Bold. Middle of the road. Too soft. The commentators were all rushing to label Bush's views on the immigration issue and his speech that he delivered on Monday night. I don't think it was any of those things, but I do think it was important and about time. National Guard on the border. Well, it makes me a little queasy on too many levels to name--let's just say I am not a big fan of that idea, but beyond that--not bad, Mr. President. And can I just say that I generally refer to him as a limp-brained, monosyllabic moron.
This issue is really important and it is not going away and it is not one-dimensional. And the president has acknowledged all of these things. And he did it from the Oval Office. This was the first time in his presidency that he has addressed the American public on a domestic issue from the Oval Office. It underscores the complexity and the urgency of this matter, and even with his dimishing poll numbers, with the moderate Republican Senators already on board with immigration reform, this may provide enough momentum for some remotely comprehensive bill to make it through both houses of Congress. I can only hope it does. And, though, I never thought I would actually be saying this, Thank you, Mr. Bush.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Checking back in
Wow. It has been two weeks since I last posted. I think I have been too overwelmed to focus in on one particular subject and compose a piece. Luckily, I am almost at the end of the school year, and that means that means freedom and time to think. On May 31st, I will leave for Spain with some of my students, and that is always good for my spirit and my inspiration. It recharges me. It reminds me who I am, why I teach, why I love language and culture, how cool it can be to just talk to and listen to kids, how you can meet new friends in the strangest places, how slowing down to enjoy a meal is civilized, how old and new together is beautiful, and how lucky I am.
Somehow, being at school day in and day out, beats so much out of me. There are so many competing demands and so many self-absorbed, self-important people to contend with, both students and faculty. One day, I will be free of that, too, and find a way to contribute to kids lives and expand their worlds outside of the confines of the school. I dream of it and slowly I am planning my escape...
Somehow, being at school day in and day out, beats so much out of me. There are so many competing demands and so many self-absorbed, self-important people to contend with, both students and faculty. One day, I will be free of that, too, and find a way to contribute to kids lives and expand their worlds outside of the confines of the school. I dream of it and slowly I am planning my escape...
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Immigration: Where do I really come down?
For a while I have been talking about immigration and in support of many illegal immigrants, but do I believe that anything goes? What are my non-negotiables? What do I concede to the right? Do I have anything in common with Lou Dobbs? Well, I do receive his updates!
Let's start at the beginning. I have been working directly with immigrant students in one way or another off and on since I was in high school and I have counted some of them as my best friends. I have been to their homes, met their families, know their struggles. Many have been here legally. Many have not. Some have come legally as students and then searched for ways to stay. Of course, even before I worked with and befriended immigrants, I was and still am a patriotic American who stands when the flag passes during the 4th of July parades, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I am one of those goodie two shoes who does what's right and tries to follow the rules. I tell the cashier when she has given me too much change. I believe in rules. I also believe in hard work, efficiency, justice and goodwill.
I have known many law-abiding, hard-working honest people who have been treated rudely and capriciously in U.S. embassies and consulates in Brazil when applying for visas. I know of people who would just like to come back and forth to the U.S., but are afraid they'll be denied a visa the next time on the whim of some consular clerk, so they decide they are better off staying. I know of hard-working honest people who have been jumping through hoops, taking off days from work and wading through mazes of paper work for years only to have something lost by our government and then told they were out of compliance. I have known wealthy, lazy, well-connected foreigners whose parents can pay for expensive undergraduate degrees in our nation's top universities who partied through college sniffing coke in the VIP rooms of the best dance clubs whose dads got them set up with some internship or job after graduation and can come and go at will from our country.
This country's whole immigration policy is a disgrace. The bureaucracy approaches and often surpasses the inefficiency of the third world government institutions with which I have had contact. Many people talk about coming here legally--in this day and age, for most perspective immigrants that is far more easily said than done.
Our borders? Porous at best. Our messages--mixed. Don't sneak in, but once you do, there is plenty of work and realistically, the government is going to turn a blind eye on those who employ you. Don't ask. Don't tell. What we don't know won't hurt us. We don't really want to make new homes more expensive or price lettuce out of the grocery budgets of the middle class, so we'll use the illegals as a tool against inflation.
In the last few weeks we have seen some crack-downs on major employers of illegals, in what we are assured is coincidental timing. How many years did it take for these companies to accumulate so many illegal workers?
In the meantime, who the hell is here with the honest, hard-working families, a few terrorists? Who knows? What a mess.
