The State of the State of Minnesota, Re. Immigration

While the 2009 spring session for the Minnesota Legislature just ended amidst a controversial decision by Governor Pawlenty to balance the budget by himself, many important immigration bills were debated in this past session. Admirably, the Land of 10,000 Lakes voted to prohibit state compliance with the Real ID Act, a catch-all piece of 2006 federal legislation which enabled the Department of Homeland Security to waive any and all laws in the construction of our border wall and would have required a national id card to be carried by everyone in the U.S., a thinly cloaked anti-immigrant measure. This bill, HF 988, will protect Minnesota’s growing immigrant community in this particularly vulnerable time of economic turmoil from an intrusive federal law.

SF 1514 was also passed  on May 21 by the Minnesota legislature, recognizing the crime of sex trafficking for the first time with harsh penalties of up to 25 years in jail while also granting victims a means of legal recourse regardless of their citizenship status.

Also important were the bills rejected by Minnesota’s lawmakers, many of which were targeted specifically at the immigrant community.  SF 505, which would have required the removal of all head coverings in order to procure state ids, was defeated, along with SF 144, which would have made government employees liable if they knew of an undocumented immigrant and failed to report it.  SF 577 was also defeated in its efforts to make English the official language (interestingly enough, just before the turn of the 20th century the same debates were being had about making Norwegian the official state language).

A couple of important federal bills might also impact Minnesota.  AgJOBS, reintroduced in the Senate by Senator Diane Feinstein (S. 1038) and in the House by Representatives Howard Berman and Adam Putnam (H.R. 2414), would allow immigrant farm workers the opportunity to earn the legal right to permanently stay in this country through continuing work in agriculture while also amending the current H2A guest worker program to grant growers a safer and more stable workforce. (Souza, Christine. California Farm Bureau Federation).  Similarly, the Visa Recapture Bill (or the “Reuniting Families Act”) introduced by Senators Robert Menendez and Charles Schumer would go a long way in reforming the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act. First, Visas unused due to lack of governmnet action dating back to 1992 would be added to the current year limits, and prospectively any surplus would added to the new year’s allowable visa limits. Second, spouses and minor children of legal permanent residents would be able to obtain visas (whereas now only citizens can really petition for immediate relatives), and it changes the age of minor children from 18 to 21.  Third, the overally level of family-sponsored immigrant visas would be expanded to 480,000/year, along with raising the number of employment-based visas to 140,000/year.

Advocates with the project Familias Unidas, along with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, have worked to include Minneapolis on this collaborative’s national tour to 20 cities.  In its attempt to encourage support for comprehensive immigration reform this year, Representatives Luis Gutierrez and Keith Ellison will hold a community forum at the Incarnation Church in Minneapolis on June 14 at 2:30.  This multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual event is aimed at getting Obama to follow through on his promise earlier this year to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2009.  The petition they will be signing at this event is as follows – feel free to print it off and send it to our President yourself:

The Honorable Barack Obama

President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

My name is _____________________________________, and I am petitioning on behalf of my

______________________ who has no realistic options to gain legal status under our current

immigration laws.

President Obama, as a result of our broken immigration system, my loved one is at risk of being

deported/ has been deported:  causing the destruction and separation of our family.

This has caused us all to live with constant anxiety and fear about the future of our family.

As you eloquently stated in your inauguration speech,

“The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation:

the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their

full measure of happiness.”

On behalf of my family and the millions of other families like mine, I urge you to stop the

misguided raids and deportations that are tearing our marriages, our childrens’ lives, and

our communities apart.

We are hopeful that you will indeed fulfill your campaign promise to work with Congress to move quickly to enact just and humane comprehensive immigration reform that includes

family reunification, faster due process, a reasonable path to citizenship, and workers’ protection.

We are hopeful that you will indeed fulfill your campaign promise to work tirelessly to bring forth the change necessary to ensure that all people have an opportunity to dream, to live, and to pursue their full measure of happiness.

We are hopeful that you will indeed fulfill your campaign promise of Si Se Puede; Yes We Can!

Sincerely,

________________________________________    ________________________________

Signature                                                                      Date

__________________________________________________________ (Address)

__________________________________________________________ (City, State, Zip Code)

__________________________________________________________ (Phone)

__________________________________________________________ (E-Mail)

A Secure Fence, a Loose Screen Door

Current Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff waived over 30 environmental laws under the Real ID Act in his haste to erect a border wall along our southern boundary as per the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

Chertoff has been touting the successes of ICE raids such as those in Postville and  increased deportations since he was appointed by President George W. Bush in April 2005.

