I’d suffered so many indignities already, being the child of Chinese immigrants. Weird fried rice instead of pizza at my birthday parties. Piano lessons every weekend, like some cliché out of "The Joy Luck Club." Fine. But why, Mom? Why can’t we have turkey for Thanksgiving?
I fought that fight for years, pouting and stomping and crying. But if there are two things I can say about my family, it’s that they love food, and that they are bloodlessly pragmatic. "So what if everyone else eats turkey?" she would say. "It doesn’t taste good. It’s so dry."
"Because this is a holiday, Mom. This is what we’re supposed to do!" I would shriek, every word hot with the disappointment of a child whose parents never lost their accents, never taught us the rules of baseball, never gathered us around to play board games like the other parents did on TV.
One year, right after what my aunt called White Kids' Day, when all the white kids come to your house looking for candy, I geared up again. At school I was making construction paper cornucopias and drawing turkeys out of the outlines of my pudgy hands, smiling at pilgrims with impossibly large hats. My turkeys were always smiling at the pilgrims.
It had been a good year. My parents' business was doing well. They even bought a summer condo in Florida -- two beds, pool, near the beach, easy access to the choicest retirement communities -- though they ended up working so much through the summer we never went. "Good news!" my mother said one night, coming home from work. She was beaming. "We’re going to Florida for Thanksgiving!" I didn’t even get a chance to fire my turkey salvo. I sank. "It’s cold now. People go to Florida in the summer," I said.
We flew on Thanksgiving day, because it was cheapest. My parents, ever scared, terrified that we would miss a flight, always insisted on getting to airports half a day early. And so we sat in the gate, our bags stinking with Chinese food we just had to bring, just in case there would be no Chinese food in Florida. We sat through the throngs of people flying to their real Thanksgivings in the morning, then thinner and thinner crowds, until it was dark, and finally time for us to board.
I fell asleep. I slept through the flight, I slept through the car rental, I slept through the drive. My father gently nudged me awake. "Jai Jai," he called me, meaning Little Son. "We’re here," he said. My brother and I helped him with our bags, and when we got out of the garage I noticed the air. It smelled good. It never smelled this good in New Jersey. And I heard the ocean, sounding like the highway out behind my cousin’s house, but nicer, quieter.
My mother was cleaning already by the time we got to the door of our apartment, really working that broom, sweeping away colonies of dead bugs. South Florida fauna is no joke. It’s like we were vacationing in Biosphere 2. There were bugs on the floor, bugs in the sink, bugs folded up in the towels. My mother is horrified by bugs, but there she was, dealing with them happily and soaking the sinks in Dettol. "Go see the balcony!" she said to me. "You can see the ocean and the pool!"
I stood outside, smelling that air again, suddenly realizing how warm it was on my skin. I looked at the ocean, enormous and dark, and at the little blue pool underneath me, glowing. I imagined swimming in it, and started tapping my toes on the floor.
"Jai Jai!" my father called. "Come eat."
We sat, under the single functioning light bulb, and right away I frowned as my mother brought out bowls of rice, some of the food from home, and a plate of vegetables she stir-fried with Spam, though I did like Spam. So this was our Thanksgiving dinner.
But then she did something strange. She opened the oven. She never used the oven. She took out a foil tray. "What’s that?" I asked.
"I went and got this for you, and brought it with us on the airplane," she said, walking toward the table. "It’s your favorite."
She set the tray down. Printed on the paper lid I could see heavy black letters under a red roof. "Pizza Hut!" I squealed. She peeled back the lid. "Spaghetti and meatballs!" I jumped out of my chair and wrapped my fat little arms around her. My father smiled, chewing on his Spam.
"Thank you, Mom!" I said. "Thank you!" And we ate our dinner.
For a conservative Texas politician locked in a major primary battle, throwing some punches at President Obama is a pretty obvious tactic. But, though it might win him some Republican votes, Gov. Rick Perry is pretty clearly out of his weight class when he tries to go after the president.
