"the political debate over immigration is stuck in 1985"

August 14, 2013 12:23 PM

"Migrants quite rationally responded to the increased costs and risks by minimizing the number of times they crossed the border,” Massey wrote in his 2007 paper “Understanding America’s Immigration ‘Crisis.’” “But they achieved this goal not by remaining in Mexico and abandoning their intention to migrate to the U.S., but by hunkering down and staying once they had run the gauntlet at the border and made it to their final destination." -- How the militarisation of the US-Mexico border actually increased Mexican immigration into the US.
posted by MartinWisse (40 comments total)

Also, a response in the National Review Online and the rebuttal.
posted by Partial Law at 12:36 PM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Follow-up from Massey to a wildly misleading article by National Review's Mark Krikorian:

Who’re you going to believe on immigration? Mark Krikorian or your lying eyes?

The possibility that ever more border enforcement might actually be stupid and counterproductive is anathema to Kirkorian’s organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates strict controls on immigration. He therefore dismisses the finding as a “pet theory” articulated for nefarious political purposes. He then trundles out a dated chart of my own data and argues that it shows precisely the opposite of what I argue. Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes!
[...]
The chart I reproduce presents the probability of returning to Mexico within 12 months of entering the United States on a first undocumented trip. The probability is computed by year from 1965 through 2010 using life history data gathered from representative interviews done with some 24,000 household heads. As can be seen, the likelihood of return migration was quite high through 1986, when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act to initiate the militarization of the border. In that year, the probability of return migration stood at 0.60, meaning that 60% of all undocumented migrants returned to Mexico within a year of entering the United States.

Thereafter the return probability began to fall, reaching just 0.48 in 1993. In that year, however, the U.S. Border Patrol launched Operation Blockade in El Paso and followed up in 1994 with Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego. These intensive operations sought to seal off the two busiest border-crossing sectors. Rather than reducing the inflow, however, this intensification of enforcement caused the probability of return migration to fall even faster, ultimately reducing it to an all-time low of 0.08 in 2010.

posted by zombieflanders at 12:36 PM on August 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

Related update from earlier today.
posted by dsfan at 12:37 PM on August 14, 2013

*shakes fist at Partial Law, sticks tongue out at dsfan*
posted by zombieflanders at 12:37 PM on August 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

Note to self: when punctuation is stripped from URLs, "who're you going to believe" becomes "whore you going to believe."
posted by googly at 12:46 PM on August 14, 2013 [7 favorites]

I noticed that too, googly--pretty great.
posted by resurrexit at 12:48 PM on August 14, 2013

I have no hard data at all, but based upon my observation of the number of spanish-speaking folks in the supermarket these days, I'd have to say that a not insignificant percentage of the grocery-buying public in my immediate area have immigrated from somewhere south of the border. And they ain't all picking fruit, that's for sure. I gotta admire someone who would pick up his shit lock, stock and barrel and embark to a whole other country in hopes of finding work and improving his lot. Illegal or no.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:58 PM on August 14, 2013 [6 favorites]

And just to get an idea of how immature the anti-immigration reform side in Congress has become (with bonus reappearance from Krikorian):

Punish Obama, Pass His Top Legislative Priority

In his ever resourceful effort to find someone to convince conservative activists they shouldn’t turn their backs on him for his sponsorship of comprehensive immigration reform, Sen. Marco Rubio has now gone beyond arguments that CIR is good for the party, or that the failure to pass CIR will be bad for the border-militarizing priorities of his nativist critics. No, now passing Barack Obama’s top legislative priority is the only way to keep him from getting his way by executive fiat. Seriously.
[...]
The idea that Obama can or would just stop enforcing the immigration laws generally is a bit much to take. But then I suppose Rubio thought it might make sense to his right-wing critics, to the extent they’ve convinced themselves Obama’s a tyrant who routinely ignores the constitutional limitations on the authority of his office. But, says Sargent:

Alas, it doesn’t appear that this logic will prove persuasive to conservatives. Opponents of immigration reform are already dismissing Rubio’s suggestion. As Mark Krikorian tweeted mockingly: “Rubio: Surrendering to Obama on immigration will yield Peace in Our Time.” The willingness to believe the worst of Obama collided with hatred of amnesty, and hatred of amnesty won.

Maybe Rubio should threaten to force a government shutdown unless Obama accepts a legislative solution to the immigration problem. That’s the kind of language Marco’s critics understand.

posted by zombieflanders at 1:00 PM on August 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

I gotta admire someone who would pick up his shit lock, stock and barrel and embark to a whole other country in hopes of finding work and improving his lot. Illegal or no.

