{"id":797,"date":"2013-02-10T02:30:36","date_gmt":"2013-02-10T02:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mmaluff.com\/?p=797"},"modified":"2021-08-20T16:56:01","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T21:56:01","slug":"obamas-hopeful-rhetoric-in-new-immigration-proposal-fails-to-hide-dark-history-of-deportation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2013\/02\/10\/obamas-hopeful-rhetoric-in-new-immigration-proposal-fails-to-hide-dark-history-of-deportation\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama\u2019s hopeful rhetoric in new immigration proposal fails to hide dark history of deportation"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post first appeared on\u00a0<\/em>The Protest<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last Tuesday President Obama gave a much anticipated speech on immigration reform. His words were typical of what we\u2019ve come to expect of his post-2008 persona; uninspired calls for \u201ccompromise\u201d and \u201cbipartisanship,\u201d increased deportations for the many, and a \u201cpath to citizenship\u201d for the few.<\/p>\n

He began the speech with a clich\u00e9, feel-good story about United States history. \u201cWe define ourselves as a nation of immigrants. That\u2019s who we are\u2014in our bones.\u201d Apparently that\u2019s what they call white supremacist settler-colonial projects nowadays: \u201cnations of immigrants.\u201d I\u2019m guessing the millions of Native Americans who died to make room for this country might call it something different, as highlighted by the Native American and Indigenous Student Alliance\u2019s\u00a0campaign to get Northwestern to recognize the genocidal legacy of our university\u2019s founder<\/a>. As would likely the slaves who were forced into nation-building to the service of America\u2019s master race.<\/p>\n

But I suppose a little factual inaccuracy isn\u2019t too bad, so long as it\u2019s part of an attempt to build a political movement to bring positive change to this country. If there\u2019s one thing Obama got right in his speech is that the US immigration system is \u201cbadly broken,\u201d and this change cannot come soon enough. The real problem is that Obama has no intention of fixing it, as made clear by the \u2018accomplishments\u2019 he touted and his proposals for the future.<\/p>\n

Among his \u201csteps to patch up some of the worst cracks in our system\u201d he cites increased border security, record deportations of \u201ccriminals,\u201d and \u201c[taking] up the cause of the DREAMers.\u201d Of course, he doesn\u2019t mention that there were also record deportations of non-criminals. In fact, \u201cabout 45 per cent of the roughly 410,000 people the United States deported in 2012 had not been convicted of felonies or misdemeanors.<\/em><\/a>\u201d And while his\u00a0concessions to the DREAMers are a welcome step, they only help a small proportion of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.<\/a><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s great promise from the years to come is, basically, more of the same. He says \u201cwe need to stay focused on enforcement.\u201d More border security, more background checks, \u201ccracking down more forcefully on businesses that knowingly hire undocumented workers.\u201d He even wants a draconian national system to allow businesses to identify anyone\u2019s employment status. And for a select few, the nice middle class immigrants, the people who can survive \u201ca process that includes passing a background check, paying taxes, paying a penalty, learning English, and then going to the back of the line, behind all the folks who are trying to come here legally,\u201d\u00a0maybe<\/em>\u00a0they\u2019ll get to stick around.<\/p>\n