Last week on December 11, Chertoff was also discovered to have been employing unauthorized workers to clean his house. (Nill, Andrea)

James Reid, owner of the cleaning company, is now facing fines of $22,880 for these workers he says “sailed through the checks.”  Among other things, Reid complains that the federal government is “outsourcing” its own responsibilities in putting the burden on employers to check and verify employee’s paperwork.  Reid also argues that small-business owners are disproportionately targeted by ICE, while larger corporations are ignored. (Hsu, Spencer. Washington Post)

Chertoff’s faux-pas has received scant notice in mainstream media, while many border activists and proponents of comprehensive immigration reform are spotlighting his inconsistency as emblematic of the United States’ view toward immigrants.  We want unauthorized immigrants, not so that they can one day work their way toward full citizenship but instead so we can underpay them, bully them, keep a workforce disunionized and without a voice.  Chertoff may or may not have been aware of the documents his cleaning staff had; however, they were most certainly people working hard to provide for their families.

While the swirl of news stories surronding this hypocritical action of Chertoff focus on the need for tighter borders or harsher penalties for employers and immigrants, we must remind folks that the real problem is that people are seen as illegal or criminal in the first place.  As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel‘s famous slogan reminds us, “No Human Being is Illegal.”  Our problem is not that our borders are porous but that our hearts are callous, and Chertoff and we want unauthorized immigrants to stay that way so we can continue to underpay and mistreat them legally.

Homeland Security

When we speak of homeland security, it is vital we define our terms. “Homeland security” must not mean defending the buildings and properties of the United States, or else the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would be busy repairing bridges, condemning buildings, and fireproofing houses. It is impossible for “homeland security” to mean protecting the American people, because what we mean by the “American people” will have grown and changed by the time you finish reading this article. “Homeland security” cannot even mean preserving our nation’s heritage and culture, or else its name would be homeland taxidermy instead.

No, “homeland security” rightly understood must mean the protection of our nation’s laws. If society is a social contract, then people come to the United States and remain in the U.S. because they agree to live by the law in a land where others do the same, thus gaining civil rights while submitting to the authority elected to enforce those laws. Defined as such, the biggest threat to homeland security today could very well be the Department of Homeland Security.

Since the 1990s, and more aggressively since 2006, DHS has been militarizing the border. Having lived in the border town of Brownsville, Texas, I can personally attest to the effects this militarization has had on local residents from California and Arizona to Texas. I have had a gun pulled on me by a Border Patrol agent as I ran on a dirt trail along the border, not unlike so many cross-country trails here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Countless friends of mine have faced aggravation and humiliation as they crossed the secure border checkpoint more than 30 miles north of the Rio Grande. Third and fourth-generation Americans have been followed and questioned by police in every one of these border towns, simply because of the color of their skin or their fluency in Spanish.

With the Secure Fence Act of 2006, the law which mandates nearly 700 miles of border wall for our nation’s southern border, these dehumanizing factors were magnified in border communities. The Department of Homeland Security has used the REAL-ID Act to waive 11 laws in Arizona and more than 30 environmental and local laws in the Rio Grande Valley in order to expedite the construction of an eighteen-foot wall between the U.S. and Latin America. With the REAL ID Act, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, an unelected official, has been granted the unconditional power to waive any and all laws “necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section;” in effect, this gives Chertoff the power to undo countless laws voted on by elected officials in our nation’s Legislative Branch, thereby undermining the very “homeland security” it purports to protect, not to mention our system of checks and balances.

Despite the dour state of affairs in our nation’s handling of the border region and immigration, we have all seen real homeland security take place in our communities. Leaders like Father Paul Oderkirk in towns like Pottsville, Iowa, have offered support and banded together with immigrants after the terror of an ICE raid on their Agriprocessors Inc. kosher slaughterhouse in May. Organizations like the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, the University of Texas at Brownsville, and the Texas Border Coalition of mayors have all sought to defend homeland security by opposing the Secure Fence Act which divides rather than cooperates with our neighbors and the REAL ID Act which negates our nation’s checks and balances. We have seen homeland security in the integration of our community sports teams, English-as-a-Second-Language classes, hospitals, and churches. Every time a recent immigrant is welcomed, each instant someone takes the time to help another get involved, there is homeland security. Please show your solidarity by supporting immigrant resource centers like Rochester’s Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement and the Advocates for Human Rights, as well as writing your encouragement to beleaguered Americans on our southern border. Additionally, a letter to our senators Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar could go a long way to encouraging real “homeland security” instead of distracting and costly excuses for real immigration reform.

