La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz for December 06, 2014

And this is important because…

Just ask any Native American about the benefits of unrestricted immigration.

A racist is a person who sees everything in terms of a persona race like most of my Mexican family and Laro.

Hmm…Would you say that those people who come here for a brief period of time to earn money are therefore not immigrants?

It’s a demonstration of the poor reasoning capacities of right-wing posters here that they didn’t actually get what Lalo was saying, or just couldn’t deal with it and so resorted to their usual talking points of, “Lalo’s a racist!” So, for those of you too dense to get it, Lalo is saying that by your very own logic, the lengths that Europeans went through to get to the Americas lo those many centuries ago, compared to the journeys most immigrants make today, make them at least as much, if not more, criminally-minded than folks crossing the border between Mexico and the US today. You can disagree with that argument, but that’s where it starts.

I might remind you that Native Americans also immigrated here.

Right you are. But arguably there weren’t any other humans around to take the Americas away from. Of course there have historically been conflicts between various indigenous American groups, tribes, and nations. But our present moment is defined by Europeans having come, largely (but not fully) wiped out the population in many parts of the Americas (the US and Argentina come to mind). And by systems overwhelmingly dominated by people of European continuing to control US society through historical advantages, discrimination, and downright systemic brutality.

Europeans from long ago were not breaking laws to get here.

Which laws are you referring to? Even the simple fact that many indigenous peoples actively fought European colonists to the Americas would imply that Europeans were, indeed, violating the laws of indigenous peoples here. Or do you just not count that?

So now you’re equating indigenous peoples to gangs? Is it your argument that laws must be put down in writing in a Western format to be laws? If so, I’d point out that it was this very European supremacist attitude that led to the genocidal takeover of US lands.

Specious argument – unless by “our present moment” you mean hundreds of years ago.

No, I mean our present moment is absolutely a product of what came before in history—and is very clearly so in the case of white-dominated systems that continue in the US today. It’s actually a well-established argument, one that is widely accepted by serious students and scholars of US history and contemporary society.

Right, we’re a nation of immigrants – LEGAL IMMIGRANTS!! But certain people don’t want to hear that part – like THE AMERICAN LEFT.

What, you don’t know the difference between an immigrant and a conquer?

“So now you’re equating indigenous peoples to gangs?”Talk about “dense.”This is an analogy.

Yes. An analogy that equates indigenous peoples to gangs.

If laws don’t exist in a tangible form so no one can read them, one can’t expect others to respect those laws.

So no preliterate societies had or have laws. Wow, that’s a really interesting view of human workings you’ve got there. Wonder where they came from then. Just magically popped up once folks started writing? Ever heard of oral traditions? Oh, and how about those indigenous American societies that did already have writing?

You do also realize, don’t you, that you’re making excuses on behalf of European colonialism and genocide?

If “present moment” can be defined by events of hundreds of years ago, then it can also be defined by ten thousand years ago, when there were no humans in the Americas.

It can, and it was. But we are much more able to trace what went on in the last several hundred years. And remember, there were active pogroms happening into the late 1800s and possibly to an extent even later. But hey, 120 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with today, right? Just think, indigenous Americans were almost completely wiped out in what’s now the US, and gee whillikers, they are now vastly outnumbered in their own lands. Millions of Africans were brought over to the US as slaves, and surprise surprise, there sure is a substantial population of African Americans. And on and on. So no, not a ridiculous argument at all, unless you’re of the mind that what happened yesterday can’t possibly have had any bearing on what happens today.

By that I meant that groups that simply live by their own codes do not have actual laws unless those laws are accessible to others in a tangible way.

How about those Europeans start by asking? Again, oral tradition was there, and it can be very highly systematized. But nah, that’d be too hard! Plus, those innocent Europeans might inconveniently find out that they in fact had no rights to the land they were coveting. (Of course it helped when European institutions declared indigenous Americans as alternately subhuman savages or effective minors, coming up with their own legal excuse to plunder the “new” lands.)

How about this? You know, maybe most Japanese people don’t understand German. Is it incumbent upon Germany to translate all their laws into Japanese to make sure a bunch of ‘em doesn’t come over and completely run amok? This is what your logic brings us to. Laws in German are not available to Japanese people in a tangible way, so they can have no expectation of Japanese people coming over and following those laws. Talk about a ridiculous argument.

Oh, and try to tell some cop or judge you were ignorant of a local law. You’ll find out very quickly they’ll have none of that argument.

Nice discussions. Like agrestic and Night-Gaunt, I was sincerely hoping to see some weighty arguments from sueamarlucan et. al. Unfortunately, most of the premises were vague and largely backed up by what I like to call “ad hominem defense.” One fun fact to add is that Columbus was sponsored by the architects of the Spanish Inquisition, which soon caused many Jews to emigrate to the New World, particularly Latin America. Though to be fair, while the actions of all three seem psychopathic by today’s standards, in their time they would have been considered progressive – even benevolent – in what they did to help lesser people.