Just language differences; of course for us French (and probably a number of EU countries), it has a more sinister meaning.
In the US, the INS (or the USCIS as it is known today) is deporting undocumented aliens.
And yes, one can be deported to one's own country: if the USCIS is "escorting to the border" (that's US English for "reconduire à la frontière") or "deporting" a French citizen who's been staying in the USA for 20 years without documents (visa or Green Card) to France, the person in question is effectively, well, deported, even if he/she doesn't have any family left whatsoever in France and just wanted to go on with his/her life in the US. Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
But again, deportation is just a regular and legitimate technical term used in English language (well, American English at least) and comparisons with WWI are no excuse to refrain from using it, which is why I used a US-centric (hypothetical) example. Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
In English too it can mean banishment, exile - see comments above.
It is precisely this kind of excesses that this diary entry stands against. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I stand by my earlier comment: the major activity of the "Ministry of Immigration and National Identity" is the deportation of undocumented migrants and for that aim, it is diverting quite a number police resources that are unavailable to fight crime.
This, I call it right wing baiting.
Same for linking "Immigration" with "National Identity"; first of all, this is no government business to decide what the French national identity is or isn't. And this is right wing baiting pure and simple: This is code speak; it's playing right into every racist's irrational fear of the brown hordes flooding over our homeland and threatening our white identity.
Of course, we can repeat the official line if we fancy to: its' all about making sure the immigrants learn our language and our values.
I'm not interested in what these people say but in what they do; and what they're doing is perpetuating a climate of fear and permanent suspicion on everyone dark-skinned, French citizen or not. And no matter how well they know French language and Republican values, it's never enough: neither them nor their children or grandchildren will be "French enough" for this kind of people - the kind of people our president is (pragmatically) sending coded messages to. Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
You can see things as right wing baiting, and someone else can reply it's calming down citizens indignated and worried about the savagery sometimes seen on public transport or certain immigrant ghettos. To say, you're continuing to hold on to your leftwing positions and call anybody else names.
In the end, you're making a speculation ("no matter how well"...), which is your right from a leftwing standpoint. You're fitting exactly the case I wanted to make: anyone not agreeing with our ideology must be some barbarian, bigot, racist, in any case not a human being whose issues might be legitimate. Well more and more of these sub-humans voted Le Pen.
Obviously, the left did not understand anything at all from Jospin's humiliation - which we can also see in the PS' recent turbulences. People are going to punish this arrogant left over and over again, the way you punish a stubborn child, until it ceases patronizing and labeling citizens as stupid, racist or bigot when they have legit and perfectly explainable problems. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
You're opposing and interpretting what you consider to be the "true meaning" of a governmental policy ("controlled immigration") that was made clear all along the electoral campaign,
You're saying we should believe a word of what a politician says during an election campaign? And not try to second-guess them based on their contacts, associates and voter demographics?
That's rich.
You can see things as right wing baiting, and someone else can reply it's calming down citizens indignated and worried about the savagery sometimes seen on public transport or certain immigrant ghettos TV.
There, fixed it for ya.
I'll take it once more for crown prince Knud: The people who actually live in the ghettos, and have first-hand experience with conditions there, do not, in the main, vote for right-wing politicians. The people who overwhelmingly vote for wingnut politicians are the ones whose only contact with the ghetto is through a TV screen.
You seem to assume that what the press reports bears a strong relationship to what actually goes on in the world. That's an assumption contrary to fact. I should know. I've been in a couple of "newsworthy" events and seen the reporting in the commercial press afterwards. You should try it too - it might be enlightening.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Anyway. As to what politicians are saying. Sarkozy made it a point to return people's interest to elections, indeed to democracy. Papers, think-tanks and poll centers keep an eye on his political program and its implementation. So I guess we'll see how it is. One thing's certain: everybody wants to believe in electoral promises. We are entitled to, and to hold those people accountable. This is the base of the democracy.
