Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita / Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria

Kenmore College is a very fine private college near me. Actually there is no Kenmore College, not around here, anyway. Kenmore is the brand name for appliances (dishwashers, refrigerators) you buy at Sears & Roebuck. But the names have been changed to protect the innocent or to protect non-Vleeptroids (or illegal immigrants to Vleeptron).

My Professor pal posted Bienvenido a America (Danbury Connecticut style) to a site at Kenmore College, and a student replied to it.

* * * * * * *

-----Original Message-----
From: One of my students, who saw your triadibe about keeping the foreign hordes (cops) at bay. (My, my - he seems to slam editors, but I've not read that site yet.

Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 1:01 PM
To: N***** S****
Subject: Re: Your .PLAN

=====================================
The Student writes:
=====================================
The person quoted in your .PLAN is absolutely right--there is never any difference between "illegal" and "legal," and this is never more true than when the terms modify "immigration." My wife, for example, is a legal immigrant--which means we filed all the paperwork required, went to the government offices when required, and paid the fees required; and after all that, the government bureaucracy looked at our submission and determined that my wife met the criteria set up by Congress.

Of course, we didn't need to do any of this because, as noted above, "legal" and "illegal" are the same thing. The sad fact is that we were just suckers--we believed we had to follow the law, as written. Smarter people, otherwise no better and no worse than us, would instead ignore the law. Ignoring the law has several benefits among which are these: first, you save time and money, and, second, you can immigrate regardless of whether you meet Congress's criteria.

A person more ignorant or less moral (or should the term be "holy"?) than we might think that illegal immigration was a problem. (See, for example, Mickey Kaus in Slate magazine, scroll to "How many editorial layers does it take to look completely clueless?") Of course, once we realize that there's no difference between illegal and legal, we realize that illegal immigration doesn't exist. And further, if it did exist, gangs aren't a problem anyway since the illegal things they do are no different from legal things.

=====================================
Bob writes:
=====================================
Ah, the Slate link is very interesting. The poster is outraged that an LA Times editorial implied that it was A Bad Thing to allow or encourage local police to do double-duty acting as deputies for federal Immigration/Homeland Security etc. police.

Specifically, the editorial was objecting to a contemplated ratcheting up of local-federal cooperation to catch ethnic gang members who were illegals, and thus instantly deportable [once physically nabbed by anyone with handcuffs and pistols and badges, any badge]).

On about one of every five episodes of the TV show "Law and Order," the NYC homicide cops have to tell a Hispanic or Asian person who is clamming up and trembling with terror, "Hey, we're not from Immigration. We just want to know what you saw in the alley." And the cops are PROUD that they don't do double-duty as federal Immigration cops. The NYC cops are PROUD that they don't handcuff illegals and put them on the deportee bus.

First, there is (or once upon a time was) a very-nearly-Constitutional-level thing called Posse Comitatus, which I think (ask You-Know-Who for details) applies here regarding concurrent police/military jurisdictions.

NOTE: You-Know-Who is Kenmore's nationally acknowledged expert scholar on U.S. Constitutional Law.

But what I'd ask you to pass along to your student is this Memoir from Vleeptron:

I used to hang with a rock band from New Zealand who were living in New York City. I invited them up here one summer to give them a Nature Break from the Asphalt Jungle, and got to chat with them a little more closely.

They (a unison chorus thing) said that one thing that really impressed them Very Positively about America was its hundreds of different and poorly linked and uncooperating police forces and agencies, federal, local, state.

You could (they were discovering, being punk musicians) run afoul of the Omaha PD, and then later, when you were stopped by an Ohio or Vermont state trooper -- your old troubles in Omaha hadn't reached this new Law Enforcement Agency, your New Cop didn't know anything about your Old Cop and his/her Issues with you.

But in New Zealand, there is One Unified Computer-Insta-Linked Police Agency -- local, county, state, federal, all the same. If you get popped making wee-wee behind a bush in the southernmost town of the South Island, and then two years later encounter a police officer in the northernmost town of the North Island, he/she clicks on his/her Motorola and instantly learns all about your public urination bust two years ago in the southernmost town of the South Island. It might just as well have been the same cop.

The nature of the Beast Sarcasm being what it is, it was a little difficult to fully clearly comprehend if your student was saying "Right On, Brother! I Couldn't Agree More!" or if he was saying "Your blog pal is a Big Dope about these immigration issues. He probably never went to Kenmore College." (Guilty.)

Which isn't my demand for further clarification.

My only demand is that his wife's welcome to America be a good welcome in the spirit of my grandparents' and great-grandparents' welcome when they first encountered the Mother of Exiles. (Better if possible.)

And that ten years from now, there isn't a bitter taste in her mouth from America's welcome. Whatever she wants from America, if it can be achieved without firearms or predation, I hope she finds it, and having found it, I hope it makes her happy.

Bob

* * * * * * *

A beautiful, mournful, muy triste Woody Guthrie song:

tune by Martin Hoffman
(tempo: a waltz for a Mexican funeral)

DEPORTEE (PLANE WRECK AT LOS GATOS)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

CHORUS:

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

After a long creative dry spell, Woody heard of an incident in California that finally inspired him to write again. In January 1948, a plane full of Mexican migrant workers crashed over California's Los Gatos canyon. Woody noticed that their names were not even known to the reporters. One report said that the plane crash wasn't too bad because all the deceased (except for the pilot) were "just deportees." Hearing the report must have taken Woody back to earlier days when he was working in the fields and feeling the plight and the pain of the workers first hand. The result was one of his most beautiful, poignant songs called "Good-bye Juan," also titled "Deportees" and "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon." It was a beautiful song, but sadly it was Woody's only impressive piece of work in years; it later turned out to be his last great work.

-- from the Woodie Guthrie pages constructed and maintained by David J. Arkush.

The agreement of 1947 [between Mexico and the U.S.]... contained a novel provision which established amnesty through deportation. Under its terms, undocumented Mexicans who were sent back across the border could return to the U.S. as temporary contract laborers; during the life of their contracts, they could not be again deported. In practice, employers often called Border Patrol stations to report their own undocumented employees, who were returned, momentarily, to border cities in Mexico, where they signed labor contracts with the same employers who had denounced them. This process became known as "drying out wetbacks" or "storm and drag immigration." "Drying out" provided a deportation-proof source of cheap seasonal labor ...

-- Dick J. Reavis, "Without Documents," New York, 1978, p. 39