Tag Archives: immigration

Proposals: Delegates to Congress from Native American Tribes and from Americans Abroad

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I have two ideas for better representation in Congress:

A Delegate for Native American Tribes

For several years, the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetowah Band of Cherokee Indians have both pursued the goal of sending a delegate to the U.S. House. The Treaty of Hopewell (1785) and Treaty of New Echota (1835), signed between the Cherokee and the United States, promised a delegate for the Cherokee to Congress, but it was never acted upon until Cherokee Nation President Chuck Hoskins appointed activist Kimberly Teehee as a delegate in 2019. Despite this appointment, Teehee has not yet been seated in any session of Congress.

Similarly, the Choctaw Nation, who received a promise for a delegate in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830), has never pursued sending a delegate, although the nation did send an ambassador to represent them before the general U.S. government throughout the 19th century. The Lenape Delaware Nation also signed a Treaty of Fort Pitt (1778) with the U.S. government, which encouraged them to form a state that would have representation in Congress, but never pursued either idea.

The issue here is that if the Cherokee (which are split between three tribes) and Choctaw deserve representation, that still leaves over 570 tribes which did not receive such a promise and do not have representation in Congress.

Their political concerns may be better represented by an at-large delegate who is popularly elected by enrolled voters from all the federally-recognized tribes in U.S. territory.

This idea, which may either provide for at-large or perhaps at least two districts on either side of the United States, more equitably support the representation of Native Americans in the federal level of government beyond the bounds of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The idea also passes the smell test of the 14th Amendment, as this would be limited only to enrollees of sovereign nations within the United States, including the 1 million who reside on reservations.

A Delegate for Americans Abroad

More countries in the 21st century, including France, Italy, Tunisia and more, have created electoral districts or reserved seats in their national parliaments to allow citizens who live abroad to vote for their own member/representative. This is often a recognition of the diasporas of citizens who keep their nationality and citizenship even as they live abroad for a long duration of time.

As of 2016, there were at least 4.8 million U.S. citizens who live abroad, including Armed Forces personnel, diplomats, businesspeople, expats, their families, and even accidental Americans who were born on U.S. soil to temporary workers or tourists but who have been raised for most of their lives in another country.

Suffrage for U.S. citizens has greatly increased since 1986, when the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) was passed. But what overseas U.S. voters are allowed to vote on varies between their state of formal residence, with some only allowing them to vote in federal elections, or some states barring their overseas residents from voting in any election if they have never resided in their formal state of residence.

Furthermore, expecting all overseas Americans to know about the candidates who are running for office on home soil is a tall order.

At the very least, those Americans who reside abroad should have more competent federal representation in Congress from U.S.-citizen candidates who may also reside closer to or on the same continent as themselves and share similar concerns as other U.S. expats.

Similar to France, this arrangement could create more than one district, but that may get into the weeds of reapportionment and how to draw lines to ensure equal population in order to comply with law, at least unless this delegation is exempted from the equal population requirement.

Finally, creating an overseas constituency for one’s parliament is an example of projecting soft power to a country’s diaspora which goes beyond just mere diplomacy, business networking or cultural promotion:

  • It creates a “legislator-diplomat” who liaises and and advocates for policy between the home country and its citizens in other countries, albeit more in the legislative branch more than in the executive.
  • If a foreign ministry executes the policies developed in the legislative branch which impact overseas citizens, it stands to reason that overseas citizens ought to have a direct say in the legislative branch.
  • Even when the policies from the legislative branch don’t directly affect foreign policy, overseas citizens also have an interest in domestic policies of a country to which they may return at some point for as long as they keep their citizenship.

Immigration and Democracy

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Immigration is always someone else’s problem which should not be in x backyard.

Maybe our system of nation-states, of republics and federations and parliamentary governments, is not scalable to the faster pace of human migration and communication, nor is it adequately responsive to the issue of external perception of a nation-state, nor is it responsive to how politics within and outside of the nation-state is increasingly defying the left-right spectrum.

The republican nation-state as it is currently conceived needs to be succeeded with something better. Small-r republican rule is still dominated by zero-sum, power-scarce thinking, by demographic anxieties.

Democracy, as it stands right now, privileges the in-group over the out-group, no matter how the out-group may be affected by the in-group’s actions.

We need something better, more scalable than any democratic republic which currently exists.