I have no official and reliable statistics as to the situation and reasons of the vote in poor neighbourhoods. I can only tell you that it is not the rich, the office employees or the youth who predominantly chose Sarkozy, but the poor, the workers, the elders - ie, the vulnerable categories. The "rich" in the fancy neighbourhoods voted left, as they always do. It is them who call the others racists and claim there is no problem in those suburbs except poverty, the rest being far-right rhetorics - and it is them who never go there. (I do speak about France)
Oh well. From your posts, I retain that politicians are not to be trusted, their programs are deceitful, democracy is flawed, press is on the rightwing's pay. My conclusion is: we need a REVOLUTION ! Sigh... Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Someone needs to tell me if there's a quick way to put in those quotation boxes - I have no patience typing html code.
I will tell you instead of someone - who actually made the plugin do it.
European Tribune - Download ET's own Firefox add-on: TribExt
Do you browse the web on Firefox? Then you can download TribExt, a nifty little add-on, written by ET user someone, to navigate around European Tribune easier. It can also be used on Booman Tribune and Daily Kos.
That plugin allows to mark and copy not only the text, but the html-code and paste it as a qoute. Very nifty. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Sarkozy made it a point to return people's interest to elections, indeed to democracy.
Elections and democracy are not quite the same thing.
Papers, think-tanks and poll centers keep an eye on his political program and its implementation.
You clearly have more faith in both the neutrality and competence of poll centres and belief tanks than I do.
One thing's certain: everybody wants to believe in electoral promises. We are entitled to, and to hold those people accountable. This is the base of the democracy.
Holding people accountable involves distrusting their will to carry out their promises as a matter of principle. If we trusted the police, we wouldn't need the courts. But in a democracy, we have an institutional distrust of the police (for a variety of mostly excellent reasons). So we have courts.
Political philosophy aside, there is, I believe, a French saying that goes something along the lines of "look not at what you eat, but with whom you eat." If a politician who takes money from employers' unions says that he wants to make anti-trust laws more effective, I'd want to read the actual proposal line by line before agreeing with it. If a politician backed by the Catholic Church says that he wants to reform the health service to give easier access to reproductive health care, I'd check with a reputable local family planning NGO before endorsing his proposal. And if an avowedly creationist politician says that the sky is blue, I'd look out my window before agreeing.
Is that really so unreasonable? Or even particularly ideological?
From your posts, I retain that politicians are not to be trusted, their programs are deceitful, democracy is flawed, press is on the rightwing's pay. My conclusion is: we need a REVOLUTION ! Sigh...
Hyperbole much?
I rather like democracy, thank you very much. But I prefer a democracy of active, engaged citizens to a "democracy" of disengaged consumers for whom turning on the television for the nightly advertisements news shows represents the height of their engagement with the body politic.
I didn't call "anyone else" names: just the racist people and their racism. As folks around here may have noted, I have very little tolerance for racism and prejudices in general.
And yes, I do object to our UMP government "speaking code" to the racists amongst us. I don't imply that they are necessarily all racists themselves, but they sure do have no compunction in playing the race card.
And for our non-white fellow citizens, this climate of discrimination and "not being French enough" is no frigging left-wing standpoint, but just a regular day in Sarkozia.
And where exactly did you see that anyone "anyone not agreeing with our ideology" must be some barbarian-bigot-racist sub-human?
Racists are idiots and humans: idiocy is a very human weakness. It's racists who do believe there are two categories of people - humans and sub-humans (themselves being in the top human category, of course). You don't have to be a racist to vote for the FN, but you have to be comfortable (or willingly oblivious) with quite a high dose of racism.
Oh, and your "elitist" left vs. "real-people" right: I've heard that for years; that's precisely the theme pushed by the Republicans since Regan. It worked beautifully in a way: they won elections and kept in power until recently - when enough people eventually saw through that horseshit and figured out where exactly the real elitists are (hint: follow the money).
People indeed do have legitimate problems and the politics of Mr Sarkozy and the UMP has only made things worse. Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
The view from the left has always been that the causes are social - that immigrants, or their offspring, are never to blame for anything, it is the society which wouldnt do enough for them. Whoever said anything different was labeled racist and xenophobe, was said to propagate fear etc etc. The whole range of arguments political correctness uses to put its fist in the mouth of those who say otherwise.