Encouragement to all those on the Border

It is 2033. By this time, more than $49 billion will have been invested to build, maintain, and repair 700 miles of border wall through California, Arizona, and Texas. Animals like the jaguarundi, the Sonoran pronghorn, and ocelots have disappeared form the American side of the border. The last remaining stands of virgin flora have become extinct due to the border wall itself and the changes it brought to the ecosystem. Sabal Palms Audobon Sanctuary, like the small community of La Lomita and Granjeno, is an abandoned ghost town, a relic of a time when Mexicans and Americans could both enjoy the benefits of the life-giving Rio Grande as it made its 1885-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico.

Illegal immigration is still a problem, because the push and pull factors of immigration were not addressed through legislative reform. An eighteen-foot wall did nothing to alleviate the more than seven-to-one pay differential between Americans and their neighbors to the South. With the increased militarization of the border and the addition of 700 miles of barriers, the flow of migration has only been redirected to more dangerous routes and means, killing more and more Americalmosts and freezing hundreds of thousands of extralegal residents here who are too afraid to cross back into Mexico. In 2007, the year before the Texas wall was built, more than 500 people lost their lives attempting to cross through the treacherous desert while more and more immigrants risked their lives and their fortunes in highly-dangerous crossings conducted by a highly-paid coyote. As Princeton Professor Douglas Massey pointed out, “The ultimate effect of the border fence policy is to increase the size [of the undocumented population] and to make it more permanent.” (TNR)

It is 2033, and my teenage children are asking why I ever let my government do something so illogical and shameful. Clearly, in retrospect, our wall seems as pointless as the Russian’s or the Chinese. My children and their friends will go to California with hammers in their hands to chisel out a piece of infamous history when the walls we built at the turn of the century finally fall.

——————

Thank God it is not 2033 yet. While the time is getting near and the pressure is being ratcheted up by the Department of Homeland Security, time still remains for our nation’s people and lawmakers to do right. People like Professor Eloisa Tamez, a UTB Professor, Lipan Apache Tribe member, and border landowner have not given up the fight in El Calaboz. Documentarians like Nat Stone have not ceased filming and recording the people and places which would be irreversibly marred by an eighteen-foot wall. National figures such as Jay Johnson-Castro have not stopped marching against the injustice of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and environmental activists such as Scott Nichols haven’t stopped speaking out against the totalitarian power endowed to DHS by the Real ID Act. Grassroots organizers like Elizabeth Garcia, Ryan and Yahaira Tauber, John Moore, Crystal Canales, Mike and Cindy Johnson, Joe Krause, as well as groups such as CASA, LUPE, No Texas Border Wall and Border Ambassadors have not surrendered because they know that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

The resistance continues; our spirit is not broken. May it continue in love and not stoop to the hate and violence that would will a wall between neighbors and families. Our resistance must remain positive; if our publicity is not respectful and focused and nonviolent, then the focus will be on our negativity and our methods rather than on the injustice of a border wall through people’s homes and lives. If we do not stay united and show DHS, our city leadership, and the entire nation that we are unified against a border wall, then we appear to be simply some people squabbling and fighting petty battles in a place far away. However, if we can stay together and remain positive now, at the breaking point, when the pressure is fiercest and the odds seem overwhelming, if we can stay true to the Truth and resist in love, then we can still rally the nation behind our just cause.

It is my prayer that we may remain strong as we hold on to the Truth in love , the satyagraha that changed India for the better, the holding on to Truth that awakened our nation from the sad malady of segregation and closemindedness in the King era. We are still able to prevent our nation from doing something it will regret for the rest of its history, if we can only cling stay united in the faith that our cause is right, the hope that our fellow Americans are moral beings, and the love that separates us all more than our conflicts can divide us.

