"They're not all illegal." Gov. Easley, NC

This is what people who identify as Latinos are treated to most days.

Yesterday on Washington Journal, the good governor replied to a racist who was ranting about Latinos in his communities by saying, "Well, they're not ALL illegal."

And, I'm not being sarcastic. This was a segment about education and the man is obviously very committed to doing SOMETHING about the drop out rate. The programs he talked about were great and in fact, I wish my own governor would do as well.

But, what the hell is that? "They're not ALL illegal."

It's the accumulation of Lou Dobbs' bullshit, of wanting to "secure our borders" against all those al Qaida nannies and gardeners, of pitting worker against worker WHILE BushCo does its best to subvert elections south of our border so progressives win there but don't get seated. ("Oh, Mexico should take care of its own." Sure. Keep Bush Co's hand out of their elections and see what happens . . .)

"They're not ALL illegal."

No, we're not all illegal. Thanks.

took it in the 1840s. There were over 100,000 Mexicans in the annexed land, many Mexican Americans are descendants of them. But don't tell that to the bigots. As far as they're concerned, the US was empty land and their European ancestors came first.

:eyes:

connection to Mexico. However, part of what is causing conflict is that Hispanic immigrants who are here illegally are moving in large numbers to ALL areas of the U.S.

Most of the U.S. wasn't part of Mexico and has no cultural connection, so the Latinos who are here illegally, claiming to have a "right" to be here, come off as arrogant when our eastern and northern cities are full of legal immigrants from all over the world. Many, many of those legal immigrants came from really life-threatening situations and spent years in refugee camps while waiting to immigrate into the U.S., legally.

I think that a lot of folks in the Southwest, just don't have a sense of what the rest of the U.S. is about. In my decade spent living in California, I was just shocked at the ignorance of native Californians about the U.S. east of Reno and Las Vegas. When I announced that I was moving to the upper Midwest, my coworkers were shocked to hear that MN doesn't have snow all year round! :eyes:

I have a few friends (who I think way less of) who are all for ridding TX of Mexicans. They, and people like Lou Dobbs, don't even realize how bloody bigoted they sound. I'd like to know how the presence of the Hispanics really impact anyone's life in TX; mine is better for their presence. So much for those great words on the Statue of Liberty, "give me your tired, your poor..."

One, the LEGAL Hispanic community -- citizens -- is growing apace. We're here. We've been here before anyone drafted a Bill of Rights. It's funny how being brown makes you LESS visible. :shrug:

Two, undocumented workers will not stop coming here until we stop messing with their governments, with their elections, with their ability to feed their families at home. Where they'd much rather be.

Three, at some point we (all of us) need to get that inciting hatred for Hispanics won't get this nation where it needs to go.

I teach them to tell people they're Americans whenever they are referred to as Latinos or Mexican or Hispanic. They are just as much American as everyone else who had the good fortune to fall out of a vagina and land in the US. No more, no less.

It's about time someone stood up to this witch-hunt. Hope our Dem presidential candidates follow his lead.

Geezus Christ on a trailor hitch.

Aim low?

From the limited context in your OP it sounds like the governor was using a painfully simple example to a foaming at the mouth racist who probably DOES think all Latinos are here without a green card. Yes, there are people that stupid in this country. Racism plus stupid = dangerous lemmings who join white power groups.


Of course, you heard the context and I didn't so maybe I'm giving Easley too much credit.

who was looking out for the students in his charge.

And, I don't know how to say this well, but to hear him say, "They aren't ALL illegal" was like getting kicked in the stomach.

Because many of us have been here longer than he has been, caring for this place, shoring it up, enlisting, doing whatever was needed. Because of so many reasons.

And the best recommendation we got from him was, "they aren't ALL illegal."

That's so wrong and on so many levels.

/oops

:hug:

I like to believe that most people are thoughtful, reasonable people but there is that small cadre of natives from Dumbcluckistan.

I live in a community with a lot of retired people. Among them are some obviously bigoted people. You can spot the angry old men who listen to the RW hate machine too.

My neighbor who is from China, has been told by little old ladies to go back where she came from.
She is legal, a physician and tons smarter than the ignorants who say such things.

I hope we can do better.

Hell, I'm first generation Italian American. I wonder if that makes me any "less" of an American? :eyes:

I'm curious if there is a pie chart or something on this issue.

