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Mitt Romney’s Plan for the Suffering 12 Million
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By Llewellyn King I jumped on an airplane for London this week. I could do it because of something of inestimable value in my pocket: a passport. Most people take passports very much for granted, except those who have ever been without one. They know how confining it is to be without the right paperwork. They know what it's like to take the first step into the ghastly limbo of statelessness; a ghoulish existence outside of the law and its protections, outside of normal society, and outside of the right to earn a living. This sub-societal life, where at least 12 million people reside in the United States, is a place too far for Mitt Romney to comprehend. His immigration proposals have the irrationality of ignorance and the cruelty of those who are committed to not knowing. Evelyn Waugh, the British writer, talked about the morbid lack of curiosity of colonial settlers in Africa to the indigenous populations. Romney and his cohorts have a morbid lack of interest in the 12 million or so illegal immigrants who live on the fringes of our society, often doing its dirtiest work. Statistics never tell the story; in their way, they obfuscate it. They don't tell of decency, generosity, kindness and nobility or despair, hurt and suffering. They tell us that 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, but that is just a statistic. To comprehend the horror, you must walk around Auschwitz or some other camp to see where the deeds were done; to see the hair and shoes of the children; and to know, in my case, that these toddlers were my contemporaries. You have to extract the individual from the data, and look him or her in the eyes. Not for Romney and other Republican savants. For them, the 12 million are just people who have broken laws – laws they choose to treat as immutable. They are less than human and should be denied education, employment, medical treatment. These people live in the fear of being rounded up and deported, often to countries they don't know and sometimes where they don't speak the language. The children, a small minority of those who are here illegally, who the DREAM Act sought to help, are among those that the immigration fanatics would punish for a crime committed by their parents: wanting a better life. The sins of the fathers will be vested on the sons. The life of the illegal, the stateless person, is one of degradation, exposure to exploitation and fear. My late friend, Johnny Prokoff, who was a much-loved bartender at the National Press Club in Washington, used to tell his own life story of the vulnerability and suffering of the stateless. Prokoff left Lithuania at a time when there was so much poverty that there was a small industry in killing lice in garments with a hammer. The trick, he told me, was to kill the vermin without damaging the garment. It was a necessity induced by poverty. The young Prokoff stowed away on a ship and began a seven-year odyssey as the property of various ruthless captains. Sometimes they would demand sex, always they would make stowaways work, and never would they let them land on any shore. Also, they would sell them to other captains – slaves, in fact. Eventually, Prokoff jumped ship in Mexico, made his way to the United States, married an American and was able finally to live a legitimate life. Multiply him by 12 million. Some walked here, some came on visitors' visas and never left, and some were brought by lovers, parents or spouses. If they cannot find low-grade work as domestics, chicken-factory employees, dog washers, they must contemplate a life of crime or prostitution; creating a statistic that politicians can advertize to prove that these people are no good. I went through a period of not having a passport, although I had a green card. Other journalists romped around the world — I stayed at home. It's a violation that one doesn't forget. Tell the 12 million about Romney's cruel and innovative idea: self-deportation. Walk to where, Mitt? – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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The Danger Posed by ‘The Enemy Within’
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In a time of terrorism, the enemy within is the most pernicious.
He is the terrorist who can strike at any time. He is the good neighbor who harbors hate. He is he loner who craves to be part of something larger than his own life promises.
Most disturbingly, he is probably a third or fourth generation immigrant.
He is the lethal misfit.
He is also the unique product of the modern world: The immigrant who doesn’t assimilate into the society in which he lives, but connects with the world of his ancestors through technology. He may be a Nigerian youth living in London, Madrid, or Houston, but in his mind he lives in Nigeria because technology makes it possible to do so.
Britain is filled with pockets of immigrants who choose not to assimilate, enjoy the privileges of British society, and deny their nationality.
A few years ago I met a young woman in Doha, Qatar, who covered her head with a scarf and spoke with an English accent.
“Oh, you’re English,” I said, thinking we might talk about the old country.
Stiffly, she said, “I was born there, but I am an Arab.”
Before taking a job with Al Jazeera’s Web site in Doha, she had never been out of England. But psychologically, she had grown up in the Middle East and was indifferent to the culture and the people who had taken in her family and educated her with tax money. She closed her ears in school and opened them in her local mosque. She is typical of immigrant children from Houston to Rome and from Toronto to Sydney, alienated by their own intent, angry and vulnerable.
When America’s immigrants were pouring in through Ellis Island, N.Y., they were coming to a new life; and however hard, it was going to be an American life. Sentimentally, they might sing rebel Irish songs in Boston, dance the polka in St. Paul, Minn., and mix the marinara sauce in Hoboken, N.J., but the tickets that brought them here were one-way tickets. The only contact with the world they had left was by slow, sea-borne letters.
Now, with technology, all immigrants’ tickets to America are essentially roundtrip tickets. Immigrants no longer have to consider assimilation as a worthy or a necessary goal.
There are reasons of national unity to work against the Balkanization of America. However, the clear and present danger is from those likely to fall prey to the malicious excesses of politics or religion.
It is frightening that a wealthy young man from Nigeria, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, tried to blow up an inbound airliner on Christmas Day. But the home-grown rebel–like the five, middle-class young men who are now being held in Pakistan–is more concerning.
Gradually, screening of passengers will improve and the intelligence community will handle information better. In the meantime what are we, and other nations like Britain, to do about our citizens who hate the lands that have given them so much? Spy on our neighbors? Inform on our friends?
If we do those things, the enemy within will have won; and if we don’t, the enemy within may win with an act of terrorism. –For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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The lost art of debate — and other wordy topics
February 6th, 2012
Guests: Aram Bakshian, author and critic; Atul Singh, Fair Observer
Obama’s strengths and weaknesses; the Internet
January 23rd, 2012
Guests: Tim Farley, Sirius XM Radio; Adam Clayton Powell III, University of Southern California; Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Report
A discussion of Shirley’s book, “December 1941: 31 Days That Saved America and Changed the World”
January 16th, 2012
Guest Craig Shirley, author
World events as the U.S. elections get fully underway
January 9th, 2012
Guests Arnaud de Borchgrave, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Andrei Sitov, Itar-Tass; Al Leeds, The Washington Post
The Joys of Transportation
January 2nd, 2012
Guests Bill Gouse, Transportation Consultant – Originally Broadcast October 16, 2011