Several years ago my boss returned from a business trip in sunny California, most of which he spent golfing with a business owner there. The California businessman had a thriving business and didn't have to work much. My boss was impressed by his wealth and by the fact that the man could hire two employees for the wages he had to pay one employee in my state.
I remember standing there with my fellow employee who had run the business while the boss was away, listening as the boss was saying how easy it is in California to hire Asians and Mexicans to work for next to nothing. All of this was to insinuate that we were damn lucky to be getting such good wages. I was irked, but at the same time I understood the boss, a generally great guy.
The boss was barely making it sometimes. He wasn't rich. His house was small and plain, set in one of those new subdivisions where every house is cheaply made and doesn't have a yard. His cars were old, really old. Finally, his wife's little econo car from the 1980s died and he went out to get her a new one, ending up getting himself one too.
And so, it must have hurt a bit and made my boss jealous to see how easily one can hire employees in California, make them work so hard and pay them nothing, and make enough money to golf in the sun all day.
I wonder if this is how those in the 1850s felt when they saw plantation owners living the life while their slaves worked diligently, making the money? Even if one didn't believe in enslaving a fellow man, it must have made them jealous when they saw how small and simple their own life was, how small, and how expensive labor and time was.
We are living in interesting times, a combination of so many other times. The states and politicians are arguing and boycotting in regard to the Mexican worker issue. This doesn't seem entirely dissimilar to the arguments between slave states and free states that began broiling in the 1850s, eventually ending in the Civil War, fought to bring the Confederacy back into the Union.
There is a bit of a difference from the 1850s and 1860s in that the Mexican workers don't seem as afraid or sedate as the slaves of the Confederacy. They don't quite seem to comprehend that they are being used as the frontal assault to fight a battle for their "masters," who send them out to protest and ask for rights, rile them up and send them in to take the blows. The Mexican Marxist movement has no idea that they are slaves. They really believe they are free. If they are so free why don't they stop the drug cartels that make them look so bad, why don't they go home to Mexico?
If the Mexicans are free enough to gather in protest why are they not free enough to gather in protest against the inhumane and dangerous working conditions their fellows often work under? Who exactly are these protesters? Are they who they say they are or do they get paid to protest? I ask this, because, historically in the United States of America slave revolts are rare and are failures. This causes me to question whether these groups of angry Mexicans are Mexican or enslaved at all, or only paid provocateurs.
In the United States of America minority groups don't simply rise up and change culture with anger. It takes time, and is done in a very intelligent, educated, and legal manner. It takes time because the minority group has to break ground, rise above the odds and show that it
is part of the culture,
not separate, not less entitled, not more entitled. Most importantly, even though each of us is individual and unique, we each are part of this country called America and assimilated to it. All civil rights movements have tried to prove this: that we are all part of the same culture, that we are
not separate, not different.
Racism is founded upon the belief that another group of people is different, separate, not assimilated. And here, in our time, we have lost sight of this and of the older civil rights movements. Now, the many groups crying for equal rights in America claim that it is equal rights to
not assimilate,
not be part of the greater culture, and continue being separate--yet equal. Now, people wear religious costume as badge of pride that tells everyone they are not part of the community, nor do they want to be. And Mexican protesters spout words such as "Latina" and speak in another language to show how separate they are.
Modern civil rights movements actually want "Separate But Equal" laws reinstated. This is an insult to those that worked so hard, who lost their lives to achieve equality and acceptance everywhere based upon individual character and merit, rather than on appearance and religion.
And so I question the honesty of the modern Mexican worker movement. There really are enslaved immigrants in this country. There really are abuses, but I doubt these people have any voice and that they have much to do with any of the current anger in the streets. I doubt the street marchers care too much about the down trodden who have no energy or freedom to march anywhere.
It's as if someone is trying to wind the American watch backwards, back to the beginning before Martin Luther King, Jr, before the Civil War, before the American Revolution. It's as if the fabric, the great patterned and stared and striped fabric of America is being unraveled.
People actually want to be defined as separate, as foreign, as slaves. We are banning certain groups, separating them out as less humans; and then demanding that other groups be given the right to be citizens, yet kept separate. Before the American Revolution British colonists brought slaves into America to work the land because they were easier to deal with than indentured servants who had to be housed and fed, then released, not to mention hard to keep from running away. A black slave was marked as different by skin color, making it hard for them to run away and assimilate into the general population.
