https://americancynic.net/Atom Feed for 'immigration' Articles2018-08-08T16:36:18ZAmer Canishttps://americancynic.net/about/tag:americancynic.net,2012-03-23:/log/2012/3/23/crossing_the_canadian_border/Crossing the Canadian Border2012-03-23T16:52:43Z2018-08-08T16:36:18Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>I spent the week in British Columbia visiting my sister who lives and works there. I flew into Seattle where she picked me up and drove me to her home in Canada. While crossing the border we were hassled a bit by a Canadian border agent.</p>
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<p>After asking my sister to explain three times why she lived in Canada, he had us park and enter the building for further questioning. I was taken into a room by a border agent there and questioned about my criminal history. While I was explaining about <a href="http://mretc.net/~cris/arrested-O14/">the charges being brought against me by the State of Colorado</a> for sitting in a park over night and my upcoming trial, the same agent who interviewed us in the car entered and addressed the agent interviewing me, “I also have questions about the girl with the work permit. I don’t know what she is doing here.”</p>
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<p>Thinking he must not have been able to understand her from the car, I offered a clarification, “She works in Canada. She cleans houses.”</p>
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<p>“I know, but we already have house cleaners up here. Why is she here?”</p>
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<p>That’s when I realized he wasn’t sincerely trying to determine our purpose in Canada. He was a Canadian nationalist trying to find an excuse to keep American labour out of his country.</p>
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<p>When they were finished with me they brought my sister in for a private interview so they could ask her how she dare clean Canadian houses. Eventually, finding no technical reason to turn us away, they returned our passports and let us continue past the border.</p>
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<p>They never searched our vehicle or our persons. They were not concerned with the migration of drugs, pestilence, or weapons. They were concerned with the migration of labour. At the border of two of the richest countries in the world. At the longest international border in the world, with few or no military fortifications, where anyone willing to walk a few miles could likely enter without detection. I wouldn’t have expected it.</p>
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<p>While my sister crosses the border frequently and this is the first time she’s had a problem, this one agent’s behavior perhaps shows anecdotally the conflict between modern, liberal capitalism (the welfare state) and freedom. The more say workers have in policy under capitalism, the more wage-jealousy has a say in policy. Also, established welfare programs, as can be found in Canada, depend on having a high taxable-wealth to recipient ratio. Immigration, especially of poor workers, threatens to upset that delicate balance.</p>
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<p>I can only imagine what immigrants face at most borders in the world, where they don’t speak the same language or have the same skin color, and where they are looking for a place to work and live instead of a mere vacation. This was my first experience at a border crossing, and it has reinforced my thoughts <a href="/log/2012/3/6/on_borders_and_the_status_quo/">On Borders and the Status Quo</a> I wrote a few weeks ago.</p>
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<p>David Rovics' song <a href="https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/track/no-one-is-illegal">“No One is Illegal”</a> shares my sentiment towards borders.</p>
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<pre class="content">(Chorus)
Will we open up the borders
Tear down the prison walls
Declare that no one is illegal
Watch the giant as it falls</pre>
</div>My experience at the Canadian border.tag:americancynic.net,2012-03-06:/log/2012/3/6/on_borders_and_the_status_quo/On Borders and the Status Quo2012-03-06T15:53:48Z2014-05-13T19:57:12Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>I’m afraid I tend to become a little indignant when my radical ideas aren’t blindly accepted by my friends. Like the other day when my suggestion that eliminating national borders (and the nation-states they delineate) would be a good idea was met with some skepticism. It is as if the idea never occurred to me that protected borders, and police, and prisons, whatever their faults, at least provide security and safeguards against oppression and corruption. I know what they’re thinking, too. They’re thinking that I’ve lived my whole life living in my mom’s basement, barely working, reading optimistic 19th-century revolutionaries and I don’t realize that people can be mean. I’m idealistic. Well, I don’t know if anyone is thinking that, but they wouldn’t be far off if they were.</p>