Let's start at the beginning. I have been working directly with immigrant students in one way or another off and on since I was in high school and I have counted some of them as my best friends. I have been to their homes, met their families, know their struggles. Many have been here legally. Many have not. Some have come legally as students and then searched for ways to stay. Of course, even before I worked with and befriended immigrants, I was and still am a patriotic American who stands when the flag passes during the 4th of July parades, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I am one of those goodie two shoes who does what's right and tries to follow the rules. I tell the cashier when she has given me too much change. I believe in rules. I also believe in hard work, efficiency, justice and goodwill.
I have known many law-abiding, hard-working honest people who have been treated rudely and capriciously in U.S. embassies and consulates in Brazil when applying for visas. I know of people who would just like to come back and forth to the U.S., but are afraid they'll be denied a visa the next time on the whim of some consular clerk, so they decide they are better off staying. I know of hard-working honest people who have been jumping through hoops, taking off days from work and wading through mazes of paper work for years only to have something lost by our government and then told they were out of compliance. I have known wealthy, lazy, well-connected foreigners whose parents can pay for expensive undergraduate degrees in our nation's top universities who partied through college sniffing coke in the VIP rooms of the best dance clubs whose dads got them set up with some internship or job after graduation and can come and go at will from our country.
This country's whole immigration policy is a disgrace. The bureaucracy approaches and often surpasses the inefficiency of the third world government institutions with which I have had contact. Many people talk about coming here legally--in this day and age, for most perspective immigrants that is far more easily said than done.
Our borders? Porous at best. Our messages--mixed. Don't sneak in, but once you do, there is plenty of work and realistically, the government is going to turn a blind eye on those who employ you. Don't ask. Don't tell. What we don't know won't hurt us. We don't really want to make new homes more expensive or price lettuce out of the grocery budgets of the middle class, so we'll use the illegals as a tool against inflation.
In the last few weeks we have seen some crack-downs on major employers of illegals, in what we are assured is coincidental timing. How many years did it take for these companies to accumulate so many illegal workers?
In the meantime, who the hell is here with the honest, hard-working families, a few terrorists? Who knows? What a mess.
- We need to enforce the borders--really.
- We need to know who is here.
- We need to stream-line the legal path to immigration.
- We need the legal process for both short and long-term visas to be transparent and fair.
- We need to wake-up to the fact that there are too many people here already to round up and deport en masse.
- We need to acknowledge the contribution that many of the illegals have made.
- We need to accept those who have been peaceably working or studying for a long period of time in this country and give them a chance to truly assimilate and be a full part of the nation.
- Once we have take these steps, we need to clamp down hard on those who employ illegals and who act as a magnet for their continuing arrivals.
The Hagel-Martinez compromise bill that was presented in the U.S. Senate is a good starting point. They would allow those illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for at least five years to pay a fine and back-taxes, show they have been working and agree to learn English to earn a spot at the back of the line towards becoming citizens. This gives them the incentive to really start to assimilate that leaving in limbo does not promote. Those who have been here for two to five years, must return to their countries and register to return. Those here fewer than two years will be sent back. We need some of these people and we need to know who they are. Otherwise we are in danger of having truly bad seeds among us. But no one has the time to weed through 12 million people to find them.
Of course, if you have been reading my blog for awhile you know I am most worried about those kids or young adults who were brought here as kids who have most of their ties and have had most of their education here in the United States. What would we be sending them back to when they didn't come here on their own to begin with? If we turned a blind-eye and created the environment in which their parents stayed here for years to labor cheaply for us, don't we have some sort of responsibility to them? They're kids. If they have been here fewer than two years, though it is difficult to be shuffled back and forth, it is not as traumatic or insurmountable a process of reacclimation.
I hope this is clear for you. I would like to thank one of my fellow teachers at Austin High School John Mast, for asking me some good questions. It led me to solidify my viewpoint here.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Latin American Left--Making a comeback?
Just out of college, I graduated in 1994, I ended up working in New York City at Banco de Galicia y Buenos Aires, an Argentine bank, on their trading floor. At the time, Emerging Markets, especially Latin American markets were hot, hot, hot. Communism was dead--except for Cuba. Privatization, after decades of protectionism and nationalized companies, was all the rage. Mario Vargas Llosa, the famed Peruvian author and failed presidential candidate had spoken on the superiority of capitalism and free markets at my graduation from Georgetown's School of Languages and Linguistics. I was reading Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War, by Jorge Castenada, one of Mexico's most important political scientists, discussing a decline in the left of the region and their search for a place in the new world order.