In the years leading up to the Civil War when new territory was being settled, the slave question began tearing up the nation because one settler would move in with his family and work the land on his own, while another would come in with his slaves and set up a giant operation and get rich without putting as much into the local economy. The slave owner could make a profit hiring his slave out for wages to another too. But the land owner who owned no slaves had to pay someone to work his land. The settler that owned no slaves and needed extra money or work couldn't find work when it was taken by a slave. It wasn't fair to the settler who owned no slaves. It felt as if he was being stolen from and paying more for everything.
If one has grown up in an area where there is no cheap labor, where there are no slaves, it is very difficult to change that sick and dishonest feeling in one's stomach and buy a slave or to hire someone to work for less-than honest wages. It's not a good feeling knowing that your employee is starving because you don't pay them enough to get by. And so, the northerners moving into the new territories of America couldn't accept slavery because it was not honest and didn't make one proud of themselves as a provider.
Finally, the Civil War broke out because the spineless politicians in Washington had compromised over and over again, not wanting to say one way or the other that slavery was right or wrong. Too afraid to step on Southern toes they had drawn a geographic line, making slavery legal below, and illegal above. They had compromised with the Southern landowners, criminalizing anyone in a free state from aiding runaway slaves as they traveled to Canada. A family caught harboring a slave could lose everything they owned. This is why it was called The Underground Railroad, because it had to go underground to protect the property of the Operators. This law, criminalizing what had formerly been a fairly common and open act, caused an uproar amongst the Free States and lead to the writing and popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin. When a person's property and livelihood are threatened it activates people.
There were many factors that lead the Southern states to secede from the Union. One was slavery, but there were other issues too. In a way, it was a war for monetary power. The North was where the money, population, banks, and manufacturing were located. The South was agricultural and old fashioned. The South felt that the Northern money was monopolizing things a bit and wanted out.
Abraham Lincoln eventually declared emancipation for the slaves, although it was more an act of weakening the power base of the Southern plantation owner than anything. The slaves were "free," but had no rights. And instead of being valuable property to an owner, they were now no one's property, and free to be abused by any and all with no loss to anyone other than to loved ones. The competition with Northern powers was broken, and a group of people found themselves indebted sharecroppers, manual labor, factory workers, and strikebreakers. The newly freed slaves were perhaps, more enslaved than before. It took another hundred years for them to be accepted as part of American culture, not separate.
Now, there is a lot of talk about "freeing" the Mexican immigrants and about amnesty, whatever that is. This is talk. President Obama will neither control the border, nor will he give full citizenship to the Mexicans. The reason for this is that his administration is funded and friended by large corporations and others who cannot afford to lose their cheap labor, either to citizenship or deportation. These illegal immigrants must be left in limbo, in a place where they have no rights, but don't leave the country. It's also important to keep the Mexicans in limbo because they make a great bone of contention in this country and keep us riled up against each other.
There are cities such as Los Angeles, California that have boycotted Arizona. And the Catholic priests are riled up, saying this is racism and not different than Nazi Germany. I think, it is actually more similar, at least right now, to the time between the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. There is money, not love of mankind, behind much of this rhetoric. What exactly has Arizona done? They have threatened a monetary power base. Arizona's stricter immigration policy may not be perfect, and may lead to abuses, but it may have been a kick in the pants to quite a few greedy and dishonest power interests.
People don't get angry and stirred up until their money and property are threatened. The Catholic church has a large Mexican attendance. If Mexicans leave the state, or the country, so too does the money in the offering plate. Now, why is California threatened by tough immigration laws? And why are they willing to risk money to boycott Arizona? Why is Utah telling Mexicans to stay within it borders where they're "safe" as non citizens? Because these states are "slave" states and Arizona has essentially announced that it's not.
If a Northern state had announced more stringent enforcement against illegal workers this would not be as big an issue. But Arizona is a border state, a corridor for illegal non-citizen workers, as well as an entry for illegal monopoly drug mafias who are the modern slave drivers that push the bodies. The pre-Civil War slave drivers were the lowest of the low, cruel and heartless criminals, and black themselves, which made them more despicable to whites and blacks. The modern slave drivers are generally Hispanic, but the cruelest of the cruel, loving only to destroy the lives of their own people. The slave owners hated their slave drivers, but depended upon them and the fear they instilled in the slaves.
