Two Utah state employees distributed a list of 1300 alleged illegal immigrants to the media and law enforcement. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estés comments on the story. She is an American poet, psychoanalyst and post-trauma specialist....Where is the List of Compassion for those caught in such dragnets, where is the List of Protectiveness for the innocent, and for the children? We can't say we care about children if we drag their parents to the police station without just cause other than we dislike them taking up room and we are suspicious of them. That too ‘easy dislike without understanding’, that ’suspicion without inquiry’… without actually knowing and caring about the person’ …all these have been the oddly predictible and unimaginative modus operandi toward ‘the stranger’ for eons.
Surely we’ve evolved to finer ways of being humane with one another now. And if not, then some are way behind in the race to the place of peace, prosperity and unity.
How even easier it is nowadays to condemn others without face to face contact. At least when I was a child, you could see who purposely threw you to the street from the trolley car, you could see who spit on you on the street, kicked you at the bus-stop, slammed down the window shade of the shop snapping the Closed sign into place. You could see in a blur who drove by your house late at night screaming obscenties and that we all should go back where we came from. You could see the the face of the man who wouldnt give your uncle the job, but who wanted you to go in the back room for a minute, to ’show you something…’ because he knew immigrant girls will be afraid to resist or to tell....
Dont send me links; that’s not discussion. Dont tell me we have to ‘debate’ this. How about a discussion, for a change how about basic grassroots inquiry, how about learning and teaching one another with civility and without condemnation, how about actual problem solving… far more powerful often than a two sided debate. This issue has hundreds of ways to understand and plan.
Tell me instead you know about the Bracero program and its ugliness firsthand. Tell me you lost a child in the desert who’d fallen in with dishonest coyotes. Tell me you know about the 3 great deportations of Mexicans from the US in febrile government sponsored work programs of the past, –when this good nation felt like it, uprooting and deporting tens of thousands of families ‘because they were not needed anymore, many of their children US citizens, and scarring those families for generations now and yet to come.
And dont tell me the Mexicans wave US and Mexican flags at their parades. Wake up, so do the Polish-Americans, the Italian-Americans, the Irish-Americans, the German-Americans, the Chinese-Americans and every other group, including Native Americans, who are sovereign nations, give their own and the US stars and stripes prominence, always.
And dont tell me 10,000 pregnant women in labor have climbed the fence just to give birth 20 minutes later in a US hospital, and dont be calling children who happened to come to earth on US soil, ‘anchor babies: They are children, just like yours. Period. And dont tell me all the unfactual rumors, lies and ‘conventional wisdom’ about immigrants that is anything but wise. And especially dont tell me only highly educated immigrants are wanted, not the ignorant…
for I have worse news yet, the day we all can breed horses and range ride for weeks, or shear sheep, spin thread, dye wool and make our own clothes, or build a house from scratch that is grace and beauty, or dig an acequia, a water ditch for miles without fainting, complaining, or giving up… then the idea that some version of ‘ignorant people are a drag on the society,’ wont be laughed at.
And don’t tell me you’re a rich immigrant, and gosh, it just isnt hard for you at all, and that since ‘you got yours’ you now turn on other immigrants who have come behind you. And dont tell me everyone can come to America, just get in line like everyone else: Those who say this have NO idea what a non-even-handed mess our immigration system is unless you’ve tried family reunification, a law on our USA law books for decades now, and impossible for most to get. It is a legal pathway, yet it is impossible to accomplish unless you’re ‘connected,’ and have endless time and money for lawyers and travel. What poor people do you know who are ‘connected?’ The answer is close to none.
And if you’re still with me, and smoke isnt pouring out of your ears, then please, I ask you… tell us ways to take ALL the criminals out of the government welfare systems, no matter what ethnic heritage. The scamming for foodstamps as I mentioned earlier is huge. It is done by Muslims, by so-called Mormons, by Christians, by Asians, by all manner of ethnic, racial and religious peoples, both immigrant and non-immigrant. Give us some solutions that are precise, humane and just, to cull the scammers.
Propose to us clear and humanly decent ways to identify and deport the criminal population in any ethnic group, whether it be a gang/drug gang/ people who truly believe in honor killing (dishonorable murders), or other. But, please include all murderous gangs, all people who believe in murder, no matter where they came from, and no matter how far back.
Please suggest to us clear and decent ways to treat human beings from foreign countries as human beings, rather than as a slave labor force– to import and use when wanted, and to dump and deport when no longer wanted. Tell us ways to keep their children’s educations in our country uninterrupted. Tell us, but tell all of us who are below poverty level incomes, and often x4, that you’ve found a way to not make US citizens into slave laborers, too.
Give us the way to see our way clear to a better day for all, regardless of race, heritage, ethnicity, country of origin, and you will be a hero, a heroine to the soul and spirit of the Americas. Some may think this dream is pie in the sky, and ooo such a nice fluffy thought, but it’s never going to happen. Some might add a bitter ha ha to that trope.
I’d just mention that many of us have lived long enough to have heard some people declaim over and over in our lifetimes, that:
–No nigger’s ever going to drink out of that park water fountain,
–No Spic is going to live next door to me,
–No Jap is ever going to be shaking my hand,
–No wet-back is ever gonna sit anywhere other than on my lawnmower.
–No sand-ass is ever going to come into my house with his screeching from that minaret thing.
–No Korean’s ever gonna go to school with my kid.
– No faggot is ever going to be welcome at our social club/ our military/ our church.
–No c– is ever going to sit in this boardroom/ be my boss/ go to college.
–No jackinapes is ever going to drive in my neighborhood without being arrested
–No half breed injun/white/nigger/viet-gook/krauthead-blackie kid is ever going to make it in my world
–No kike is every going to stand at the bar in my country club
–No hippie with long hair is ever going to work here
–no goddam crip in a wheelchair is ever gonna have ’special needs’; just let ‘em make do like the rest of us.
– No babykilling, yellow buck toothed, slanty eyed devil is ever going to climb to the top
–No good will ever come from a drunken Mick or Portuguese nigger.
–No one with one drop of nigger will ever marry into this family
Are you laughing sadly yet with joy yet? If so, laughter echoing from far far out in the Universe is sadly-joyously laughing with us.
And with love,
dr.e
http://themoderatevoice.com/79910/response-to-names-of-1300-alleged-undocumented-residents-released-in-utah/
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