Ratio of legal or native-born-in-US Latinos to illegal Latinos, how Latinos compare to other immigrant groups, how the ratio of illegal Latinos is compared to, say, illegal Chinese or illegal Somolians or illegal Indians or illegal Europeans.

I'm not copying you, I think.

The sarcastic "Well, they're not ALL :eyes: here illegally" statement makes it sound like there are like six Latinos here legally.

It is 75% legal? 90% legal?

I'm talking about both people born south of the border and people born here from parents/grandparents/great-to-the-nth-power-grandparents.

He was offering a bone to a rabid caller. :(

I'll keep an eye out for numbers. When the illegal immigration issue comes up again, I'm sure Thom Hartmann or Rhani Rhodes will have some numbers for me

and those of us who have been driven from our homes by US interference.

It wasn't intentional, but it was revealing. "They aren't all illegal."

4,808,000 of this estimated 7 million (68.7%) were from Mexico. The country of origin for the next highest number of unauthorized residents was El Salvidor, at 189,000 (2.7%).

The unauthorized resident population in the US doubled between 1990 and 2000.

The total (legal and illegal) foreign-born population in the US was 31 million. 9,177,000 of these people came from Mexico.

Source: Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: 1990 to 2000 by the Office of Policy and Planning, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

So about 53% of Mexicans are here illegally. About 22.5% of immigrants are here illegally overall.

But it is important to be as precise and fair as we can in this asessment. We are talking only about people who were born outside the US. Many citizens who self-identify as Mexican- or Latino- Americans, for example, would not be part of the comparison.

Another consideration is that the study provides an estimate as of 2000. I'm going to stick my neck out just a tad and say that the current number of unauthorized residents in the US is probably between 12 and 20 million. I believe Mexicans now comprise a higher percentage of this number than they did in 2000.

in bluejeans and a t-shirt and the rubber boots that fisherman/shrimpers wear around these parts. He was impatient and grumbly and he was in line behind a couple of men that appeared to be Mexicans. They too appeared to be laborers. When the two got up to the clerk, they had some difficulty communicating with the clerk. One was better with English than the other and did most of the communicating. Then the other one wrote a check upon the first's direction. The man in front of me turned to me and sneered "can you believe they let them have an American bank account?" I asked him, do you know for a fact that they don't have a green card? He shot me a look and said "No, but my bet is they don't"

I simply looked at him and said "I bet they said the same thing about my great grandparents and probably about your grandparents."

The two fellows left and he continued to grumble, by the time I got up to the clerk, they told me that he fusses about everything.

Some folks just like to bitch and they don't think, if they did, they would realize that the majority of us living in the USA had parents, grandparents or great grandparents that faced the same type of distrust caused by ignorance and fear.

Not ALL are illegal.

discriminating against people for how they appear, is that I have a bunch of Latino looking cousins who are all professionals.

It's one thing to take care of border security. It's another thing to target people because of their appearance.

This is what the wingnuts have done to us. They've melded the border issue with a race issue.

What a surprise. I hope my cousin Ellen, who works as an accountant for a Fortune 500, doesn't get picked up. That's were we're going.

There won't be border security under this administration because their greedy rich supporters and the greedy rich corporations want the cheap labor and love the caste system.

I understand your concerns and the concerns of your family members and all that have been a part of this nation long before most of the idiots promoting the hate were ever born.

:hug:

Good post.

and I'm not sure what to do with it except to take exception to it.

It's being sold to consumers as a safety issue.

And we've been here before.

It's taking a course that my friend Rubin calls "the sophistication of racism." It puts on a suit & tie, rather than a white robe. But it's the same thing under the fine dressing.

than of the individuals themselves.

Also, it would be helpful if we brought attention to the fact that there are a number of illegal aliens here from Europe and the Isles.

That may be a badge of honor.

But, it did freak me out that even this man, who was so obviously so well intentioned, could only come up with "they aren't all illegal".

Hello?

"the new immigrants."

Now I know my knowledge of English history is limited, but I KNOW that Americans know better than that when it comes to latinos.

and forth seasonally for hundreds of years.

How did we become the New Fearful Thing Under the Bed? :)

As long as we had vast horizons to populate once the American Indians were displaced, there was lots of room for error and/experimentation. But now that good jobs are being shipped overseas and Middle America is strapped, every penny that is spent on taxes is micro-managed. THAT's why there is such an emphasis on the "uncontrolled" part of immigration.