If one has ever traveled in Utah and California they will see that these states rely heavily upon non-citizen workers. These people allow business, state, and corporations to reap huge amounts of money and to keep things looking pretty as a southern plantation. While the giant corporate and government monopolies get rich by using these bodies, the citizens pay taxes into this false economy and get poorer.
California is like one of those American territories where one person earns and sweats for everything they have, while the guy next door has a perfect and easy life because he has 50 slaves out doing the work for nothing. Contrary, to what people say, California government makes a "profit" off of non-citizens. Each non-citizen equals a new Social service worker, new teacher, new bureaucracy that needs more money. The government keeps itself busy with all these bodies, never really doing anything to help them, and pockets the taxes taken from the citizens. It's a transfer of wealth, from the citizens to the State.
California needs non-citizens to work the fields, service industry, and whatever else. The State needs them for employment. If every Mexican was made a citizen and properly educated in English, the language that the laws and Constitution are written in, California and its corporations would soon be in trouble. They already are. The other solution is to send the non-citizens home and close the border. Mexicans are big business in California and Utah.
Why do you think California and other states don't teach Mexican students in English? It's not because they care about the students. It is actually to prevent them from becoming assimilated to American culture and from being able to learn their rights as American citizens. It's extremely important to read and write in the language of one's country. Before the Civil War there were laws on the books preventing slaves from reading, and especially from learning to write. This kept the slaves separate and unable to realize their power as humans. In America of the early 1900s there were a great deal of children born to foreign immigrants that never spoke English until their first year of school, and somehow, they caught on quickly with barely a problem.
It is wrong to prevent people from speaking their native language, but it is also wrong to keep them ignorant of the common language of the land, which is the language of laws and business and rights and literature. All people need to know how to get along with and understand the culture they live in or be outcasts and despised. It would be disrespectful to move to Japan or Russia and never learn the language or the social rules of the culture. Language is power.
Arizona has provoked a kind of war, a first shot. And the opposition is sending out the troops--the very people they enslave, because those with the power are too good to dirty or bloody themselves. And so, they make movies like "Machete" to invoke the slave troops into violence against the "enemy." And they pay a few loud voices to rally the troops, telling them to pick up their hoes, shovels, toilet brushes, and hamburger flippers and revolt.
There are only two solutions, neither perfect. Give the Mexican workers full citizenship, or prohibit them from working in the country. Arizona could not give them citizenship, and so made it a law that they cannot work without proper proof of permission. I'm not sure this is a solution either. Those in the slave states and in the federal government may make it easier to get papers. And how will this be enforced? Perhaps, it is the message that matters more than the actual enforcement.
What Arizona has done is similar to what Abraham Lincoln did when he freed the slaves. He pulled the rug out from underneath the power structure of the Southern land owners. Arizona has threatened the power structure of the neighboring states and business. Soon, we will see more states choosing sides in the same manner as Southern secession. Instead of seceding to be a slave state, the states will "secede" to be Free States. And like the slaves during and after the Civil War, the average Mexican will be caught in the middle. Do they go back to their slave master in Mexico, which has essentially hired them out to the U.S.?
I myself, am inclined to make most Mexican workers full citizens and encourage assimilation into the culture. If their country would rather hire them out, and gain corporate payoffs, then I'd rather cut Mexico off from its source of income. If I could prohibit money from going back into Mexico I would. And if I could cut off Mexican trucking, drivers, dirty diesel, and untrained drivers I'd do that too. But there is no easy solution, and it will take more than Arizona's law to solve this. I hope we don't have to go through another Civil War.
At any rate, this is contentious, and I hope that Americans can see past the mobs and that this is like North versus South, American money versus giant Corporate and State money. Perhaps, America could have avoided the Civil War by allowing escaped slaves to be full citizens in Free States, until the South was completely cleaned out of cheap/free labor. Compromising, being neither hot nor cold, leads to war and death of innocent people.
Does anyone recall learning about the old days and of how people were put on the auction block and bid upon? 
