What should be done about illegal immigration?

While the exclusion laws have rendered practically nil the immigration from China, the immigration from Japan, though relatively not great has doubled in the last year. This increase is significant too, because it comes in the face of regulation adopted by the American Government, with the assent of Japan, which it was supposed would curtail the immigration of Japanese to this country very materially.

Commissioner Sargent presents official reports made by Inspectors sent to Mexico and Canada to study the situation with special reference to the coming of Japanese to America through these countries. The reports show that thousands of Japanese landed in Mexico during the last year and ultimately gained admission surreptitiously in to this country.

While the regulations concerning Japanese immigration have tended to reduce the number of regularly admitted immigrants, thousands of Japanese still are coming into the country by stealth.

How many other (than Chinese) Asians were illegal immigrants since 1906? I want to see you back up this claim?

- Japanese immigrants were called an "invasion" and were considered a threat to American culture (just like Hispanic immigrants are today).

- Japanese immigrants were accused of being unwilling or unable to assimilate (just like Hispanic immigrants are today).

- Japanese immigrants were accused stealing jobs, and bringing disease and crime (just like Hispanic immigrants are today).

There were even fearful claims that Japanese immigrants were going to change the face of California (sound familiar?) Of course this is coded now-- Hispanics are going to make California a "third world country" (I never heard "third world" used to refer to a color in any other context).

The World War II evacuation of Japanese farmers from the Pacific Coast caused a staggering labor shortage created by the U.S. Government itself, which then wrestled with forced transfer of confiscated farmlands to new “non-Japanese” owners and lessees. Most of the new “owners” were naturalized European immigrants, or Americans from the Dust Bowl region of the southern United States.

WRA photo No. A-66 taken in Penryn, California, November 10, 1942Nobumitsu Takahashi, agricultural coordinator for the Japanese-American Citizens League, warned, as internment began in 1942, that removal of the Japanese would disrupt the California vegetable industry. Japanese truck farmers, he said, produced crops valued at 40 million dollars annually and interned Japanese “stand to lose approximately 100 million dollars in investments” because of confiscation or forced sale by the U.S. Government.

The California Farm Bureau was quoted by The News, saying that Japanese farmers were responsible for 40 percent of all vegetables grown in the state, including nearly 100 percent of all tomatoes, celery, strawberries and peppers.

Lawrence Hewes, regional director of the Farm Security Administration, charged with confiscating or selling Japanese land holdings, said FSA field agents had registered 6000 farms totaling approximately 200,000 acres. The FSA received applications to acquire vacated farms from more than 2000 farmers. Hewes said more than 1000 Japanese farms, totaling 50,000 acres, were transferred to new owners during March 1942.

My main point is that anti-immigrant hatred (that once was directed toward Japanese people including your grandfather) hasn't changed much.

Thousands of fair minded and well meaning people who were biased and ignorant on the question of Japanese immigration have during the last year, entirely changed their views on the subject. They have learned the truth that the Japanese coolie is even a greater menace to the existence of the white race, to the progress and prosperity of our country than is the Chinese coolie.

But if there has been danger from Asiatic imigration to our state before, that danger has not lessened now.

On the contrary it has increased.

The great calamity which befell San Francisco will furnish the Orient with lurid tales of opportunity for employment and profit. California, the land of fabulous wealth, revenue and mountains of gold, and San Francisco with its wonderful wages will be exploited before the ignorant coolies until they will come in ship loads like an endless swarm of rats.

Why isn't Haiti like Jamaica or Barbados? Those places certainly have their problems, but they're not dystopian like Haiti.....

My guess is that Haiti's so screwed up because it wasn't colonized long enough. The ancestors of today's Haitians, like elsewhere in the Caribbean, experienced the dislocation of de-tribalization, which disrupted the natural ties of family and clan and ethnicity. They also suffered the brutality of sugar-plantation slavery, which was so deadly that the majority of slaves at the time of independence were African-born, because their predecessors hadn't lived long enough to reproduce.

But, unlike Jamaicans and Bajans and Guadeloupeans, et al., after experiencing the worst of tropical colonial slavery, the Haitians didn't stick around long enough to benefit from it. (Haiti became independent in 1804.). And by benefit I mean develop a local culture significantly shaped by the more-advanced civilization of the colonizers.

Hispanics are less likely to reelect President Bush if he supports amnesty.