I'm just saying, make that focus fair, and be sure to include the illegal immigrants from all over the world. Not just latinos. And also be aware of the reasons why Middle America is so cash poor right now. Mainly because we have an asshat for President who found a way to filter the $$$ to his cronies.

However, that isn't the case in most of the U.S. and there are now large numbers of Latino immigrants here illegally moving in large numbers to the East and the North. There isn't a traditional or cultural connection.

I understand why you feel the way you do and for your part of the country, you make a very good point. But, there is so much more to this large country. In my area, we have many Hmong, Somali, Liberian and Ethiopian immigrants who escaped truly life-threatening circumstances and sat for years in refugee camps while they waited to immigrate to the U.S. legally. Because there is no special cultural or historic connection to Hispanics here, when they arrive illegally and demand the "right" to stay, they sound whiny, if not arrogant. They are competing with those legal immigrants for jobs and they've gotten here by "cutting" ahead in line. The reality, whether people like it or not, is that sovereign nations have borders and have the right to control them. (Until we reach some Utopian state in future.)

There is so much emotion attached to this subject, I wish we could all work to resolve the issues in good faith and with clear thinking.

:hi:

and that was after she went through the process and because she was good at her job.

I was in a class of 19 at UC Berkeley in the graduate English Department the year I was admitted and there were thousands of applications.

But, it's never enough.

We really need to focus up. Because you're right.

for his legal training, for example.

While I'm sympathetic to your objections to assertions like "Well, they're not all illegal," I have had (over a period of years) almost no success explaining to Southerners why one might want to avoid such turns of phrase: it requires a view of politics that is more or less lacking in the South. That being the case, one should look at what Easley actually does when trying to understand what such an assertion means and how it will be heard

Easley's first response was a bigoted one.

I don't need sympathy. This messed up culture may, though.

is something like

I think I understand what you are saying: but after years of kicking and screaming when people use this sort of unanalyzed language, I have finally realized that hardly anybody down here has a clue what I'm talking about, and have decided it's counter-productive to accuse people of racism just because they don't talk the way I want

There's a completely natural and obvious non-racist interpretation of Easley's comment, which is: confronted with a constituent spewing dishonest stereotypes about Hispanic immigration law violations, the Governor merely indicates in a few words that the speaker is wrong and that many of the newcomers have the proper papers. The phrasing isn't certainly clever or courageous -- but it effectively defuses the sweeping claims made without inciting a major controversy which distracts from all other discussion topics.

Easley carried about 75% of the 2004 vote in my county, which is about 50% black and Hispanic, so real evidence that Easley held racist views would very much interest me and my neighbors of various hues. But you don't seem to have such evidence.

NT

only some people's residence in this country. The slogan "nobody is illegal" is trite semantic niggling.

I think you're wrong about that.

not illegal people.

I think you're wrong to try to win your argument by sloganeering instead of logic. It is not an issue that can be reduced to a bumper-sticker catchphrase, and people who attempt to do so do a disservice to their argument.

... just say'n ....


Peace.

because they look "illegal".

Any day now.

One of my ancestors moved here in 1740 to escape religious persecution. He and the immigrants he came with were invited by William Penn to settle Pennsylvania. I have a photocopy of the "Oath of Loyalty" to King Charles II that he signed.

I won't argue that American Indians were totally shafted, but they didn't have a government with an immigration policy. All three ancestors of mine that came here in the 1700's followed whatever rules were in place at the time.

This subject really deserves an intelligent, informed discussion and not just talking points on either side of the issue.

Uh, thanks.

K&R.

:hi:

"They're not all on welfare."

Geezus.

And then having to hear the name "Joe Lieberman" yet one more time.

The group is smeared. And in this case, insulted as an encore.

This is not about legal vs illegal. It's about human beings and social justice. 100 years ago, the Irish were the illegals. 50 years ago, it was African Americans, who weren't illegal, but dared to demand equal rights. 25 years ago, it was Southeast Asians. Today it is Hispanics from Central America.

One of the sick things about our society is that we seem to need a group of people we can beat up on.

I hear you on Lou Dobbs. He is just worshiped here by some DUers and that really blows my mind.

:hi:

Are repeatedly pulled over by the cops and asked for their Green Cards. I've seen this happen twice.