Well, it looks like the left is emerging again, but what form it will take is still up for grabs. The 90s did not save Latin America. The poor are still desperately poor. The privatizations were not always the most egalitarian of processes and in many cases rich insiders became the oligarchs of industries. Despite the arguments of brilliant authors, like Vargas Llosa, capitalism, like communism, was not a magic bullet. Now we have Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva in Brazil, a president who began his political career as a labor leader. Michelle Bachalet Jeria, recently made history with her win in Chile, becoming the nation's first woman president. She is described as a pro-business leftist. In Argentina, Nestor Carlos Kirchner, was elected following string of short-lived presidencies after the economic collapse of the country. As a young man, Kirchner was a radical leftist who fought against the military dictatorship and as president has shown disdain for the International Monetary Fund using it to his advantage to restructure the country's debt and improve the national economy. Also on the left, Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay, but the two most radical and well-known of the new left area Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Juan "Evo" Morales Aima of Bolivia.
Chavez, whose government and personality garnered a feature story in the April 2006 issue of National Geographic, has partnered with Fidel Castro to bring doctors and free health services to the poor, seized private lands for redistribution to the peasants and used the country's oil reserves and exports as a bargaining chip with countries like the United States. "Evo" Morales cut his teeth in politics as the head of the cocalero movement, a coalition of coca farmers opposed to the eradication of the coca crop by U.S. supported Bolivian governments. What may have put him over the top in elections was an on-going, public feud with U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Manuel Rocha. Anytime the U.S. representative had something negative to say about Morales or Morales against Rocha, he seemed to do even better in the polls. His election was as much a victory over American influence in the region as it was a victory over Morales' political opponents. His MAS party (Movimiento al socialismo) is anti-U.S. and anti-capitalism. Morales even dresses in a manner that demonstrates his disdain for the business driven capitalization that he rails against. Rather than a suit and tie, Evo sports a sweater made of alpaca wool, even when meeting with world leaders.
Morales and Chavez represent the most extreme left forms of government in Latin America. Other, like Brazil's Lula, though once quite radical himself, have adopted a pragmatic leftist leaning, but more centrist approach having reached office. Few expect Bachalet of Chile to be turning her country into a continental Cuba. Even Morales, who shunned the United States on his first international tour, visited with European leaders and the Chinese, as well has his comrades in Havana and Caracas on the trip. Obviously he is not unaware that business interests and investments have to be addressed if his government and his country are to succeed.
As former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardozo, himself a former left-leaning sociologist, said on Foreign Exchange this morning, globalization is here to stay. There are balances that need to be reached, but in the best cases, foreign investment opens up opportunities for both sides. And so the pendulum swings. Where it will eventually come to rest, is probably somewhere in the middle.
Well, it looks like the left is emerging again, but what form it will take is still up for grabs. The 90s did not save Latin America. The poor are still desperately poor. The privatizations were not always the most egalitarian of processes and in many cases rich insiders became the oligarchs of industries. Despite the arguments of brilliant authors, like Vargas Llosa, capitalism, like communism, was not a magic bullet. Now we have Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva in Brazil, a president who began his political career as a labor leader. Michelle Bachalet Jeria, recently made history with her win in Chile, becoming the nation's first woman president. She is described as a pro-business leftist. In Argentina, Nestor Carlos Kirchner, was elected following string of short-lived presidencies after the economic collapse of the country. As a young man, Kirchner was a radical leftist who fought against the military dictatorship and as president has shown disdain for the International Monetary Fund using it to his advantage to restructure the country's debt and improve the national economy. Also on the left, Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay, but the two most radical and well-known of the new left area Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Juan "Evo" Morales Aima of Bolivia.
Chavez, whose government and personality garnered a feature story in the April 2006 issue of National Geographic, has partnered with Fidel Castro to bring doctors and free health services to the poor, seized private lands for redistribution to the peasants and used the country's oil reserves and exports as a bargaining chip with countries like the United States. "Evo" Morales cut his teeth in politics as the head of the cocalero movement, a coalition of coca farmers opposed to the eradication of the coca crop by U.S. supported Bolivian governments. What may have put him over the top in elections was an on-going, public feud with U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Manuel Rocha. Anytime the U.S. representative had something negative to say about Morales or Morales against Rocha, he seemed to do even better in the polls. His election was as much a victory over American influence in the region as it was a victory over Morales' political opponents. His MAS party (Movimiento al socialismo) is anti-U.S. and anti-capitalism. Morales even dresses in a manner that demonstrates his disdain for the business driven capitalization that he rails against. Rather than a suit and tie, Evo sports a sweater made of alpaca wool, even when meeting with world leaders.