The Supreme Court on Alaska & Texas

This week, the Supreme Court of the United States both rewrote history and chartered a brave new future for our nation.  Yesterday, the Supreme Court reduced the $5 billion damages against Exxon Mobil from the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill to a measly $500 million, setting precedent for future damage cases of being a one-to-one ration.  This catastrophic 11,000,000-gallon spill in Alaska damaged 1300 miles of shoreline and killed hundreds of thousands of sea animals; Wednesday’s decision downplays this accident, one which spurred a host of increasingly stringent environmental regulations on the oil industry, by slashing its price tag presumably because of the “oil crisis.” (Liptak, Adam. New York Times, April 26, 2008)

 

            Also, this Monday Supreme Court Justices voted with the White House in allowing the appointed Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to waive any and all environmental laws.  By refusing to hear the case brought by the Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club concerning a stretch of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in Arizona, the Supreme Court was condoning and endorsing the Executive Branch’s ability and right to disregard local, state, and environmental laws, many of which were instated by the Legislative Branch.  To residents on the border in towns like Brownsville and nearby Hidalgo County, this decision from Washington damages a last remaining hope that the breakneck construction of a hasty border fence could be stopped legally.  Representative Bennie Thompson, who supported the challenges to Chertoff’s authority, said, “I am extremely disappointed in the court’s decision” because it is a distraction from “the real issue: their lack of a comprehensive border security plan.” (Stout, David. New York Times, April 24, 2008)

           

            In one week, the Supreme Court chartered a new direction for American history, one that seemingly ignores environmental caution in lieu of situational expediency.  In downplaying the significance of the Exxon Valdez spill by discounting its impact on both human and environmental conditions, the Supreme Court placed the needs of corporations and businesses above those of resources and humans.  Similarly, by refusing to hear the Defenders of Wildlife case, the Supreme Court has lent its unashamed support for Homeland Security’s environmentally devastating, socially disrupting, and ultimately futile attempt to thwart illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and terrorism simply by building an 18-foot wall along 700 miles of our nation’s southern border.  As voting citizens and as concerned social activists, we must be prepared for future “panaceas” like the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and the Real ID Act, “panaceas” which cure all of our problems merely at the cost of our democratic freedom. 

May 6- Eloisa Tamez Addresses the Cameron County Commissioners

In the Castellano Province of northern Spain, I have been overwhelmed with awe at a new land, language, and people every single day of this month-long Rotary trip to Spain.  All of this traveling, though, is tinged with a hint of regret that I am reduced to a peripheral role in the organized opposition to the border wall or levee-wall compromise on the Texas & Mexico border.  The Spaniards are very sympathetic to border residents’ resentment towards the Secure Fence Act of 2006, but I still feel somewhat removed from events such as Eloisa Tamez’s address to the Cameroun County Commisioners on May 6.  Her address was as follows:

Presentation to Cameron County Commissioner’s Court
Presented by Eloisa G. Taméz, RN, PhD, FAAN
Judge Cascos, Commissioners, Fellow Citizens
We the citizens of Cameron County are facing many challenges in relation to the Border Wall construction.
1.        Through the Declaration of Taking (DTA), many of us landowners are in peril of losing our ancestral lands.
2.       The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has violated constitutional laws to take our lands (Persisitently used 2006 Secure Fence Act and ignored 2008 Appropriations Bill).
3.       Members of Congress and Senate passed the Real ID Act of 2005, giving Secretary Chertoff, an appointed Executive Branch official, absolute power.
4.       The human rights of the citizens of South Texas are being violated as evidenced by the absence of the proposed Border Wall construction in properties owned by corporations (River Bend Resort) and the connected (Hunt Enterprises).
5.       The citizens of South Texas are being denied equal protection in accordance with the 5th Amendment.
6.       The affected citizens lack representation by elected officials: local, state, national.
7.       Citizens are being accosted in their own land by Border Patrol Agents (BPA).  Example:  Those of us, whose land is divided by the levee, are being confronted by the BPA when we are on the levee.  We hold title and pay taxes on that easement that only the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) is authorized to access.
8.       The BPA, while trespassing on private property, have turned the levee into a highway and DHS is now requiring Cameron County citizens to bear the cost of repairs to damage they produced.  This movement is unacceptable to the citizens of Cameron County.
We are indigenous to these lands and citizens of the United States.  Yet, we are under siege by our own government and subject to disparaging remarks by those elected officials in Washington DC who authored bills like the 2006 Secure Fence Act and the Real ID Act of 2005 that are based on political survival rather than the greater good for America.  Fear has been purposely created on less than valid and justified conclusions.  At a recent Congressional Hearing in Brownsville, DHS representatives were unable to provide qualified and scientific information regarding those areas in the proposed Wall’s path that are excluded.
America is headed towards a Unitarian Government rather than a democracy.  Is this the legacy that we want for our children and their children?  To heal this decay in American democracy, we must unite as a people and raise consciousness to local and state elected officials, the President of the United States and Congress that the opening words in the constitution read “We the people……. not “We the corporations” or  “I Michael Chertoff”.
I urge you to vote responsibly for your constituents to approve the proposition presented here today, May 6, 2008, by Commissioner John Wood, who honors all Cameron County with diligence.
Name of lawsuit:  Affirmative Lawsuit of Taméz, García, et al VS Michael Chertoff & Robert F. Janson of the Department of Homeland Security.

