Research & Rescue

Deportee

This is my favourite rendition, by far, of the old Woody Guthrie song, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon (Deportee).

Stop Making Delicious Food I Can't Stop Eating And Go Back To Mexico

Special Report:

 

 

Stop Making Delicious Food I Can't Stop Eating And Go Back To Mexico

By James Whittington
August 24, 2010 | ISSUE 46•34

This isn't the country I grew up in anymore. It used to be a place where hardworking Americans could make an honest living, support their families, and feel safe walking the streets. It used to be a place that rewarded decency and fairness. But now, thanks to the millions of illegal immigrants crossing our borders every year, all that's changed—and I for one have had enough. So listen up, Mexicans: Stop cooking all that mouthwatering food that I cannot stop consuming and go home!

I am dead serious. We didn't invite you here, and it's high time you quit making all those rich, complex mole sauces that seem to fire every taste bud on my tongue and return to your native land. There's no room for you here.

Yes, your sauces satisfy the body as well as the soul. But does that excuse the throngs of day laborers waiting on the corner every morning for jobs that rightfully belong to someone born in the USA? Even if that heavenly sauce is drizzled over seared duck breast and is studded with ripe avocados?

No, sir. Not in my book.

Every Saturday I drive out to the East Side to pick up a stack of piping-hot gorditas, and all I see are Mexican mothers pushing strollers filled with Mexican infants. It just fumes me to think how they're getting government benefits that I pay for with my taxes. It's ridiculous! Just because these women can turn ground cornmeal into a feast fit for the gods themselves doesn't mean they should get special treatment. I don't care how bright and fresh their salsa tastes.

And another thing: The roasted-poblano-pepper-and-Chihuahua-cheese tamales they serve on the truck by the art supply store make me weak in the knees, but the way these people come to our country and refuse to speak our language makes me sick. This is America, folks!

If you're ever in that neighborhood, though, make sure you try the tacos de lengua con queso. Dios mío, they are good.

Besides the sizzling fajitas and the crispy buñelos fried to melt-in-your mouth perfection, these international trespassers add nothing to society. It's time for them to go! Of course, we Americans would have to learn how to whip lard to the right consistency before adding it to the tamale batter and slow-roast chiles to deepen their flavor. For the first few years, the food will be merely passable, but that's a small price to be rid of these immigrants who work in the fields and orchards for less than minimum wage, thereby allowing me to purchase cheap fruits and vegetables any time of year.

And good riddance to them all! Except for Pedro at work, of course. And the Velázquez family, who've invited me to their family barbecue three years running. Talk about some grilling going down! I guess I'd miss Maria from the coffee shop; she must have the sweetest smile I've ever seen. Oh, and Danny, who sometimes plays golf with us. Can't forget the Guzmáns. They're more friends of my wife, but Manuel is full of hilarious stories, plus they turned me onto pollo en pipián. Who would have thought that a sauce made from pumpkin seeds could be so sublime? Yeah, and Dr. Gilberto, my dentist. I'll miss him too. He's a good guy.

But the rest of you, the ones I don't know personally, I won't miss you at all.

We just need a few brave politicians willing to do the right thing and deport all of these people, no matter how unpopular it is or how much of a stink the liberals put up. Granted, they should leave us their most cherished recipes, and we'd need some of the local Mexican housewives to make at least a year's worth of barbacoa and posole stew to keep in my freezer. Just enough until I can take a trip down to Cozumel for a week of eating and relaxing. Then: Out with them for good!

If you are a Mexican—and you can read enough English to comprende this—start packing your bags. You and your warm≠hearted people with your rustic pottery and intricate woven crafts and your colorful songs are no longer welcome here. So vamos! Get out!

Man, I could go for a taco con pollo y salsa verde and a little queso fresco right now.

via theonion.com

 

Posted via email from thinking aloud

Immigrant farm workers' challenge: Take our jobs

SAN FRANCISCO -- In a tongue-in-cheek call for immigration reform, farm workers are teaming up with comedian Stephen Colbert to challenge unemployed Americans: Come on, take our jobs.

Farm workers are tired of being blamed by politicians and anti-immigrant activists for taking work that should go to Americans and dragging down the economy, said Arturo Rodriguez, the president of the United Farm Workers of America.

So the group is encouraging the unemployed - and any Washington pundits or anti-immigrant activists who want to join them - to apply for the some of thousands of agricultural jobs being posted with state agencies as harvest season begins.

All applicants need to do is fill out an online form under the banner "I want to be a farm worker" athttp://www.takeourjobs.org, and experienced field hands will train them and connect them to farms.

Read the rest at www.washingtonpost.com

Multi-racials and politics

There's an interesting piece over at the website of Institute for Southern Studies today about the rise of multi-racials in Census data. When we got our form, I was fine with putting in a couple of different races but from a data perspective, I knew immediately that I wouldn't want to have to parse those data. From a personal and social justice perspective, I've told friends for a long time that I believe racism usually involves hatred of one particular group of people. I wonder if the rise of multi-racial Americans makes the problem of racism better or worse? Can you hate 30% of someone who isn't the same race as you? Or does this rise just lead racist people to insist on some purity test, as in all white or all black? It's going to be interesting to see how this all plays out as politicians seek to draw in racial/ethnic voting blacs.