----ding!-----

They're Puerto Rican! They were born US citizens, and don't need no friggin' Green Cards. My parents were immigrants, but nobody pulls me over and asks me for mine. I guess being whiter than white must mean I'm legit...:sarcasm:

lol

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

home.

We don't talk about that much.

and how it's destroyed the market for Mexican corn, which has put many Mexican farmers/farm workers out of work, which has driven them north.

No, I didn't hear the program in question, but I have lived in California and currently live in North Carolina. In Cali, of course, there are large numbers of Latinos who have been in the US since before it was the US, 13th generation Californians, 3rd generation Californians, etc. It makes no sense to conflate the immigrant community with the Latino community in a place such as California. In North Carolina, however, it's very different. My precinct is probably 20-25% Latino right now, but few of them show up on the voter rolls--there are probably about ten people in my precinct with identifiable Spanish surnames. When I went knocking on doors during the last election cycle, however, I found large numbers of immigrants at home. They had no interest in registering to vote, because they knew they were ineligible--which was a shame, of course, because most expressed support for the Democratic Party.

There's a lot of ignorance surrounding immigrants, their issues and their communities. It's not homogeneous. Here in North Carolina, it is quite likely that most of the Hispanic population are illegal, or undocumented, immigrants. Most come from Mexico, the remainder (probably 20-30%) from points south of Mexico. There's absolutely no sense here that the US has any responsibility for the conditions our policies have created that drive illegal immigration. To acknowledge that, after all, would be to admit complicity in the creation of a hyperexploited class of workers without the protection of labor laws.

We sometimes see even folks on the left repeating old saws about immigrants--they do jobs Americans don't want to do, Americans are lazy--without realizing they are buying into a line that is being fed to them by corporations who profit by exploiting immigrants. Americans will do any job, for the right pay. As anyone who has watched reality TV knows, Americans will eat live cockroaches, live in the open air, and sell their own mother if the price is right. We have millions of undocumented workers here because of the push of emiseration at home coupled with the pull of jobs that pay phenomenally well compared to those available back home. Immigrants will work harder, for less money, than Americans, and the key part is the "for less money" part. The employers who benefit, however, don't pull their freight when it comes to the social challenges having a large numbers of immigrants from poorer countries pose. There is a real challenge in our school system to educate the children of immigrants, some of whom come from families not literate even in their native language. The immigrants I've met are motivated to be excellent parents, and I have no doubt that assimilation will take place for those who decide to stay. What remains are questions of good public policy and, on that score, I trust our governor Mike Easley more than just about any politician in the country, gaffes notwithstanding.

we need to do a better job of that because many eligible voters do not register. My mom is working on that in San Jose, CA.

In my area, though, all the Latinos who are here legally (almost all native-born US citizens, though most all from other states) have college degrees, professional jobs and (usually) already are registered to vote. Here the big prize is still with the black vote, especially the young. We've had talk about some special drive to register Latinos, but I tell folks it's laughable--unless some sort of program to enable non-citizens to vote in the US is instituted, the Latinos who can vote are already registered, and those who cannot certainly won't try to commit fraud by doing so, so we get a much bigger bang for our buck by reaching out young people generally, but especially African-Americans.

Latinos who are citizens avoid civic activity because just being asked for their documentation is insulting to them. :(

Iirc, a portion of my immigrant family reacted in the very same way. My mom was walking for JFK but some of her brothers and sisters, also here legally, just seemed to avoid the civic arena because they didn't want to be put in the position of being called out.

We lose a lot of people that way in the Latino community. :(

...our gov't spends entirely too much effort manipulating elections. NOT JUST its own, but those in Mexico and elsewhere. Their damned meddling just burns me up. :mad:

it is law that we must educate them. The SCOTUS says so! At times, it is more prudent and compassionate to look at things in a more humanistic way, than in the black and white way of the law.

they don't all have old money and born with silver spoons in their mouths.

Sadly, far too many of us are swallowing it. The people who profit from us being at each other's throats are promoting this white on brown hatred, and we are accepting it while both white and brown are plundered mercilessly.

Sad.

look and look for excuses to do so. also sad, is that the people of the US tend to select people with dark skin......be it black or brown, and people who don't want to live or worship as they do. sad, sad, sad.

for his diplmatic skills. In fact he pretty much loathes the spotlight and doesn't enjoy the "bully pullpit" aspect of the job at all.

So, it's not surprising that in an effort to quelch more racist speech, he engages in it himself.