Someone who\u2019s still trying to believe in Obama\u2019s message might ask, \u201cIf they\u2019ll crack down on businesses that employ undocumented immigrants, and the path to citizenship will be long and arduous, what will undocumented immigrants do to survive in the meantime?\u201d Perhaps the hope is that they\u2019ll just leave:\u00a0self-deportation<\/em><\/a>, Democrat-style. But really, his comments were so vague that anyone\u2019s guess is as good as mine as to how he really thinks the process will look like. Only one thing is clear: enforcement comes first, we\u2019ll worry about human rights when all the baddies are deported and the border is hermetically sealed.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s combination of pretty stories about immigrants and cute phrases on how much they contribute to society, juxtaposed with his harsh rhetoric of enforcement and deportation, tells a particularly dark tale of Obama\u2019s views on immigrants. We can only conclude from his words that those who can\u2019t go through his careful process of sieving do\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0contribute to society, that they\u2019re somehow a burden on the rest of us, making our lives harder by the mere fact that they lack a piece of paper.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s become quite clear by now that we cannot count on Obama to come from on\u00a0high to save the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free right here in\u00a0the US of A. Only a broad movement for immigrant rights, independent of the\u00a0Democratic Party\u2019s chains, can bring about the change we really need: a moratorium on\u00a0deportations, and a path to citizenship for all peoples who have built their lives in thiscountry, even when they aren\u2019t \u201cforeign entrepreneurs\u201d coming to join America\u2019s great\u00a0multicultural ruling class. Whether that movement will materialize is up to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post first appeared on\u00a0The Protest. Last Tuesday President Obama gave a much anticipated speech on immigration reform. His words were typical of what we\u2019ve come to expect of his post-2008 persona; uninspired calls for \u201ccompromise\u201d and \u201cbipartisanship,\u201d increased deportations for the many, and a \u201cpath to citizenship\u201d for the few. He began the speech … Continue reading “Obama\u2019s hopeful rhetoric in new immigration proposal fails to hide dark history of deportation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[104,105,72,75],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-immigration","tag-obama","tag-politics","tag-racism"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3A68f-cR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":745,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2013\/05\/07\/cultural-appropriation-or-why-cant-i-wear-a-sombrero\/","url_meta":{"origin":797,"position":0},"title":"Cultural Appropriation, or: Why can’t I wear a sombrero?","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"May 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This post was written for\u00a0The Protest. If you're a Northwestern student, you've probably received an email from ASG and Alianza calling for a \"respectful celebration of Cinco de Mayo.\" The letter explained what the date actually means to Mexicans, and among other things, contained the following statement: Unfortunately, instead of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"HA1194350","src":"https:\/\/foreignersview.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/ha1194350.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":535,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/09\/10\/the-chicago-teachers-union-a-new-hope-for-public-education-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":797,"position":1},"title":"The Chicago Teachers Union: A New Hope for Public Education","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"September 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Credit to Miriam of brutereason.net for giving me the idea for this post. Watch for it as a guest-post there later today. Will also show up on the-protest.com and marooned on the subway. After months of deadlocked negotiations with the Chicago Public Schools Board of Education, the 26,000 members of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/foreignersview.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/09\/564665_10151002519021436_1062329344_n.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":507,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/07\/08\/what-went-wrong-in-paraguay\/","url_meta":{"origin":797,"position":2},"title":"What Went Wrong in Paraguay?","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"July 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This article was originally posted on The Protest. It's a rough translation of the original in Spanish, with an expanded background and English language references. As you may have heard, Paraguay's leftist president Fernando Lugo was impeached a couple of weeks ago, on June 22. Our parliament charged him with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/7\/7f\/Fernando_Lugo_Mendez_%28copyred%29.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2011\/04\/05\/democratic-countries-dont-go-to-war-with-each-other\/","url_meta":{"origin":797,"position":3},"title":"Democratic countries don’t go to war with each other?","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"April 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This morning I was thinking about a conversation I had with a friend over the last winter break when I was visiting my old school in Vancouver Island (I'll talk more about it later since it deserves at least a whole post), in which we were talking about sciences and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":832,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2013\/05\/29\/day-to-day-college-life-under-capitalism\/","url_meta":{"origin":797,"position":4},"title":"Day-to-day College Life Under Capitalism","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"May 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the text of a speech I gave for a panel titled \"The University under Capitalism,\" featuring Noah Charles, Moira Geary, N S, and myself. You can listen to the whole panel on We Are Many. Obviously the text is not identical to the talk. Noah has talked about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":587,"url":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/2012\/10\/02\/capitalism-is-failing-socialism-is-the-alternative\/","url_meta":{"origin":797,"position":5},"title":"Capitalism is failing: Socialism is the alternative.","author":"Mauricio Maluff Masi","date":"October 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the text of a speech I gave today in the first public forum of the International Socialist Organization at Northwestern. I publish it here in case anyone wants to check my sources or give a closer reading to something I said. The past four years have been devastating\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1061,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions\/1061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmaluff.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}