Integration Under “jus soli” Citizenship

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Countries with jus soli citizenship and separation of religion and state are more capable of integrating and assimilating people of 1) similar religion and 2) similar skin color.

Such worked to the advantage of Lebanese Christians who moved from the Ottoman Empire to American countries such as Brazil. Brazil, which once emphasized a “Blanqueamento” policy of “whitening” the population through subsidized European migration, has the largest Arab population outside of the Arab World, with a Lebanese-descended population larger than that of modern-day Lebanon itself.

Due to the lack of Jim Crow-style apartheid, Brazilian whiteness was made more expansive to include those “white enough” (and Christian enough) to be integrated. Masses of Mediterranean Christian Arabs fit the bill for Portuguese-descended Catholic Brazilians in a way that masses of Mediterranean Muslim Arabs or even the long-resident descendants of African slaves could not.

It took longer for the historically-Protestant United States to fully welcome Catholics, let alone Catholics who were a darker shade of “White”, into the U.S. melting pot. The latter still face a great deal of hostility.

This has me wondering if, in a pluralistic society, it’s not enough to merely have 1) separation of religion and state + 2) jus soli citizenship. Those principles already allow for whiteness in countries like Brazil and the U.S. to be more expansive than they’ve been in the past, but not enough to reduce hostility against people from non-Christian or majority-darker-skinned societies.

More open policies for putting government above the privileges of skin color and religion would allow for better social integration of immigrants.

Closing Borders Until Nothing’s Left

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Wealthier countries close their borders against each other and rigidize themselves against lower-GDP nations, when it wasn’t that long ago that folks from the second smallest continent fled their poverty for the “Terra nullius” of the Americas, South Africa and Australasia (only to run over the aboriginal peoples of both landforms in the process).

Too bad that there aren’t many other places in the world where the “huddled masses” can go to “breathe free”. There is no Terra nullius to which the “wretched refuse” of color can find the sort of liberty which White European settlers once found in abundance, at least without stepping on the heads of those who are already resident.

Oh, and let’s not forget that our aggravation of climate change threatens to mess things up a bit for a while for everyone.

If nativist nationalists and their tightened borders/fences/walls are to prevail at some point, where can the migrant turn? Virtual worlds? Antarctica? Deserts? Mass suicide?

Racism Against African Immigrants in Australia

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Good morning.

I’m reading about another African diaspora community in Australia which is being jolted by news of a store sign in Melbourne saying “no 14-18yo blacks or dogs allowed”. Most of the comments under articles about this sign either excuse the sign or shift the blame on Black teens.

The African-descended communities in Australia are entirely voluntary immigrants, mostly from Africa and some from the Americas. Generational slavery’s traumas (as manifested in the Americas) play far less of a role here in the lower economic strata of Afro-Australians, since chattel slavery in Australia did not involve Africans.

But these “black teens” who are turning to gangs like Apex in Melbourne are mostly of Somali and South Sudanese descent – two nationalities deeply impacted by decades of war, poverty and illiteracy in their homelands. Those factors are often a major predictor for the lack of financial or educational empowerment among many immigrant communities.

A leader of the Apex gang – interviewed here by the Daily Mail Australia – mentions some of the additional misfortunes which drive these teens to seek the comfort of drugs and gang relationships. Chief among them are family breakups, school bullying and chronic joblessness.

A similar cyclical recipe for a rise in gang affiliation can be found in any other immigrant community under similar circumstances anywhere in the world, whether it’s Chicago, Paris, Toronto or Miami.

Unfortunately, its a lot more difficult for Black mediocrity to get a pass in a predominately White European-descended, high-income developed society like Australia, even if chattel slavery is not a factor in how any living Australian citizen gained that nationality. Nothing less than “model minority behavior” is expected of non-White, non-Christian immigrants: skilled, educated, white-collar professional.

And it’s hard to exemplify that behavior when you’re a young person from a war-torn, impoverished, malnourished country like South Sudan.

While we’re getting our schadenfreude on about the Trump supporter’s husband being deported, other Trump supporters remain vocally resentful and spiteful against the husband for not going through the immigration process.

Because 10 years is, in their view, “plenty of time to become legal”, when it actually isn’t.

Their rage against illegal/undocumented immigrants, against the idea of amnesty, against the idea of open borders knows no bounds, not even among their fellow Trump supporters’ families.