Perry’s making news today because of some frankly crazy comments he made in Midland, Tex. on Wednesday. The whole speech was inflammatory, but what’s grabbed the most attention is the governor’s claim that the Obama administration is “hell-bent toward taking America towards a socialist country.”
At this point, that’s really not that shocking coming from Perry. Facing a stiff challenge for renomination in 2010 from fellow Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the governor has moved steadily to the right, and worked to align himself with the Tea Party protests. Remember, this is the guy who publicly entertained the idea of seceding from the union back in April.
Beyond the headline quote about socialism, though, it’s worth noting that Perry fails to say almost anything true or accurate in the almost six minutes of video available online. Let’s do a quick rundown.
Just how red, white and blue does an American's blood need to run before being considered truly American?
In CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell's first contemplation of this important question, considered in the context of Meb Keflezighi's New York Marathon win this past weekend, the answer seemed to be, either you are born in America, or you flat out don't deserve any patriotic credit. Channeling the nativist, anti-immigrant sentiments of a nation of jerks, Rovell delivered himself of some pearls of journalistic opinion.
It's a stunning headline: American Wins Men's NYC Marathon For First Time Since '82.
Unfortunately, it's not as good as it sounds.
Meb Keflezighi, who won yesterday in New York, is technically American by virtue of him becoming a citizen in 1998, but the fact that he's not American-born takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies....
He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country...
Nothing against Keflezighi, but he's like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.
The positive sign was that some American-born runners did extremely well in yesterday's men's race.
If any of them stand on the top step of the podium in Central Park one day, that's when I'll break out my red, white and blue.
Rovell's column excited a storm of negative commentary, and was effectively demolished by Gina Kolata in yesterday's New York Times. Keflezighi may have been born in Eritrea, but "he immigrated to the United States at age 12, [and] he is...a product of American distance running programs at the youth, college and professional levels."
So today Rovell attempted to grovel.
Let me be clear: Meb Keflezighi is an American and any suggestion otherwise is wrong...
That's an almost an apology. But then there's this:
I never said he didn't deserve to be called American.
Sorry, mister, but such a slur sums up exactly the implication of your first column. You should just consider yourself lucky you don't have to take a test to gain American citizenship, because judging by your own words, if asked what it means to be American, you would fail.
Opening paragraphs I wish I'd written:
It's after sundown in Chandankiyari, a village near Bokaro in Jharkhand, and the only sound audible is of howling hyenas in the distance. But strain the ears and you catch snatches of a foreign movie playing. The film, strangely, is in Mandarin and it's for the benefit of the hundreds of Chinese workers here at the site for a steel plant. Watching one of their movies on the big screen is a relaxing way to end the day.
So begins an investigation conducted by by India's Outlook magazine into a sticky labor issue. (Found via ChinaDigitalTimes.) Chinese construction companies contracted to build power plants and steel mills and other big infrastructural projects in India are importing as many as 25,000 Chinese laborers to do much of the work -- and skirting or outright disobeying Indian visa rules that are supposed to only allow entry to "skilled workers."
American technology professionals who look askance at Indian H1B visa immigrants as unfair, low-wage competition might want to hold off on indulging in their schadenfreude. The weird twist to this story is that, according to Indian workers, the Chinese workers get paid wages far higher than their Indian counterparts. So it's not exactly your standard case of cheap foreign labor exploitation.
However, Outlook did gain access into the Chinese walled residential compound. Built like a military base, it had air-conditioned barracks and amenities like a basketball court, a Chinese canteen and cable TV, among other facilities the Indian workers couldn't possibly dream of. As an Indian worker put it, "The Chinese get rum bottles, water bottles and we don't even have a tubewell." The compound is constantly guarded given the tensions with the locals.
Clearly, the Chinese, despite being famous for cheap products, do not come cheap. But the Indian management isn't complaining. R.S. Singh refused to divulge financial details but says the Chinese are very "cost-effective". "They'll set up this plant in 15 months whereas a plant of a similar nature would take an Indian enterprise eight years," he says. D.S. Rajan, director, Centre for China Studies, Chennai, agrees on that point. "They behave very well collectively with an inclination to complete projects in time. Indians tend to be more individualistic."