I look forward to rejoining the solid efforts already organized against the construction of any border barrier on any frontera of the United States when I return to Brownsville, Texas, on May 26.

Headed to Spain

This coming Monday, April 28, the Defenders of Wildlife will be hosting a “Congressional Field Hearing on the Border Wall and the Department of Homeland Security’s Abuse of Power” at UT-Brownsville.  The community event is a vital step in uniting environmental groups and community members in the open nonviolent opposition to the violence of a border wall in South Texas.

Regrettably, I will not be able to attend this meeting.  By Monday, I will be in the Basque region of northern Spain, researching second-language education programs and immigration systems in the developed country with one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world.  I will be thousands of miles removed from the present situation of the REAL ID Act and the Secure Fence Act of 2006.  The civil disobedience training scheduled for mid-May, as well as many community events organized to call for a moratorium on the border wall – all of these events will go on in the month I am away from la frontera. 

But, in some ways I will be traveling closer to the solution.  Spain is a country who has confronted issues of immigration in a constructive, positive fashion.  Rather than entertaining the idea of a border wall to solve or salve its immigration issues, Spain has chosen to view people as assets, be they from Morocco or Romania or Bosnia.  I look forward to learning how these people are assimilated, how they are granted real opportunities to participate fully in Spanish society, and how they are guaranted the rights of all citizens. 

Since the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was born out of aborted bipartisan immigration discussions, real immigration reform is at the heart of any alternative to an atrocious 700-mile border barrier between the U.S. and Mexico.  The individuals throughout south Texas who plan to engage in trained civil disobedience to oppose the construction of a border wall have both my blessing and my prayers.  It is also my prayer that I will be able to apply the lessons I learn across the Atlantic to this issue, one which is fundamentally a domestic conflict due to inevitable globalization.  I will try to keep posting blog entries as faithfully as possible, so that my thoughts and meditations might add yet another perspective to the ongoing legal fight and nonviolent struggle against the border wall.

Quinceaneras and Coming of Age as a Mexican-American

It is hard for my students to understand that Mexican is a dirty word in some stretches of middle America. Here in Brownsville, most of my freshman prefer Mexico to the United States in terms of life – not living standards, not poverty level, not economic potential or educational excellence, but vida life. Many of my high-school children do not understand why Brownsville is so quiet at night, why no one walks the streets after dark, why there are so many cul-de-sacs and so few nightclubs. Though they complain that Matamoros always floods after rain, these 14 and 15-year-olds prefer its untidy reality to the American sprawl they see in the strip malls and the vacant 30-story hotels in Brownsville’s historic downtown.

The wall proposed for the Rio Grande Valley and, locally, between Matamoros and Brownsville, would force my students to make a choice they should never have to make – between their cultural past and their economic future. The Secure Fence Act is selective division, and while none of us want a similar wall with Canada or on our Atlantic beach front, the wall seems to be a pointed affront to Latino culture. A border wall through la frontera here in Texas would make the hyphen between Mexican-American more like a minus sign than a symbol of cohesion.

Each xenophobic nativist and any anti-Mexican Minuteman would surely change his/her mind about a Mexican border wall if only they were invited to a quinceanera. This past Saturday I had the profound privilege to attend a the fifteenth-birthday celebration of one of my freshman ESL students. As is a rite of passage when driving in Mexico, my fiance and I got hopelessly lost. Every person we spoke to was very understanding of our direction-less driving, as well as the green coolant leaking out of my tired ’94 Dodge Spirit. Finally, we followed a kindly man and his wife to the Salon de Santa Fe.

