Tom Tancredo

Step back for a second and marvel at the fact that this man is running for President of the United States on a major-party ticket and no one is batting an eye:



Pretty scary, if you ask me.

Borders

From the New York Times, a story on the newly redesigned citizenship test:

Federal immigration authorities yesterday unveiled 100 new questions immigrants will have to study to pass a civics test to become naturalized American citizens.

The redesign of the test, the first since it was created in 1986 as a standardized examination, follows years of criticism in which conservatives said the test was too easy and immigrant advocates said it was too hard.

The new questions did little to quell that debate among many immigrant groups, who complained that the citizenship test would become even more daunting. Conservatives seemed to be more satisfied.

Imagine my surprise.

I was thinking about going into a diatribe about the test itself - it's available as a PDF at the link - but I think I'll limit that part and take it a different direction. In a second, anyway. First:

72. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s.
▪ War of 1812
▪ Mexican-American War
▪ Civil War
▪ Spanish-American War

78. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1900s.*
▪ World War I
▪ World War II
▪ Korean War
▪ Vietnam War
▪ (Persian) Gulf War

Funny how Mexico is the only country from the Western Hemisphere to make these lists. I could name a few others. I'll grant that most of the things I am thinking of are not wars, but U.S. interventions or occupations - but still. For a more complete list, see this Wikipedia article.

Anyway, on to my larger point: The citizenship test is pretty bogus. While the questions seem roughly at the level of a high school government class, that could have an interesting result:

“People who take this seriously will have a good chance of passing,” said Gary Gerstle, a professor of American history at Vanderbilt University. “Indeed, their knowledge of American history may even exceed the knowledge of millions of American-born citizens.”

On the other hand, the test would seem rather ludicrous if it was designed at the functioning level of most U.S. citizens, wouldn't it?

So there's some tension there, between designing a test on the merits and designing a test based on the average knowledge level of the population the immigrant in question is entering. I think one could make a good argument that there's a double standard present here.

But that's still not my main point. Mostly, I think the test is bogus because I think the idea of national citizenship is kind of bogus. Lines on a map are arbitrary, and using violence to prevent people from crossing those lines strikes me as immoral. Also, the idea that someone is more valuable because they are a citizen of a particular country? Pretty baseless.

In Which I Fail To Understand the World Yet Again

From Pandagon, some fucked-up shit:

ATLANTA — Emelina Ramirez called police to tell them her roommates were attacking her, punching and kicking her in the stomach. When the police arrived, they handcuffed her, took her to jail and ran her fingerprints through a federal database. She is now in an Alabama cell awaiting deportation.

Did they check and see if she was OK first? I could find no evidence in the story the police did. And it gets better:

Ramirez, 30, was three months' pregnant in June when, she says, her roommates attacked her. The Carrollton police officer who arrested her did not speak Spanish. He charged her with simple battery and took her to jail.

Justice, my ass. This looks like a really screwed-up sense of priorities to me: Racism and faux "national security" over the health of a pregnant woman.

But it gets better still. From Xicanopwr:

After further investigation, it seems like this is the case for Emelina. According to an old Google cache from Congress.org, from Congress.org, it appears that she was previously married to an US Citizen who abused her. Ironically, her former husband happens to be police officer. During their marriage, they never had her immigration status adjusted. The marriage ended in a divorce because he was an abusive towards her. Since her divorce, she is still stigmatized and branded as an “illegal.”

Yup. Racism in the United States is a thing of the past. Just like patriarchy.

Turns out that the original police officer is acting under a new Georgia law that instructs local officers to enforce federal immigration laws. That makes this institutionalized injustice rather than just personal.

And don't go pulling that "but she is illegal!" crap. She's still a human being, and if that doesn't trump her location on this planet, then you've got some thinking to do.