White Supremecists in the Army, Exploitation of Undocumented Immigrants, and Losses of Food Stamps to the Most Needy

Our country is struggles galore.

One of the scariest things I've read in a long time is this article on white supremecists in the US Army. People with tattoos of swastikas and other racist symbols are being encouraged to just "give an explanation" when they enlist. And, obviously, these groups are now having increased access to and recruitment success among psychologically vulnerable men and women in the US Armed Forces with expertise and training. One person in the article pointed out that this war is particularly conducive to recruitment for racist groups. "The military is attractive to white supremacists," Millard says, "because the war itself is racist."

The author of the article, Matt Kennard, tried posing as a potential Army recruit with racist tattoos, with interesting results:

In the spring, I telephoned at random five Army recruitment centers across the country. I said I was interested in joining up and mentioned that I had a pair of "SS bolts" tattooed on my arm. A 2000 military brochure stated that SS bolts were a tattoo image that should raise suspicions. But none of the recruiters reacted negatively, and when pressed directly about the tattoo, not one said it would be an outright problem. A recruiter in Houston was typical; he said he'd never heard of SS bolts and just encouraged me to come on in.

It's in the interest of recruiters to interpret recruiting standards loosely. If they fail to meet targets, based on the number of soldiers they enlist, they may have to attend a punitive counseling session, and it could hurt any chance for promotion. When, in 2005, the Army relaxed regulations on non-extremist tattoos, such as body art covering the hands, neck and face, this cut recruiters even more slack.

In other news, three men were arrested for posing as Christian pastors and promising hundreds of undocumented immigrants that they would get them green cards for a fee of anywhere between $6,000-$10,000 per person. Without reform to our incredibly flawed system of course already-vulnerable undocumented immigrants trying to make a living are going to continue to be exploited and taken advantage of by individuals eager to make a buck. I also think it is interesting that the NYTimes focuses on this case but makes no mention of comparable exploitation going on elsewhere every day, primarily by major corporations. (read the full article here)

Also, Obama's stimulus package cut food stamps for some of the most needy, the Huffington Post reported last week. They write,

Under the economic recovery plan, laid-off workers have seen a $25 weekly bump in their unemployment checks as part of a broad expansion of benefits for the poor. But the law did not raise the income cap for food stamp eligibility, so the extra money has pushed some people over the limit.

Laid-off workers and state officials are only now realizing the quirk, a consequence of pushing a $787 billion, 400-page bill through Congress and into law in three weeks.

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What a mess.

Illegal Mines in the West Bank

The BBC reported yesterday that a human rights group in Israel,
Yesh Din (translatable as "There is a judge" or "there is justice" is calling for Israel
to stop mining in the occupied territories.
From the BBC:

Yesh Din cites military documents which show nine million of the 12 million tonnes of rock and gravel mined in the West Bank each year are sold in Israel - and says Israel is "addicted to the exploitation".

It says its High Court petition addresses "the illegal practice of brutal economic exploitation of a conquered territory to serve the exclusive economic needs of the occupying power".

"According to international law, this kind of activity is a violation of occupation laws as well as of human rights laws and, in certain cases, might be defined as pillage," says the petition.

Undocumented Immigration 101

So here's the basic situation as I understand it
The U.S. government has historically:
- manipulated governments and trade in the region,
- exploited opportunities to use land and bodies from south of the border
- criminalized the bodies that cross the border because of the incentives that big business (supported by the same government) provides for crossing
- accepted taxes from these individuals (for more click here) and
- allowed the U.S. economy to benefit from these workers while simultaneously
- incarcerating, detaining, and deporting any undocumented workers they find

The NYT reported today that undocumented immigrants are actually rebuilding New Orleans for us.. and then being mugged and attacked in the streets. For the full article click here

As Tom Barry writes in Dollars and Sense,

"The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 drastically altered the traditional political economy of immigration. The millions of undocumented immigrants—those who crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas—who were living and working in the United States were no longer simply regarded as a shadow population or as surplus cheap labor. In the public and policy debate, immigrants were increasingly defined as threats to the nation’s security. Categorizing immigrants as national security threats gave the government’s flailing immigration law-enforcement and border- control operations a new unifying logic that has propelled the immigrant crackdown forward.

Responsibility for immigration law-enforcement and border control passed from the Justice Department to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In Congress Democrats and Republicans alike readily supported a vast expansion of the country’s immigration control apparatus—doubling the number of Border Patrol agents and authorizing a tripling of immigrant prison beds.

Today, after the shift in the immigration debate, the $15 billion-plus DHS budget for immigration affairs has fueled an immigrant-crackdown economy that has greatly boosted the already-bloated prison industry. Even now, with the economy imploding, immigrants are currently behind one of the country’s most profitable industries: they are the nation’s fastest growing sector of the U.S. prison population.

Across the country new prisons are hurriedly being constructed to house the hundreds of thousands of immigrants caught each year. State and local governments are vying with each other to attract new immigrant prisons as the foundation of their rural “economic development” plans.

While DHS is driving immigrants from their jobs and homes, U.S. firms in the business of providing prison beds are raking in record profits from the immigrant crackdown. Although only one piece of the broader story of immigration, it’s all a part of the new political economy of immigration."

Click here for the full article The New Political Economy of Immigration