Bloggings: Where is the outrage? Where are the demonstrations? Where are the protests against America's treatment of minority immigrants? By Roger Algase

For the past week or more, America's airwaves, TV screens and newspapers have been filled with justified outrage against the failure of law enforcement to take action against the killer of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager in Florida. There have been many demonstrations and protests, and most other news items have been pushed to the background. Indeed, there has been so much media publicity over the case that if the killer, George Zimmerman, is ever actually arrested and charged, his lawyers will undoubtedly claim inability to receive a fair trial in any part of the US as a defense.

The killing, with apparent impunity, of a young man who, based on information that has been released so far, committed no offense other than the "crime" of being black, is without doubt, a terrible indictment of racial attitudes in 21st Century America. However, there is another ongoing racial injustice in America, one that affects many more people. It is one that has caused the deaths of dozens immigrants in detention facilities and thousands of people at the Mexican border.

Using America's immigration laws as a weapon against brown skinned people from every part of the world has broken up thousands of American families, forced tens or hundreds of thousands of people to submit to being rounded up like animals, locked up in inhuman conditions and, in places such as Maricopa County, Arizona and many others, to be humiliated and treated with deliberate sadism. It has created fear and terror in minority communities in every part of this country, but especially in states such as Alabama and Arizona. Above all, it has resulted in the deportation of as many as 400,000 brown- skinned immigrants each year by a brown -skinned president who claims to be sympathetic to the very people whom he is locking up and kicking out of America.

It has also resulted in promises by all of President Obama's Republican opponents, especially Mitt Romney, the most likely GOP presidential candidate, to take even harsher action against Hispanic and other non-white immigrants, unless they "deport themselves". If he is elected president, every state in the union will be free to become its own Alabama, Arizona, or South Carolina toward immigrants. An even more draconian law, one modeled after H.R. 3447, passed by the Republican House of Representatives in late 2005, could easily become the law of the land.

For those with short memories, one of the provisions of H.R. 3447 would have made even the most trivial and technical immigration infraction, such as walking outside one's home without carrying one's alien registration card, a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Giving any "assistance" to an unauthorized immigrant (religious counseling? legal advice? medical treatment?) would also have been a federal felony with the same punishment.

By all means, let there be more protests, demonstrations, and expressions of outrage until justice is done in the Trayvon Martin case. But where are the protests, the demonstrations and the outrage over America's treatment of minority immigrants?

Comments

[Matthew Kolken]

ooops.. forgot the link: http://blogs.ilw.com/deportationandremoval/2012/03/on-the-immigration-front-the-lesser-of-two-evils-is-still-evil.html

[Matthew Kolken]

I posted my response here. Please feel free to chime in!

[Roger Algase]

I am not at all against Matt's assessment of the situation. But in order to prevent even worse abuses, perhaps unimaginably worse ones, from taking place under a Republican administration (and by the way, the last one was also guilty of horrible abuses of people in immigration detention - the Washington Post had a series of articles on this), we still have no choice but to re-elect Obama - and then send him to The Hague after he completes his second term!

Where, with all due respect, I have to part company with Matt, who is a great lawyer and a passionate fighter for justice, is in his assessment of my reasons for supporting Obama for re-election. it is not because he is a Democrat. Yes, I have usually voted Democratic, beginning with JFK in 1960, but I am not attached to party labels.

However, anyone who thinks that it doesn't matter which party wins this fall as far as immigration is concerned is just kidding himself or herself. Go back and read H.R. 3447 and the Alabama immigration law. Look at the videos or news reports of Mitt Romney's campaigning together with Kris Kobach.

Look at which party is desperate to take the vote away from Hispanic US citizens. Are abuses in immigration detention centers going to get any better if the Republicans take over in the fall? Of course not. It may just be harder to get information about them.

But we can be sure that there will be even more people, many more, in those centers waiting to be abused if the Republicans win this fall, at least according to the statements that all of their presidential candidates have made. And I am not even mentioning Joe Arpaio, who will be back in business big time with his raids, roundups, two meals a day and pink underwear i public for inmates. if the Republicans win. Doesn't he also belong in The Hague?

Matt is focused the present, and he is absolutely right. But we also have to focus on the future, especially when there are so many unmistakable signs of what it wold have in store for immigration under a Republican president and Congress. We might wish to close our eyes to that, in justified anger, disgust and outrage against the current administration. But we had better keep our eyes open, if we want to avoid something even worse - much worse.

[Matthew Kolken]

The "professional left" doesn't protest against a President with a D after his name, regardless of how many human rights violations their administration commits. This is especially so when the victims of abuse, rape, and torture can't vote in November.