Dream Act, the census and the Civil War

The Island Now

This month the Dream Act, which was heavily supported by Congressman Gary Ackerman, went down in defeat, the 2010 Census gave advantage to Republican control of Congress and the Electoral College and South Carolina celebrated the 150th anniversary of its secession from the United States with a gala in period dress.

As improbable as it may seem, there are actually important connections and parallels between all of these events.

First the parallel: As the nation contemplates the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the southern states seem to be revising history to downgrade the issue of slavery and make secession almost entirely about states’ rights, a fight which they seem determined to restart. To bolster this myth, southerners point to the fact that only 10 precedent of Confederate soldiers came from slave-holding families – but that is only proof of the phenomenon we see today, of people somehow signing up to fight for causes that actually go against their own self interest (opposing health care reform and Wall Street reform, as recent examples). The Civil War caused the deaths of 620,000 Americans – the equivalent of 6 million in today’s population – the bloodiest, most horrific and tragic in the nation’s history.

But if the issue were really about states rights – and not preserving slavery – each of the states could have come up with their own formula to phase out slavery, as was done in the North and in every civilized nation in the world.

It is just the same with health care – if it were really a matter of states’ rights, each state could have come up with a solution to provide access to health care for each of its citizens. But they have not, so that at the point when Congress finally approved the Affordable Health Care Act last year, there are nearly 50 million people who were shut out of the system.

The South was not fighting for states’ rights. They were fighting to preserve their way of life, but the underpinning of that way of life was slavery. Slavery was the basis for the economy, providing cheap labor (even farmers who did not own their own slaves could pay a slaveholder for the use of theirs), a social order that excused the moral depravity of one group having life-and-death control over human chattel by concocting a notion of superior and inferior beings.

But what is overlooked is the reality of the political control that the South wielded because of slavery. Out of a population of 9 million in the Southern states, 4 million were slaves (a further reason that the South feared an overnight emancipation, which they feared the 1860 election of Lincoln would bring, as an uprising of slaves against their masters). Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person in the census for the purpose of representation in Congress and the Electoral College. And the Southern states wanted the Western territories that were entering the union to also be slave-holding, in order to expand that political power.

Now, right-wing conservatives who dominate the South – Arizona, for example – make illegal immigrants a key issue. They are really upset that we don’t have martial law and build an electrified fence along the border. They want the government to raid homes and snatch up anyone without documents, throw them into for-profit prisons or deport them. They claim to want to rid the nation of the estimated 12 million undocumented aliens.

But if they were really concerned about lawless illegals, they would have supported the Dream Act, which would have given legal status to several million young people who were brought here as children, grew up here, only know the United States as their home, have gone to college or into the military, who are now are stateless, with no future.

If the right wingers were really interested in addressing the dangers of having an underclass living in the shadows, supposedly engaged in all sorts of illicit activities, they would have supported the Dream Act.

But just as the slaves, business owners, employers and consumes benefit from access to cheap labor with no legal rights or protections.

More significantly, like slaves before the Civil War, immigrants including illegal immigrants are counted in the census – and that figures in how many representatives a district will have as well as that district’s share of $400 billion federal pot But these people cannot vote.

This gives oversized political power to the few over the many.

That may help explain why Republicans were not so fast to reduce the number of illegal immigrants from an estimated 12 million, perhaps by several million people – the children who grew up here, attended schools, and would be given a path to citizenship by virtue of graduating college or going into military service.

But by getting a path to citizenship, they would also become voters, and the Republicans can’t have that.

Hopefully, Congressman Ackerman will find a way in the new Congress, even though he is now in the minority party, to continue this fight – for the fairness, the justice of it, and also, for a fairer body politic.

The process has to start all over again. Hopefully, the Congressman can expose the hypocrisy of the Republican position, and embarrass them to doing the right thing, to break the chains of illegal status. So far, the party has been incapable of being embarrassed.

 

Karen Rubin

Share this Article