Massive discrimination against Arab and Muslim men
| June 9th, 2003While Jenn Lee takes a well-earned break, I’ll be filling in on her Dicebox comic with a (very) short story featuring Jenn’s characters Molly and Griffen. Producing said short piece is keeping me busy; the blogging here will therefore be a bit slow this week.
Meanwhile, go read this post on Long Story, Short Pier, which is certainly the most horrifying - and important - domestic news story going on right now. Here’s just a sample, but please click over and read the whole thing.
These 13,000 deportations will tear families and communities apart. They will affect far more than 13,000—only men were targetted by the Special Registration. Their wives, sisters, mothers, and children will need to choose between staying behind or leaving with them. These 13,000 deportations will foster resentment and hatred in the very people who had our best interests at heart, sending people back to the very countries they fled to escape persecution, oppression, economic hardship, whose governments they came here to speak out against, to countries that some haven’t seen since infancy. The threat alone has already sent thousands of immigrants over borders and deeper into hiding. These 13,000 deportations will not fight terrorism. They will not make us any safer. They are cruel and mean-spirited. They are unnecessary. They are short-sighted. They will, in fact, make the world more dangerous. They are wrong.
Read Kip’s post, and read Jeralyn’s post at TalkLeft as well. This is evil.
June 10th, 2003 at 5:43 am
This is also a clear message to the Muslim world, and any potential USA supporters there: don’t believe the hype, we really do hate you.
This comment was written by John Isbell.There are about a billion Muslims in the world.
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June 10th, 2003 at 8:02 am
Why is it evil? Were you planning on offering any arguments in support of that thesis?
Is it evil because all deportations are evil? In that case, you might want to provide some arguments for why our immigration laws are too strict and need reform.
Is it evil because Arab Muslims are (at least according to certain activists) being targeted in some sense? If so, what is the remedy? Expelling more Mexicans? What about the notion of triage — we can’t expel every illegal immigrant, and there doesn’t seem to be any such thing as Mexican terrorism . . .
Is it evil because it will “foster resentment and hatred”? That sounds more like a reason that the policy might be counterproductive, not evil. Whenever those laws are enforced, people might resent it. And if resentment by the law-violator is a good reason not to enforce the law, why not just give up on all criminal law? Criminals universally seem to resent being caught, after all.
Lastly, aren’t you failing to appreciate the catch-22 the Bush administration is in? I mean, they’re catching all kinds of hell because they didn’t do enough to track down the 19 hijackers prior to September 11 — and keep in mind that several of those hijackers would have been caught had the immigration laws been more strictly enforced. But when the Bush administration actually starts enforcing the immigration laws proactively — without waiting for someone to hijack another airplane — they catch all kinds of hell because they’re being “mean” and “evil,” and who cares about the law anyway.
So what are they supposed to do? Hire a psychic and figure out precisely which illegal immigrants who might be planning another terrorist attack, and then enforce immigration laws as to them while leaving everyone else alone? Care to explain how that sort of psychic law enforcement would be possible?
This comment was written by Joe.Report this comment to the moderators
June 10th, 2003 at 8:04 am
I’m just playing devil’s advocate, by the way. The policy here might be wrong or ill-conceived, but I’d like to see something more than the typical, knee-jerk, unthinking response. Come up with something more than, “Ooh, I don’t like it.”
This comment was written by Joe.Report this comment to the moderators
June 10th, 2003 at 9:43 am
Psst. Joe. He’s not offering an argument with this post, he’s pointing out someone else’s post (mine, yes, and thanks) and adding a brief “me, too!” because he’s drawing a strip for someone else and “the blogging here will therefore be a bit slow this week.”
So instead of ragging on Barry for failing to present an argument he never claimed to be putting forth, you might instead click through to the post he’s pointing out and see if the links I cite and the picture they paint support my overheated rhetoric and Barry’s use of the word “evil.” You have some good questions, many of which I think have already been answered handily by the articles I’ve linked to. Click through and see if you agree, or not, and why.
–Naked self-promotion, perhaps, but this is an important topic that ought to be far more widely discussed. And honest: I promise I won’t call you names this time.
This comment was written by --k..Report this comment to the moderators
June 10th, 2003 at 10:36 am
I did read your post. I suppose I’ll respond to a couple of points here:
These 13,000 deportations ostensibly have to do with terrorism—but only 11 of those 82,000 have been linked with terrorism.
So what? How many of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers would have been successfully prosecuted for “terrorism” — before Sept. 11? But several of them COULD have been kept out of the country if immigration laws had been enforced.
These 13,000 deportations are ethnically biased—“What the government is doing is very aggressively targeting particular nationalities for enforcement of immigration law,” said Lucas Guttentag, director of the immigrants’ rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “The identical violation committed by, say, a Mexican immigrant is not enforced in the same way.”
Well, I’m not sure what to think of this. On the one hand, the laws should be enforced equally. But again, we haven’t been attacked by Mexican terrorists. And if we don’t have the resources to deport all illegal immigrants at once, right now, why not start with the one group that does harbor terrorists? It’s not ideal, but life’s a bitch. It would be even less fair to start by rounding up all the illegal Mexicans here.
And I don’t see any articles linked that explain how the Bush administration is supposed to thread its way through the catch-22 to which I referred. If they don’t enforce immigration laws, it becomes much easier for some terrorist to slip through again, just as did the Sept. 11 hijackers. If they DO enforce immigration laws, everyone gets all hysterical because it’s so mean to actually enforce the law.
You do make a good point that it would be unfair to penalize immigrants whose paperwork fell through the cracks at the INS.
This comment was written by Joe.Report this comment to the moderators
June 12th, 2003 at 12:31 pm
Let me tell you what the government should have done. It should’ve been a little lenient on the illegal immigrants who registered by giving them a break and not tag their record because if you are an illegal immigrant and if you get deported, you usually get banned for ten years. (double check for me. ) and hence you are essentially barred from reentry.
This way the 13000 deported under “special circumstances” due to 911, should’ve been given the chance to come back legally.
United Arab Emirates did something similar six or so years ago. They knew they had an illegal immigrant problem, and they gave them a grace period to leave the country without being penalized, and hence were able to reduce their illegal immigrant population by a huge number.
This comment was written by adnan.Report this comment to the moderators