By Marisa Trevino LatinaLista The U.S. Census released a report last week that showed something that everyone has known to be on the horizon for a while now -- the growth in numbers of people of color.

According to the U.S. Census' figures, which are still based on the 2000 Census and updated by Census staff using a variety of resources, the minority population now makes up 35 percent of the nation's population.

When the groups are looked at separately, it's no big surprise that the group seen with the biggest gain is Latinos, who now comprise 16 percent of the population versus the black population that only comprises 12 percent of the population.

However, what is a surprise for many is the rise of a new demographic -- multiracials.

via www.southernstudies.org

Jan Brewer, Arizona Gov., Meets With Obama

Be sure to read this insightful piece by Terry Greene Sterling (White Woman in the Barrio) on Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona...

Jan Brewer, fresh off an immigration summit with Obama, is seen as Arizona’s “accidental governor.” Terry Greene Sterling on her master plan, why she signed the bill, and her new Palin updo.

On Thursday, Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office to discuss her perception of the Grand Canyon State’s drastic immigration woes. The meeting came as the Obama administration considers mounting a legal challenge to SB 1070, the controversial immigration law that Brewer signed in April and Obama has called “misguided.”

Read the rest at www.thedailybeast.com

To the mountaintop, indeed

Jesus wept.

This is the second time in a week that I have seen a public figure invoke of the image of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the purposes of furthering a right-wing agenda that would have simply horrified the man. it certainly horrifies me. The first time I noticed this sort of statement was in the Anderson Cooper interview Tom Horne about the recent Arizona banning of ethnic studies classes. He maintains that we should have, essentially, social studies but that they should not be taught by members of that ethnicity to members of that ethnicity. He fails to realize that in order to specialize enough to even teach the subject, those teachers would ideally have received college degrees in that subject. He also fails to realize that there is no prerequisite of being, say, Asian American to take Asian American studies and there never was. While trying to argue that we don't have a problem if we don't separate coursework on separate cultures, Horne points out that he was on the Mall at Martin Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream speech. Perhaps he was there but he certainly missed the point.

And then there's Glenn Beck (hat tip Barb Wold of Democracy for New Mexico for the video pointer):

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Glenn to the Mountaintop
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

Imagine Beck's lunatic rantings had Martin Luther King Jr. said the following today, instead of in 1967:

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolution

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; [Audience:] (Yes) the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

From Martin Luther King Speeches - Beyond Vietnam - MLK Online

Would Tom Horne let this man teach in the Tucson Consolidated District? Not likely. More likely, both he and Glenn Beck would have been calling him a communist and many in the right wing did in the 60s. 

Calling into their context the "I Have a Dream" speech from 1963 and tossing aside everything MLK said over the next 5 years is reminiscent of their use of Leviticus to suppress the human rights of gay people, while thumbing their nose at same book's call to embrace the strangers in our land. Perhaps if these people had taken a few ethnic studies courses, they would have a little better grasp of history.

Not All States Target Immigrants

A bit of positive trending for immigrants:

Despite the commotion around Arizona’s SB 1070, a recent report shows that more laws expanding immigrants’ rights are being enacted than those contracting them. The Wilson Center’s study, Context Matters: Latino Immigrant Civic Engagement in Nine U.S. Cities, found that in 2007, 19 percent of 313 bills expanding immigrant rights were enacted and only 11 percent of 263 bills contracting rights were enacted by state legislatures. Washington, for example, passed SB 6403, which seeks to improve high school graduation rates by serving vulnerable youth, including recent immigrants. Andrew Selee

via immigrationimpact.com

Immigration and Net Neutrality

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - People in the midst of the immigration debate say it's intertwined with another issue, one that might be surprising: universal broadband access and net neutrality. They're two big issues that might be more related than they seem. Migrant advocacy groups celebrated last week when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced it would regulate broadband in much the same way as telephone networks. Telephone service is essentially treated as a universal service that all Americans should have access to.

Read the rest at www.publicnewsservice.org (Hat tip @clausw on Twitter)

If Christ were to go to Arizona… » CWS Immigration Reform

A great piece from Church World Service...

In light of the anti-immigrant law in Arizona, SB 1070, I have been doing a lot of research on the public sentiment in the state that led to this legislation.  While Governor Jan Brewer stated that this legislation is in response to the Federal Government failing to fix the “immigration problem” that her state is facing, other Arizona residents are looking to the Bible to justify their support of SB 1070.

Read the rest at: supportimmigrationreform.org

Standing (Online) With Immigrants

 

This Sunday, March 21, we invite you to join with us and thousands of other people of faith from around the country, and with tens of thousands of other Americans, at March for America: Change Takes Courage and Faith. Come show your solidarity with immigrants to America and their families, and our support for just and humane immigration reform.

Can’t make it to D.C. this weekend? Show your solidarity online, by adopting this image as your profile picture on Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media platforms you frequent. Once you’ve done that, please post a status/tweet along the lines of, “I’m showing my solidarity with immigrants. Join me: http://su.pr/2Ky1Lh.”

Read more at faithandimmigration.org