Deportee challenge
The deportation of non-citizen veterans is an unintended consequence of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), signed by former
US President Bill Clinton in September 1996. Billed as an anti-crime effort, the law made it possible to deport legal permanent residents convicted of certain crimes, or sentenced to a term of imprisonment that exceeds a year categorised as aggravated felonies.
Based on six years of studies and notes-taking, I find that there are two types of deportees — criminal and
Professor Paul Golding is former dean of the College of Business and Management at the University of Technology, Jamaica. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or pgolding@utech.edu.jm. codes stripped blacks in the South of their right to vote, serve on juries, travel freely, marry, education, or to work freely. Black people could be imprisoned for, among other spurious things, being an uppity black, speaking loudly in the presence of a white woman, and an inability to prove that one was employed. So black people became criminals with up to 90 per cent of the prison population in the South being black. These black people were leased out en masse to farmers and industrialists and were treated worse than slaves. The death rate was 30 per cent to 40 per cent, per year. A complementary approach was peonage (debt servitude) — a system in which an employer compelled a worker to pay off a debt with work. In the South, one’s debt would never ever be paid off. All these methods of neo-slavery were done in conjunction and complicit with state and county governments.
The Federal Government was successful in reintegrating the Union. The compromise, however, was to allow
cultural superiority of white over Negro, but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”
This philosophy is alive, well, and being dangerously “trumpeted” by the White House. The lyrics from Bob Marley’s War is very appropriate here: “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war.”
Buckley Jr’s perspective on the use of violence in preserving the superiority and privilege of the “advanced race” — white race. He writes: “Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence.” So, as the BLM movement makes improvements in civil rights and cultural slavery, major changes to the philosophical fabric will be met with violence. The New York Daily News reported on June 2 that gun sales in 2020 had skyrocketed compared to 2019, particularly in the months of March, April and May, as the US dealt with the coronavirus pandemic, police brutality, and protests. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but experts believe the increase in gun sales is connected to the protest. In March, it was estimated that 2.5 million guns were sold — an 85 per cent increase from last year. April saw a 71 per cent year-overyear increase, and there was an 80 per cent increase in May. In January and February, before the pandemic and protest, the country firearm sales were only up 19 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively. “Yuh betta tek sleep and mark death!”
In conclusion, the philosophy that needs to be embraced is the Unity of Mankind by Blumenbach, which makes the compelling argument that mankind is a single species and all races have accomplished equal cultural development, including writing, art and scientific investigation. In this, both God and science are in unity. I invite readers to watch the PBS documentary Slavery by Another Name on Youtube.
Associate editor — news/health
Srichardsai@jamaicaobserver.com