Although we missed the religious ceremonies at La Iglesia San Juan de los Lagos, I was immediately struck by the profound meaning of the quinceanera. It was a beautiful event, less like a Sweet Sixteen birthday party and more like a full-blown wedding. Each table had elaborate floral arrangements, hors d’oeuvres, and decorations. We were escorted to our table by the mother of my English-as-a-Second-Language student. She speaks no English, but she is entrusting me and my fellow American teachers with her daughter’s education every week. Her daughter Vero leaves their Mexican house on Sunday evening, not to return until Friday night. Her mom can visit Vero on a day-visa, but she would be outside of the law if she tried to make a permanent residence north of the Rio Grande. Vero is torn between her mother’s love and her aptitude for academics, and so she makes the long trip across the narrow river every week. And all this at fifteen years old.

I beam with pride to see my young student say goodbye to childhood through several dances with her father, her tios, and her childhood boy friends. The Vero who waltzes with her father is the same Vero who aces my vocabulary tests in English. The same girl who giggles and screams unabashedly as she pulls out a kitten from her giant birthday box is the same staid student who always is on time, always helps others, always gives her all. The same girl going table to table to thank all her family friends of Mexico is the same Vero who blesses her newfound American community by volunteering many hours each month.

La frontera is more than just the last home for endangered animals like the ocelot and Sonoran Pronghorn; this borderland is also one of the few places in the United States that celebrates quinceaneras. The quinceanera is a proud moment where a girls’ entire community is able to affirm her life and celebrate her maturation into womanhood. It speaks to the best in Mexican culture. As we snack on avocados and pickled peppers and watch a slide show of her life, I wish all America could witness this beautiful celebration. Dancing cumbias and salsas alongside my students and their vecinos, singing corridos and romanticos with grandmothers and granddaughters, I realize this culture calls out the best in family. The world would do well to look to the Mexican mode of making events significant. In 2007, the Catholic Church officially recognized this profound event with its own liturgy; America and all people of faith could learn a lot about community from this Mexican tradition.

Loving God,
you created all the people of the world
and you know each of us by name.
We thank you for Vero,
who today celebrates her fifteenth birthday.
Bless her with your love and friendship
that she may grow in wisdom, knowledge, and grace.
May she love her family always
and be faithful to her friends.
Grant this through Christ our Lord.

(Quinceanera Liturgy)

Driving back across the Mexican-American border checkpoint on the international bridge, past the barbed wire and racial profiling, past the sniffing dogs and warning signs, I ponder why anyone would want to wall off the culture of quinceaneras. While the United States is busy enacting bills like the REAL ID Act and the Secure Fence Act, students like Vero will continue coming of age in a multi-cultural community which is best when it learns from all its immigrants.

Hanen’s New Decision, Our New Resolution

In addition to waiving 39 laws through its use of the REAL ID Act, the federal branch of the U.S. government notched another victory in its continuing lawsuits against homeowners on the border. UTB Professor Eloisa Tamez, who has been refusing the government access to her land since January, was just ordered by Judge Hanen on Thursday to allow the government to survey her land for six months.

73-year-old Eloisa Tamez wanted to know the government’s intentions in detail, but the government stated that it wouldn’t know those intentions or the scope of its construction until it surveyed her Spanish land-grant acreage. This deliberate murkiness has permeated every phase of the U.S. government’s efforts to raise a wall on la frontera. From the Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) report, which gave two different proposed trajectories of the wall so that no one is quite sure where it will be built, to the indiscriminate waiving of laws to expedite a process which is either top-secret or undecided or both – every interaction of the government with the people of this Rio Grande Valley has been evasive and less than honest.

For a $50 billion project, the American public deserves the right to know exactly what it is going to look like. The EIS report shows metal fencing, plexi-glass, concrete walls, and double-thick walls, all of which are “possibilities,” yet none of which are decided upon. The government report shows tiny paths of entry for small lizards and rodents, but government officials have also promised people like Jimmy Paz, the manager of Sabal Palms Audobon Sanctuary, that they will have a gate and a key for such a wall. Even the intended purpose of the wall, which began as a piece of immigration legislation, has been touted as a solution to terrorism, drug-smuggling, Social Security, and borderland trash. No one is quite sure how the wall will look, how it will impact the communities, and what effects it will have. Yet still, it has managed to pass through our legislature and dozens of local courts on its way to presumably land in the Rio Grande Valley by the beginning of next month.