I suppose an economist could make a case that the overall welfare of the Indian people will rise faster than it would have otherwise if Chinese laborers build new roads and power plants and airports at an accelerated pace. But as we know from the U.S. example, arguments about the impact of outsourcing or illegal immigration on our collective prosperity tend not to make much of an impact on the individual who has been downsized or otherwise lost out competing in the job market with foreign imports.
But is international labour mobility something to be shunned? Not at the cost of resentment at home, says Rajan. "At no point should the locals feel that outsiders are taking away their jobs," he says.
OK...now you can plug in your schadenfreude meters.
Of all the wingnut mythology surrounding healthcare reform, nothing has stirred greater fury or louder denials than the suggestion that government might somehow provide insurance to America's undocumented workers and their families. "You lie!" screamed Rep. Joe Wilson as the President told Congress that his plan would provide no coverage to them. "No, we don't!" replied the Democrats, who scrambled to make sure that the undocumented are excluded by statute.
Yet as the nation prepares for a possible swine flu pandemic this winter, we are learning that the firm determination of both parties to deny medical care to people without papers is actually quite flaccid. Even the most hysterical immigrant-bashers seem content to allow the government to vaccinate immigrants against the H1N1 virus (unless, that is, they happen to be among the right-wing chorus that suspects vaccination itself to be a nefarious socialist plot). Even they seem to realize that viruses don't discriminate on the basis of citizenship -- although they wrongly tried to blame last spring's first outbreak of swine flu on the Mexicans among us.
Rather timidly, President Obama has suggested that the children of illegal immigrants might have to be considered an exception to the rule, since they will inevitably come in contact with the offspring of legal citizens. He didn't explain how unvaccinated and infected adults would avoid contact with their own children, or how they would avoid passing the virus on to the people they serve in the businesses and industries that employ them by the millions. And of course, the Centers for Disease Control is wisely ignoring such invidious distinctions and is now urging everyone, regardless of status, to get vaccinated as soon as the medication is available.
That everyone tolerates the current emergency exception, regardless of ideology, reveals much about the furious resistance to healthcare for the undocumented. Public health experts and many health economists have always considered that bipartisan opposition to be stupid as well as cruel. Not only would we protect ourselves and our children from communicable diseases more effectively if everyone had access to insurance and regular care, regardless of status, but we might even be able to reduce the rising cost of insurance (and diminish the attractiveness of hiring illegal workers).
So let us consider the strange moral perspective of the nativists and the politicians who serve as their echoes. According to them, it is wholly permissible to let the "illegals" and their children suffer from illness and even die prematurely, so long as their condition poses no threat to the rest of us. To those who consider healthcare a human right rather than a privilege of wealth, this is obviously an outrage. But even those who reject the ideals of solidarity and Scripture suddenly worry about their neighbors when a cough or a sneeze, on a bus or in a restaurant, can threaten them and their families.
The problem with that easy moral exception is that the effects of persecution don't fade away so conveniently. When the same people who have been trying to round you up and put you and your family in a detention camp abruptly put on a smiley face and urge you to come in for a vaccination -- promising not to place you under arrest this time -- they have no credibility.
More to the point, many cases of serious communicable disease, such as flu or tuberculosis, tend to be discovered by doctors during routine examinations, or when patients show up complaining of symptoms that seem unrelated. So protecting public health is accomplished far more effectively when everyone has insurance coverage and receives regular preventive care.
Among the most ironic aspects of the debate over truly universal coverage is that allowing undocumented workers to buy into a public option or an insurance exchange system would almost certainly reduce costs for everyone. That's because illegal workers actually tend to be younger and healthier than average, and because many of them return to their home countries before they become old enough to make major demands on the health system. (The same principle applies to Social Security, a system supported by contributions from undocumented workers who never draw any benefits from it.)
In other countries, most notably under France's excellent system, the public is smart enough to protect itself from disease and compassionate enough to protect all within their nation's borders. Too bad we only seem able to achieve that level of wisdom when we think we have glimpsed the apocalypse.
