Immigration Debate

[e_dog]

www.democracynow.org

Fri. May 19th 2006


AMY GOODMAN: It's very good to have you with us. Let's start where we left off in headlines, and that's the issue of immigration. How do you see, as you look from the south to the United States in the north, the issue of the wall, the issue of the treatment of immigrants in this country?

EDUARDO GALEANO: It's a sad story. A daily sad story. I wonder if our time will be remembered as a period, a terrible period in human history, in which money was free to go and come and come back and go again. But people, not.

AMY GOODMAN: You wrote about immigration in your new book Voices of Time.

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes. There are some stories about it.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you read an excerpt?

EDUARDO GALEANO: One of them, which is quite short. It's a document on history. Scientific. Pure science. Objective. There is a religion of objectivity here, so I respect it. And this is -- you’ll see, you’ll see. “Christopher Columbus couldn't discover America, because he didn't have a visa or even a passport.

“Pedro Alvares Cabral couldn't get off the boat in Brazil, because he might have been carrying smallpox, measles, the flu or other foreign plagues.

“Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro never even began the conquest of Mexico and Peru, because they didn't have working papers.

“Pedro de Alvarado was turned away from Guatemala, and Pedro de Valdivia couldn't even enter Chile, because they didn't bring proof of a clean record.

“And the Mayflower pilgrims were sent back to sea from the coast of Massachusetts: the immigration quotas were full.”

AMY GOODMAN: Eduardo Galeano, reading from his new book Voices of Time: A Life in Stories.

[stilltrucking]

Yeah it is a good thing Columbus made it
We had been waiting a long time for Syphilis to get here.

Interesting book called , Guns Steel and Germs

Borders are a festing sores on the earth's skin.
We draw them with blood



Only the Mexicans are detained
No body talks about how the OTM's got here
Walked through a thousand miles or more of Mexico and nobody noticed.

I heard the mexican police are selling maps to the immigrants.

Will there be a solution as long as the sytem works so well for Mexico? Billions sent back to the old country by the immigrants.

"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
We make out pretty good with the illegals too. They pay taxes for services they can't get, Social Security too. The myth is they are a drain on the tax payer, I don't think that is true.

[e_dog]

to clarify, i don't think Galeano is saying that the history ofd conquistadors is a demonstration of the good value of open borders, he's pointing out the utter hypocrisy of white or European-ancestry anti-immigration politics.

[stilltrucking]

I know e-dog and you are right but-
My mind drips sarcasm
I was born under a bad sire
I am a cynical son of a bitch
I think it is an ill wind that blows no good
If it can blow Iraq off the front pages
Yes it is a problem
After we correct this problem we can move on to even more serious issues like gay marriage and flag burning
and

the more decadent a society the more laws there are

Mangled quote from memory-(Tacitus?)