Although members of the Smart Borders group will continue visiting local communities along the RGV corridor in order to alert them to their rights and register them to vote, we must also begin training and preparing for a nonviolent campaign of direct action. Should bulldozers come to our peaceful Valley, we must be prepared to engage in the civil disobedience which transformed India and Jim Crow. These apparent defeats for the rights of border residents must not discourage and enervate but encourage and inspire us to bring this issue to national attention. Please join us as we oppose an unjust law in a morally ascendant manner.

Satyagraha in Manhattan and the Americas

The MET is staging Satyagraha in New York City. Philip Glass‘s 1979 opera about Gandhi’s life and philosophy of “holding on to truth” is a spectacle which makes me wish I were in Manhattan for a matinee. Julian Crouch, one of the artistic directors of Improbable Theater Company of London, stated that the giant puppets of this opera were chosen because “…we wanted to use very humble materials in the making of the opera…We wanted similarly to take these materials, maybe associated with poverty, and see if we could do a kind of alchemy with that, turn them into something beautiful” (NYT). This opera shows Mohandis Gandhi meeting with his philosophical mentor Leo Tolstoy and with his inspired follower Martin Luther King, Jr. In the meantime, newspapers are transformed into puppets, wadded pages represent rocks, and other texts are molded to resemble Hindu goddesses in a transformation of the mundane into the sacred, the profane into the divine.

I wish the Improbable Theater Company could travel to Brownsville, Texas, bringing with it the ideas of nonviolence and civil disobedience to a border region currently preparing to oppose an unjust border wall through its homes and backyards. If Satyagraha could be staged in Dean Porter Park, perhaps the poorest city in the United States would see that it does not need money or political power in order to stand for the Truth. The Truth is compelling, and when men and women refuse to resort to violence but instead seek reconciliation in the face of injustice, we have to believe that the spark of the divine will be ignited in our fellow Man when he is confronted with the morality of our plea. A border wall, above and beyond beyond environmentally unsound, politically backwards, and environmentally devastating, is morally reprehensible.

On April 1, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff used the REAL ID Act to waive 39 laws in an effort to speed up the construction of the border wall. All 100 Senators voted for this act, a piece of legislation predominantly concerned with driver’s licenses but with a rider granting unprecedented powers to waive all laws in constructing border barriers. In traditional Jewish law, a law which was passed unanimously was thrown out – something must have been amiss. In Gandhi’s book, Satyagraha, he writes, ““It is a superstition and ungodly thing to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority…all reforms owe their origin to the initiation of minorities in opposition to majorities” (18). The overwhelming vote for the REAL ID Act must not dissuade us from speaking truth and campaigning for the overturning of these waivers.

Valley residents are not alone, however. The minority in opposition to a wall is growing, and we have the moral power of knowing we are right. Thank you, Rep. Thompson, for your courageous stand along with 14 other Congressman. We pray your Amicus Curiae brief will persuade the Supreme Court to take case with Homeland Security’s ability to waive unlimited legislation to expedite the Secure Fence Act of 2006. It is encouraging to know that the unanimous vote in the Senate is not the entire story.

It is also encouraging to note that the European Union is currently considering the introduction of a decade of nonviolence, a year after dissolving the last of its countries’ borders. It is heartening to know that the E.U. recognizes, “Gandhian non-violence to be the most appropriate means of ensuring that fundamental human rights are enjoyed, upheld, promoted and respected” (http://www.unpo.org/content/view/7980/83/). It is encouraging to know that the spirit of nonviolence was not killed along with Gandhi and King, that it survives even though the United States has already started clearing brush from its levees in South Texas, fully intending to build a border wall between itself and its neighbors to the South. Nonviolence, that soul-force which King preached and which is parading in New York’s MET right now, still walks the streets and marches on, despite the fact that the Secure Fence Act of 2006 still stands as a blight upon our nation, culture, and all immigrants, a symbol of division in a time when we need unity.

We, the people of the Valley, call for the prayers and support of all concerned citizens at this crucial time in American history. The people of the Valley are already fighting the legal battle and will continue to campaign for Justice through the courts. In addition, we are readying for civil disobedience, should it come to that. Groups such as Fellowship of Reconciliation and Christian Peacemakers, as well as individuals like the American Gandhi, have already expressed interest in training a group of concerned citizens in proper, positive civil disobedience.  We welcome any and all support in our efforts of reconciliation as opposed to division. We join with Christian thought in recognizing that we inevitably reap what we sow, and we seek to keep the United States from sowing a seed of dissension and division rather than working on communication and mutually beneficial relations with brothers and sisters of the world.