Isolationism and xenophobia, of which we have plenty, is a destructive crusade. What will the end of this crusade look like after we deport all the undocumented immigrants? Who else has to go? Who else will the inner regime behind the American mask deport?

 

America was founded by people who ran away. From religious persecution, from famine, from genocide, from bad economies, from cramped living conditions, from war, from dictatorship, from discrimination, from a lack of business opportunities, from prison, from sheer boredom.

All good reasons to run away. All the reasons why the the settler colonies of the United States of America, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Brazil, apartheid South Africa, Australia and New Zealand exist.

But Syrian war refugees will now not be allowed to run away to this settler colony, nor will refugees in 6 other countries.

Free Movement and Terra Nullius

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All of the colonizable places to settle are taken.

The window period to settle a place, “remove” the indigenous population by force and establish a government of people who come from the same background as you has long expired. No more Americas. No more Australias.

From now on, you will be a guest who has to integrate yourself.

But you ended up here the wrong way? Your ancestors were brought as slaves, and their earlier descendants attained belated citizenship, and then their descendants fought for the ability to integrate into employment and voting, and now you are tired of fighting for respect from an inherently-classist criminal justice system steeped in the same system which preserved slavery? You want out of this country and its status quo?

Well, at least if you leave this country for another, you’ll be doing so on your own terms. It won’t be a panacea, and you can’t expect to not face racism as a guest.

But maybe, as an immigrant to another country, the art of respectability politics might save you.

Why I’m glad that we don’t have an official language

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One thing that I’m glad about, as an American citizen, is that we don’t have an “official” language.

This country, from long before the end of British rule in 1781, has attracted one of the most extreme varieties of peoples from all over the world. Despite the rise of xenophobic and/or racist movements from the descendants of immigrants, despite the fears and electoral stump speeches about the Irish, the Jewish, the Asian, the Central- and South American and the Middle Eastern menaces who “threatened” to “change our culture”, each one of these groups manifested enough interest in integrating into our society, and many of their descendants came to demand more for their lives than what was offered to their forebears.

We integrated, and continue to integrate, those who integrate into our society, and those who may leave this country for other shores are not left without the influence of the American experience.

So what helped us integrate so many people?

  • First, our separation of religion and state, and non-establishment of a state religion.
  • Second, our non-establishment of a state language.

If the signatories to the 1787 Constitution had privileged English as the official language of the United States, I think that our experience with immigrants would have been made worse than what the current historical record shows. It would establish English-speakers as a more politically-privileged class of people over those who don’t speak English, only certifying and empowering the prevalent bigoted attitudes against fellow human beings simply by way of linguistic history, and no doubt antagonizing those who lived in territories formerly colonized by Spain or France, or those who were indigenous to the land and spoke languages prior to interaction with European settlers (i.e. the former Kingdom of Hawai’i).

I also look at the experience of Canada, which has integrated almost as wide of a variety of human beings from all inhabited continents from the moment of European colonization as our country. In Canada, English and French are established as the state languages, and politicians and civil servants are expected to learn both languages in order to hold their jobs. Despite the integration of French as a first-class language in Canadian federal politics, Quebec separatism still runs strong as a political force among those who feel that the minority-status French language is not treated with equal dignity in the Canadian public. This sentiment jeopardizes the relationship of minorities who are not English- or French-speaking nor entirely aligned with either linguistic structure, including Canadian people of color, with Canadian identity.

This is why I would rather that no language would be declared “official” in this country. Once we begin to pick a state language, or a state religion, or a state socio-economic ideology, we begin to ostracize those who don’t fit so neatly within the categories set by such state favoritisms. We begin to favor the stronger over the weaker, some over others, when we would gain more from negotiating with such parties at some point in their integration.

And I say all this from my own favoritism to English. It is more adaptable and assimilative of any “foreign” word than most other languages known to the human species, very much like a creole or a pidgin language. That makes it a highly-useful language in trade, education and diplomacy.

I would rather that English, as a language, defend itself on its own merits in the marketplace of languages. The state, in my opinion, does a greater service in integrating our society beyond our languages, our religions or the ways in which we think.

E pluribus unum.

No immigrant, no matter whether they’re from Mexico or Lebanon or China, threatens this creed. We only threaten it when we loose sight of this creed and all that it entails.

An “official” language, like a state-favored religion, threatens this creed. Let’s maintain this “separation of language and state”, a key tool in the stirring of this “melting pot”.