Census-taking has always been a politically fraught process. It’s a point that some political theorists love to make endlessly: When it comes to running a government, knowledge -- in the form of data -- is power. Hence, unearthing the basic facts about who makes up the United States inevitably has a direct impact on who rules the country and how. The decennial count tends to cut right along our deep political cleavages.
Lately, something about the census really seems to really get conservatives’ juices flowing. Of course there’s Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., who’s urged constituents to give the minimum cooperation to census-takers. She and Glenn Beck have taken care to issue dire warnings -- incorrect at the time, and now moot -- about ACORN’s role in administering the count. And, of course, there’s an immigration issue. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., is currently pushing to stop the census from counting undocumented immigrants, as it has done for years.
Vitter’s argument is that counting undocumented immigrants yields an undeserved windfall of representation for states that happen to have a lot of them. Because the census determines how the 435 congressional districts (and the 538 electoral votes) are divided among the states, immigration hawks like Vitter claim that non-citizens unfairly tilt representation toward their states. Says the senator, “I don't think states which have particularly large noncitizen populations should have more say and more clout in Congress, and that states like Louisiana that don't should be penalized.”
The Census Bureau says that adding Vitter’s question now would delay the whole process immensely and cost millions of extra dollars. Currently, the census does ask about immigration status, but in its more frequent American Communities Survey. This is a statistical sample, and because sampling is effective, it's the basis of most of the useful information the census collects. But there also has to be a comprehensive, every-household-in-the-country questionnaire that determines population, and this is where Vitter wants the immigration question asked.
The White House opposes the idea, and the Senate leadership pretty clearly wants to avoid a vote. Things appear likely to come to a head Thursday, when the Senate leadership seeks cloture on the appropriations bill that Vitter is hoping to amend.
But liberals aren’t just against the amendment because of its logistical implications. Just because the census doesn’t count certain people doesn’t mean, of course, that they aren’t there. Whether or not they are included in the census and their numbers are used to reapportion congressional seats, undocumented immigrants will continue to use roads, schools and hospitals. The states where they live in large numbers -- California, for example -- rely on federal dollars to provide many key services, which are divvied out according to population. So not counting people who are actually there is, in a certain sense, a way of cutting them off from public services. This is something that anti-immigration conservatives have attempted before, rather more directly, and at immense political cost.
There is also a broader philosophical issue at stake. The United States has wrestled in the past with how to recognize the presence of people whose legal status as citizens the government didn't acknowledge. There is an obvious, but imperfect, parallel here with the infamous Three-fifths Compromise included in the Constitution.
The origins of the compromise were in the ratification process of the Constitution; the southern delegates wanted the slaves held in their states to be counted in full by the census, multiplying the power of the slave-owners’ votes. (The slaves themselves, of course, didn’t get to cast the votes.) The northern delegates, unhappy about the idea of extending the power of the plantation owners, bargained them down to counting the slaves as three-fifths of a person each.
Obviously, the idea of counting someone as only a fraction of a person is repugnant. But at the heart of the three-fifths debate compromise is the question of who should get to speak on behalf of people deemed unqualified to participate in politics directly. And that’s where the 18th century has something to say to the 21st.
We’d unanimously reject the idea of slavery now, of course. But we continue to argue furiously over whether and how to incorporate undocumented immigrants into the polity. And it’s Vitter and the other critics of counting undocumented immigrants in the census who would also block them from a path toward legal status and ultimately, citizenship.
Unlike in the case of the Three-fifths Compromise, the politicians who gain -- unfairly, as Vitter would have it -- from the census’ counting of non-voters, and hence are in the position to “speak for” them, actually tend to be concerned with providing rights and services to their currently disqualified constituents. Vitter and company, though apparently analogous to the old northern delegates here in opposing counting the undocumented, are actually making an argument for keeping the government blind to the needs and concerns of a class of people living in its borders.
Well, at least science pushes on...
Illegal Immigrants: Republicans Can't Do Math
The Opposite of Political Correctness