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<p>When I picture a world without borders, I picture a world where people can live and work where they want, where wealth isn’t constrained within the borders of wealthy countries, where trade prohibitions don’t construct markets which profit only the ruthless, where immigrants can assert their dignity as human beings without fear of deportation, where there are no militaries amassed for the sole purpose of defending and expanding borders against other militaries amassed for the same senseless purpose. They picture a world where thugs and tyrants, consumed by the desire for power, are free to roam the earth exerting their wills over the defenseless. There are worse things than soldiers asking for papers at borders, after all.</p>
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<p>And there is no better defense of the status quo. Not everything is perfect, but if it weren’t for those imperfect systems things would be worse. Things <em>used to</em> be worse, which I would know if I’d only read my history books.</p>
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<p>Still, in my idealistic, naive, overly-optimistic opinion, that is a utilitarian argument of the worst order. We must mistreat some people <em>now</em> to prevent the mistreatment of more people <em>later</em>? Suppose the world is full of bogeymen which are only being held at bay by the constructs of the state. Suppose the fears are justified, that if we stop imprisoning people for crossing geographic lines without permission, and if we stop sending soldiers to shoot their counterparts in other states, if we do away with the State as authority, then society will come to a brutal end. Genocide, a war of all against all, the strong enslaving the weak, a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short life for all. Then I would <em>still</em> advocate against borders and states. I would then continue to advocate against the new self-appointed despots for the duration of my short life.</p>
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<p>Maybe if, as some of their defenders seem to believe, States were eternal and by perfecting them over the generations we were building some sort of heaven-on-earth, then it might be worth supporting the violence of borders as a necessary evil and mourn its victims as unavoidable collateral damage. But states are not eternal, and more importantly if the choice is truly between being an oppressor or being a victim, my life, if it has any meaning at all, is too short to spend as an oppressor. For what benefit is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? So then, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.</p>
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<p>Luckily the divide between the utilitarian and the deontological is not so sharp. There is no necessary dichotomy between maintaining individual morality and social harmony.</p>
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<p>I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation.</p>
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— Mikhail Bakunin<br>
<cite><a href="http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1871/man-society.htm">Man Society and Freedom</a></cite>
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</div>Dystopian visions of future freedom are no excuse for the nation-states of today.tag:americancynic.net,2010-12-09:/log/2010/12/9/opinion_dream_act/Opinion: DREAM Act2010-12-09T20:07:52Z2018-08-08T01:11:32Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>The Senate just voted to not vote on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act">DREAM Act</a> until next week. The DREAM Act is a proposed bill which would provide a way for illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children to gain legal status.</p>
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<p>I don’t like it. First, it’s not fair. People illegally brought to live here as children should not be forced by threat of deportation to adhere to arbitrary standards of education or behavior which are not required of children who happened to be born to parents who are citizens. Conditional nonimmigrants will pay the same Federal taxes, contribute equally or more to society and the state, and enjoy fewer freedoms than citizens.</p>
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<p>More importantly, the requirements to be accepted as a permanent resident are troubling. The first states that the alien (the “conditional nonimmigrant”) must have demonstrated “good moral character”. That phrase is so general, anyone could be rejected for almost any reason.</p>
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<p>And Sec. 6 (d)(1)(D) requires aliens to either complete two years of college or serve in the armed forces for two years. College doesn’t sound too bad, but conditional nonimmigrants are not eligible for Federal Pell grants. Children from illegal families tend not to have extra money to spend on higher education. I guess using poor Mexican kids as cannon fodder is one way to continue a foreign policy that is unusually heavy on ground-war invasions.</p>
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<p>I have a better idea: include everyone who wants to live and work here, for any duration, in the equal rights, protections, and freedoms as everyone else. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act seems to be the best compromise currently available for young immigrants.</p>
</div>I don't like the DREAM Act