Morales and Chavez represent the most extreme left forms of government in Latin America. Other, like Brazil's Lula, though once quite radical himself, have adopted a pragmatic leftist leaning, but more centrist approach having reached office. Few expect Bachalet of Chile to be turning her country into a continental Cuba. Even Morales, who shunned the United States on his first international tour, visited with European leaders and the Chinese, as well has his comrades in Havana and Caracas on the trip. Obviously he is not unaware that business interests and investments have to be addressed if his government and his country are to succeed.
As former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardozo, himself a former left-leaning sociologist, said on Foreign Exchange this morning, globalization is here to stay. There are balances that need to be reached, but in the best cases, foreign investment opens up opportunities for both sides. And so the pendulum swings. Where it will eventually come to rest, is probably somewhere in the middle.
Here is a great quote I found on Wikipedia credited to now Bolivian president Evo Morales from his campaign for that office. His opponents from more traditional parties did not want to debate him, so he said referencing U.S. ambassador Rocha: "I prefer to argue with the owner of the circus, not with the clowns."
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
So what's the big deal with Rumsfeld?
Much has been made of the retired generals who have been calling for Rumsfeld's resignation. In the end, as Bush said yesterday, [Bush] is the "decider" when it boils down to the nitty-gritty. It is not Rumsfeld's War. He serves at the pleasure of the President. But, let's face it, Bush needs someone with new ideas, new perspective. Like Bush himself, the people with whom he surrounds himself are either loyal and persistent or stubborn and unable to admit mistakes, depending on your perspective. Even if you go with the former, is it a good idea to be loyal to something that doesn't work?
Rumsfeld needs to go. Bush needs fresh blood and in a bad way. Today I was listening to American Morning on CNN as I got ready for work, and I heard an interview with Major General Tom Wilkerson, retired. He was defending Rumsfeld. His main argument seemed to be that we need to stop harping on past mistakes and start dealing with the present situation. Besides, it is now up to the Iraqis to form their government and make things work, and the lack of progress on that front is not Rumsfeld's fault.
Okay, stop a minute. Let's think about this. First of all, I am sad to say that I have been right with about 90 percent of what has happened in Iraq since Bush started saber-rattling after 9-11. I kept wishing I would be wrong, but I wasn't. I kept hoping that these well-informed Bush administration officials knew better than me, a high school Spanish teacher, but alas, they didn't. Why, if the Secretary of Defense and this whole administration have made so many mistakes from day one, do we think they are the ones who will suddenly make all the right decisions from here on out? Hello?! We need fresh blood. Now.
And this notion that we are going to blame the Iraqis for the current problems, because they have not set up a workable government seems a bit like passing the buck. Of course, it is their country and they do need to have some responsibility in this situation, but let us not forget that they wrote their constitution and held elections on our timetable after we overthrew their government. Then we told them to set up a new one. Part of the reason that our democracy has endured (not without issues--remember that period from 1860 to 1864), is because it was formed from a home-grown revolution. It was our time. We decided. Forced democracy--talk about an oximoron.
So what's the big deal with Rumsfeld? He is the biggest, loudest, and I would argue, most arrogant symbol of what is wrong with this administration and its Iraq War policy. Please, show him the door.
Rumsfeld needs to go. Bush needs fresh blood and in a bad way. Today I was listening to American Morning on CNN as I got ready for work, and I heard an interview with Major General Tom Wilkerson, retired. He was defending Rumsfeld. His main argument seemed to be that we need to stop harping on past mistakes and start dealing with the present situation. Besides, it is now up to the Iraqis to form their government and make things work, and the lack of progress on that front is not Rumsfeld's fault.
Okay, stop a minute. Let's think about this. First of all, I am sad to say that I have been right with about 90 percent of what has happened in Iraq since Bush started saber-rattling after 9-11. I kept wishing I would be wrong, but I wasn't. I kept hoping that these well-informed Bush administration officials knew better than me, a high school Spanish teacher, but alas, they didn't. Why, if the Secretary of Defense and this whole administration have made so many mistakes from day one, do we think they are the ones who will suddenly make all the right decisions from here on out? Hello?! We need fresh blood. Now.
And this notion that we are going to blame the Iraqis for the current problems, because they have not set up a workable government seems a bit like passing the buck. Of course, it is their country and they do need to have some responsibility in this situation, but let us not forget that they wrote their constitution and held elections on our timetable after we overthrew their government. Then we told them to set up a new one. Part of the reason that our democracy has endured (not without issues--remember that period from 1860 to 1864), is because it was formed from a home-grown revolution. It was our time. We decided. Forced democracy--talk about an oximoron.
So what's the big deal with Rumsfeld? He is the biggest, loudest, and I would argue, most arrogant symbol of what is wrong with this administration and its Iraq War policy. Please, show him the door.
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