So you here did the same thing: you assumed that Sarkozy and his immigration policies, addressed racists, which is the usual French leftwing line. What if FN voters or sympathizers were not all racists, what if many are citizens who feel republican values are stepped upon, and it is insulting to call them racists (despicable people, not far from nazis), patronize them, exclude them. It is them who eliminated Lionel Jospin, who made win Sarkozy, and will continue to do so, as long as you guys continue to consider them as such. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I repeat my request I put to you downthread - I'm interested in your ideas and solutions regarding these political issues. Would you please consider writing them down? We can play devil's advocate until we're blue in the face.
This led me to say that the dutch policies you mentioned were not so much pragmatic but debatable compromises made on a social-libertarian foundation. In the same way, I replied to Bernard that what he calls racist policies or code speech targeting racists, are actually pragmatic policies meant to address what are legitimate issues for many citizens.
I gave both of you hints about what I see as pragmatic policies: helping the immigrants, but also considering the locals, the cultural differences, enforcing integration and republican values (in France) along with help for integration and against discrimination. Also accepting in France people with a good chance to adapt - balanced, rational measures that have worked in countries like Canada or Australia. The same about the more general question of civil rights. Vulnerable people must be protected and helped, but not by introducing other kinds of unfairness or exclusion. Hence, I don't believe in quota laws, except very rare, precise cases and very limited in time. I think both Massachusets vote for and California vote against gay marriage should be accepted as democratical, contested democratically, without throwing insults and contempt at the other. I do think people have a certain degree of free will and critical thinking. Hence we should not legislate for every possible situation, we should not attempt to protect people at all cost, we cannot justify issues only by societal or environmental causes. I think the idea that people are completely irresponsible is wrong, just as the idea that crime or poverty would only be explained by external causes. I also believe wrong the idea that people would be completely responsible, that life, success or failure, would be mostly up to them, that crime should only be dealt with by punishment. In short, I would be somewhere between the US (americans call me a socialist) and Europe (where I am positioned to the right).
These are but general ideas. Situations are not dealt with like this, with general statements made upon imperative demand. Laws should not be made from principial reasons, but depending on the concrete case, looking at all facets and considering all sides and how that will profit the society and the individuals. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I gave both of you hints about what I see as pragmatic policies: helping the immigrants, but also considering the locals, the cultural differences, enforcing integration and republican values (in France) along with help for integration and against discrimination.
That's not policies, that's slogans. How do you think the immigrants should be helped (and helped to do what?)? How do you think the locals should be "considered?" What does "cultural differences" mean when translated into English, and how does one "consider" it when designing policy? How does one "enforce" "republican values?" And what are those "republican values" in the first place? How do you think that public policy can best assist integration (of whom into what?), and how can public policy be used to prune back discrimination?
Also accepting in France people with a good chance to adapt
What does this even mean? You do realise that there are several ways to get into France that France has very little control over? Refugees cannot be cherry-picked like that - aside from the dubious morality of doing so, it's probably in violation of the UN Refugee Convention. Then there's the whole marriage thing - where a policy of making immigration by marriage difficult by making potential immigrants jump through a ridiculous number of insane hoops is not only of dubious legality under both UN and Union law - it also effectively exiles those of your own citizens who happen to be unfortunate enough to fall in love with someone from outside the Union.
balanced, rational measures that have worked in countries like Canada or Australia.
But you haven't actually mentioned any of those measures! All you've done is provide a laundry list of slogans. Australia and Canada have taken a lot of measures over the years that could broadly be said to be based on those slogans - some of them more or less rational and balanced, while others... not so much.
Vulnerable people must be protected and helped, but not by introducing other kinds of unfairness or exclusion. Hence, I don't believe in quota laws, except very rare, precise cases and very limited in time.
OK, this is more like it. There's actually a debatable political principle here. So quotas are bad and need to be thoroughly justified and limited in scope and time. I can buy that (for suitable values of "limited" and "thoroughly justified").
But can you actually give any examples of quotas that have been assigned on ideological rather than factual grounds?
I think both Massachusets vote for and California vote against gay marriage should be accepted as democratical, contested democratically, without throwing insults and contempt at the other.
