Your Tax Dollars at Work: Structural Racism & Mass Deportation of 'Illegal Immigrants'

Now here's something interesting I came across that highlights structural racism, and the deportation of undocumented immigrants. It's a piece written by Tanya Golash-Boza who happens to be an Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies at the University of Kansas, that was featured over at one of my favorite sites, racismreview.com:

The overwhelming majority of the 12 million undocumented people in the United States are not in deportation proceedings. Some undocumented migrants, particularly East Asians, are very unlikely to ever be apprehended and deported. In 2007, there were about 230,000 undocumented South Koreans in the United States. Only 417 Koreans were deported from the United States in 2007. In that same year, there were about 280,000 undocumented Hondurans in the United States. Yet, 29,737 Hondurans were deported. In 2007, there were slightly more undocumented Chinese and Filipinos in the United States than Hondurans. However, only 408 Filipinos and 766 Chinese were deported. This is indicative of a trend – Latin Americans are much more likely than Asians to be deported.

Given that DHS claims to be making the nation safer through deportation, it is remarkable that they almost never deport people to countries which the U.S. Department of State identifies as sponsoring terrorism – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan. In 2007, for example, 319,382 people were deported. Among these were 49 Iranians, 27 Iraqis, 40 Syrians, 76 Cubans, and 13 Sudanese. (Data were not available for Libya and North Korea.) Instead, deportees are most often sent to countries with which the United States has amicable relations – our allies in the Western Hemisphere. Human Rights Watch reports that 897,099 people were deported on criminal grounds between April 1, 1997, and August 1, 2007, and that 94 percent of these people were from just ten countries, all in the Western Hemisphere – Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Colombia, Jamaica, Canada, Brazil, and Haiti. (source)

After reading the above section, my guess is that immigrants from the south of the border should start flying planes into buildings. Yep, maybe if they did, they'd be seen as less of a threat to national security. But then again, maybe the war on terror is actually working.

Yep, maybe the U.S. needs to invade and occupy Mexico. Shit, it has to be cheaper going to war and exterminating them on their homelands than it is to round them up and deport them. Besides, it's not like we can't stand to have more diversity among convenience store owners...

PIC: ElviraArellano - deported and separated from U.S. born son in 2007.