While William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC is calling immigrants “third world invaders” and accusing Republicans who support immigration reform, including Karl Rove and Lindsey Graham, of having “blood on their hands,” (this from a guy who has advocated violent revolution) the Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) University of Austin chapter is planning on hosting a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Game” on the UT campus from noon to 3 pm tomorrow:
YCT will be having a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” event this upcoming Wednesday. The details of the game goes as follows:
There will be several people walking around the UT campus with the label “illegal immigrant” on their clothing. Any UT student who catches one of these “illegal immigrants” and brings them back to our table will receive a $25 gift card.
The purpose of this event is to spark a campus-wide discussion about the issue of illegal immigration, and how it affects our everyday lives.
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What could possibly go wrong?
Nothing like making vigilantism a game. All that’s missing is actor-vigilante Steven Segal and the Arpaio Freikorps.
YCT says the purpose of the game “is to spark a campus-wide discussion about the issue of illegal immigration and how it affects our everyday lives.”
Well, it gives your parents cheap gardeners and housekeepers, and low-pay labor for your daddy’s corporation. How’s that for starters?
It has also affected your life by giving you opportunities to get some free, and possibly profitable, fascist-training, like giving you somebody to hunt down and apprehend.
I bet the discussion it prompts will provide some tips on racial profiling.
And I don’t suppose it is going to make any other students on campus uncomfortable to have a bunch of vigilantes-in-training staring at them, trying to spot a tag that might or might not be there.
If they really want a discussion, they could, you know, just talk. Right?
Can we please get some more melodrama?
Oh wait, forgot about Phyllis Schlafly, you know, Sarah Palin’s “original mama grizzly,” who is worried about polygamous Muslims on welfare. She also doesn’t think Latinos make good immigrants because they won’t vote Republican.
Gosh, can’t imagine why not with spokesmen like Gheen, the YCT, and Schlafly, can you?
It is true that some Muslims have multiple wives. I knew of a couple while I was living in the DC area. Of course, they were not legally married to their other wives but yes, polygamy does exist among the American Muslim community. And yes, there may even be some on welfare. There are also, no doubt, polygamous Christians on welfare.
But look, Polygamy isn’t threatening our country. Republicans are, Republicans who refuse to create jobs, Republicans who obstruct any meaningful progress on restoring our economy, Republicans who advocate violence against a constructed other. Republicans like Gheen, the YCT, and Schlafly, or Sandy Rios, who is also freaking out over Muslim immigrants.
If they had their way, Republicans stormtroopers would make like Nazi brownshirts and bash their way down our city streets, rounding up anyone who looks like a Jew…er, I mean, Latino.
And we don’t want to forget, do we, about the nasty old representative of the evils of pluralism, the UN, which is going to “snatch homeschoolers and kids with glasses.”
This all boils down to more völkisch thuggery.
As Robert Jensen wrote at YES! Magazine in 2010, “The United States abolished a formal apartheid system but remains a white-supremacist society.”
The most vocal spokespeople for white supremacy are Republicans. And they want to know why nobody but white people will vote for them. It should not need to be pointed out to the GOP that hosting “catch an illegal immigrant” events is not a way to drum up Latino votes.
But hey, why worry about it when you can just keep Latinos (and other minorities) from voting?
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
