norquist’s “starve the beast” playbook to further the weakening of infrastructure of our government while lining their own pockets. Education, health care, living wages? Those are all arch-enemy issues for their well-being. We’re all getting screwed and their propaganda is making it a successful endeavor.
Yeah, deadly silence on NAFTA and CAFTA when that is the crux of so much of what is wrong with the whole job situation. Everything I’ve read has concluded that NATFA caused almost 2 and a half million farmers in Mexico to lose their farms, that almost 15 million or more people in Mexico slid into poverty in the last ten years due to NAFTA.
Now US corporations abound in Mexico yet they pay sometimes only 5 fucken dollars a day, that’s right a day to workers. I think I read that almost 2/3’s of people in Mexico work now for US businesses there…with no benefits etc due as always the greed of corporations. The corporations pay no taxes to the community they happen to be in so with no taxes the towns remain without funding for adequate schools and other improvements..the whole NAFTA deal/free trade instead of fair trade is just horrible.(what an understatement).
There will never be an effective and rational border/immigration policy enacted in this country because the economy is structured in such a way that it depends on a large segment of the population being poor in order to keep ongoing downward pressure on wages in place. The corporate exploitative structure of our economy needs lots of poor people in order to support the self-indulgent and wasteful excesses of the middle and upper classes. Most in congress know that if they stand for strict immigration policy their corporate campaign contributions will go down, so the majority will never support the kind of insanity proposed by the Tancredo/Buchanan/minutemen racists, though they will vote for increasing militarization ofour society as a whole.
I posted earlier today in the news bucket that nat’l guards won’t be assigned to the cdn border at this time, but us officials have said that the door has been left ajar. And I just read this:
And who’s going to pay for this? Why do they have the money for this but not for a national healthcare system! Everything they do — every initiative and law passed, their whole platform — is based on fear and hate!
Seriously. I said it in the news bucket, but I’d be concerned you guys — is this to keep others out or you all in! I read a while back about some of the tracking measures that they are looking at implementing on citizens — embedded computer chips instead of paper passports. It was on a site that contained some real ‘out there’ stuff … let’s just say that if you think monitoring phone records is bad, wait ’til they start tracking your every move w/ GIS.
Once we stood for tearing walls down. Then we supported others building them. Now we build them ourselves. Who will liberate us from our wall builders?
for some lucky Halliburton subsidiary. Subbing it out will expedite the rapid acquisition of no-cost labor who can be transported to Mexico at project’s end, and exterminated should they attempt to return to the US to lodge claims for unpaid wages, a preposterous notion since paying “undocumented” workers has never been mandatory.
We had our fingers crossed Bush would come to Nogales or Douglas. The triple wall is going to kill Downtown Nogales, Arizona and the business owners and civic booster types are pissed!
They aren’t too excited about the troops either.
welcome to BooTrib. Looking forward to reading more of your commentary over at your new blog. I think it’s important that those of us who live in this area give a voice to what we’re dealing with everyday.
I was just watching the news and heard about this horrific story:
tears abound…
Hi Manny, hope you are doing ok? I don’t have much to add, you know how I feel about all this racist bullshit. It just gets a bit scarier all the time…to say nothing of a massive waste of taxpayer money and misuse of the Nat. Guards.
Like someone mentioned above about Putin saying ‘Tear down this Wall’..that was going through my head also-various leaders coming here and throwing in our face those words-rightly so if that would happen. It’s beyond shameful.
As for the democrats who voted for this, well lets just say that I’m trying to imagine them doing an anatomically impossible act to themselves.
i’m doing alright, just feeling alittle unnerved today. There was no political reason for the Dems to go along with this. As Duke said in a comment over at my blog, this allows the rabid wingers in the House like Tancredo and Sensenbrenner to frame the debate on their terms when “negotiations” begin. Makes no sense…
Actually, (I hate to say this), it was Reagan who made the “Tear down this wall” statement famous. . .
Never thought I’d be quoting Reagan favorably.
When I read this title, my first thought was of an actual, physical, literal Wall of Shame. You know, something like a scaled-down version of the wall Clueless-in-Chief is proposing, suitable to be hauled around on a flatbed truck and displayed around the country. Maybe with pictures and artifacts to go with it, like say a picture of that five-year-old boy who died in the desert for starters.
Unfortunately the people who would really need to see something like this would be too busy hurling invective at it from across the street to get close enough for it to mean anything.
When will this pandering to the depths of racism in this country end?
This is just horrific. In addition to its being a “look over there, at those dangerous aliens” (instead of at the war, and the erosion of the Constitution, and the fuller ascendancy of corporate governance over that of the citizenry), our leaders have this willingness to totally ignore our history. And absolute stupidity about accepting cultural perspectives not built upon modern “American” popular culture.
I loved the Candorville cartoon from this past Sunday. I don’t have a link, but look for it, you’ll appreciate it.
What it doesn’t do, is acknowledge the stupidity of acting as if snow white English speaking people came here to a completely empty continent, long before anyone else showed up. So much of this is purely about race and a belief in the associated cultural superiority of English heritage – which is pretty stupic when you look at our backgrounds. A third of my family “went to Texas” in the 1800s, and half of them married the locals, who did not speak English, by and large, and whose forebears had been there many, many years before English-speaking types got there.
Oh yes, the idea that the U.S. is transforming into a Hispanic nation is such a completely and totally accurate view of what’s happening here (I wish I had flaming purple ink to write out some statements like that!). It reminds me of the Gilbert & Sullivan lyrics about God being an Englishman – I keep wanting to say “It’s a joke folks, not to be taken seriously!
Why, why not just take some places in the Nogales desert, or on the staked plains of west Texas, and declare them “Homelands”, for persons of this unacceptable, culturally inferior sort? After all, if we have hordes invading from the South, why should any of their co-culturists already here, even if citizens, be beyond suspicion?
Oh, it’s too early to rant on . . I’m just horrified, and so upset that even my own Senators voted for this travesty.
This from the Yuma Sun, where George is visiting today.
What a disgrace.
I’m saddened Manny. Latin-Americans are this election seasons homosexuals. Let’s get white people to hate something more than the sorry state of the world that has been brought to them by a tax-gutting, free trade zone that was once a country.
You are so much kinder on this topic than i Manny.
My post at LSF was titled “The Senate Should Be Horsewhipped” 🙂