Reducing a group of people to second-class citizens based on nothing more than their sexual preference is a completely kosher expression of democracy? I disagree, but at least that proposition is sufficiently concrete to be subject to be debated on its merits.
But I do wonder: When those amendments are struck down by the SCOTUS as being in violation of the Federal constitution, will you argue that this should also be accepted as a kosher expression of democracy? Or is a plebiscite "more democratic" than the doctrine of judicial review?
we should not legislate for every possible situation,
Straw man.
we should not attempt to protect people at all cost,
From what? And, as an aside, "at all cost" is a straw man too.
we cannot justify issues only by societal or environmental causes.
Environmental as in the culture you grow up in or environmental as in polar bears?
I think the idea that people are completely irresponsible is wrong,
But surely, you do accept that some people are totally and utterly irresponsible, right? And policies must be enacted to curtail their irresponsible behaviour, correct? I think that's pretty obvious - particularly set against the backdrop of a global economy brought to the ragged edges of another great depression by one of the greatest pyramid scams in history...
just as the idea that crime or poverty would only be explained by external causes.
Here's my suggestion for the question of crime and poverty: We know that poverty causes crime. We don't know how much of the current crime is caused by poverty, and how much is caused by other factors. But we do know that inasmuch as there is poverty, some of the crime is caused by poverty. So I'd suggest getting rid of the poverty. Then there will be less crime, and we will probably have a clearer picture of what causes the crime, since we've eliminated one of the contributions.
I'd call that a pragmatic approach.
As for the causes of poverty... pragmatically, they don't matter much, because poverty can largely be cured with distributionary policies. There may be ideological reasons to prefer other methods as far as possible (empowerment is also a part of lefty ideology, after all) but pragmatically money works exceedingly well to combat poverty...
Laws should not be made from principial reasons, but depending on the concrete case,
Kinda sorta... But taken to excess, this leads to a lex 8 o'clock news syndrome - where each whiff of scandal gives rise to a new law or rule or regulation to prevent similar failings in the future. Such ad hoc laws often create an ineffective and unduly burdensome legal hodge-podge, which lacks both coherence, structure and a clear strategy for what it is supposed to accomplish.
Jake has gotten into depth to important questions but I will restrict my reply to two issues:
ValentinD:
This led me to say that the dutch policies you mentioned were not so much pragmatic but debatable compromises made on a social-libertarian foundation.
So you did, but with little evidence to show for your argument. Again, I don't think you've adequately answered why libertarian rational can never be considered as pragmatic.
The other problem I remain having is also pointed out by Jake - your ideas on pragmatism get obfuscated by a slew of generalities. I don't "get" your side of pragmatism - the word just gets bandied around and it's just a filler word for me. Drop the hints, tell us what you really would like to see happening.
And preferably not in this thread.
Because I object to right-wing baiting from the presidential party, I am a patronizing, insulting, fist-in-the-mouth, left-wing elitist?
It's your opinion and this is a free country.
Over time, there has been less and less arguments and more vituperation in your writings.
If you choose to go this way, this is your prerogative; just don't expect me to follow you there.
In my book, each adult takes personal responsibility for one's own words and actions. I assume mine.
You decided to behave the way you do; no one else forced you. You can call this ideology (like I care), I call this values. Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
You said that Sarkozy's electoral promises and immigration policies are coded speech targeting racists. I said - and I repeat - that the audience that you call racists are actually citizens who have perfectly legitimate and real reasons to worry, that you deny. And you deny it, because they don't fit the leftwing ideology claiming that "those who appear as weak or as victims must always be right".
The left, just like you do for the third time now, declares those people racists (ie, calls them names), despises them, excludes them. Hence they, with their 15-20%, pushed Le Pen in front of PS's Jospin 6 years ago and ensured Sarkozy wins in 2007.
The speech you call rightwing baiting for racists are actually pragmatic policies addressing legitimate issues of an important part of voting citizens.
You'll likely dismiss this, and I am saying this yet again: the French left, with its custom of picking favourite categories and pushing forwad unreasonable rhetorics and political correctness, is bound to lose general elections for a long time still. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