I just came here to take a job away from a US STEM graduate. Ha ha!
posted by GuyZero at 1:03 PM on August 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

I just came here to take a job away from a US STEM graduate. Ha ha!

Ha! Little did you realize that the net effect of your nefarious plan would be added economic stimulus that actually increases the total job pool. Sick burn!
posted by yoink at 1:09 PM on August 14, 2013 [11 favorites]

I just came here to take a job away from a US STEM graduate. Ha ha!

We still have those? I was told to turn the lights off after I graduated.
posted by backseatpilot at 1:11 PM on August 14, 2013 [4 favorites]

Okay, is it Krikorian or Kirkorian? I can't get a consensus out of that Post article.
posted by Naberius at 1:17 PM on August 14, 2013

Okay, is it Krikorian or Kirkorian?

Who cares? Sounds like he's one of those uneducated filthy Eastern Europeans come to steal our jobs, welfare, and women. {/}
posted by Aizkolari at 1:23 PM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

1. Yes, they actually used the word "peasantry."

I'm on board for pointing and laughing at the NRO but I'm not quite sure why the term "peasant" strikes you as so outlandish. It's not synonymous with "serf" and it seems an appropriate descriptor for many traditional rural communities in Mexico.
posted by yoink at 2:32 PM on August 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

It's not synonymous with "serf" and it seems an appropriate descriptor for many traditional rural communities in Mexico.

Then it should also be an appropriate descriptor for many rural communities in Kansas. I'd be real curious how well it'd go over.
posted by restless_nomad at 2:34 PM on August 14, 2013 [9 favorites]

Then it should also be an appropriate descriptor for many rural communities in Kansas.

That doesn't really follow, does it? Are Kansas and rural Mexico really so deeply similar, economically and socially, that anything one says about the one must automatically be true of the other?

You seem to think "peasant" is a pejorative term. I can see where you're getting the idea from, but I think it is basically mistaken. You might want to consider the work, for example, of La Via Campesina and their use of the term. There are plenty of socialist groups in Mexico who embrace the identity of rural farmers as "peasants."
posted by yoink at 2:44 PM on August 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

The people I personally know who have immigrated to the United States from Mexico (and Nicaragua and El Salvador and Honduras) are not peasants. Both of my parents were born in rural communities in the United States and I don't think they ever identified as peasants. "From a farm" or "from out in the country" would have been the description used if such a classification was required. Like Country Music. Did Johnny Cash ever describe himself as a peasant?
posted by bukvich at 2:47 PM on August 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

The people I personally know who have immigrated to the United States from Mexico (and Nicaragua and El Salvador and Honduras) are not peasants.

So? The claim was not "every single Sth American person who emigrates to the US is a peasant." The claim is that there is a large peasant class in Mexico from which a substantial number of immigrants are drawn. That would seem to be an uncontroversial claim, unless you have some strange notion that the only people who use the term "peasant" are obese oligarchs chortling as they instruct their limo driver to accelerate towards the mob outside their mansion gates. Which would be an odd assumption, but seems to be prevailing here.
posted by yoink at 3:02 PM on August 14, 2013

I have been saying for years that people got here and then stayed put because the old seasonal migration simply got too dangerous.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 4:02 PM on August 14, 2013

God, how many of these The Conventional Wisdom About A Thing Is Incredibly Wrong And Actively Harmful articles does there have to be before people actually start to notice the world isn't as they see it?!
posted by JHarris at 4:03 PM on August 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

The NRO article uses the term to describe United States cities, expressly stating that U.S. cities are populated by Mexican peasants.

No, it says that Mexican peasants have moved, in large numbers, to US cities. How is that statement not accurate? And why would any US publication not refer to US cities as "our" cities? Would that use of the possessive offend you if it were a liberal politician saying "our cities should be places of refuge and welcome for immigrants from all lands"? This just seems like weird nitpicking because you don't like what they're saying. Neither do I, but why don't we just confine the criticism to the stupid policy they're advocating and their misunderstanding of the impact of immigration on US society and leave the perfectly legitimate use of the word "peasantry" and the possessive pronoun out of it?
posted by yoink at 4:16 PM on August 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

I don't like that they're referring to all Mexican immigrants as peasants.

Then I have joyful news for you: they do not do that. Nowhere do they say or imply that "all Mexican immigrants come from a peasant background." They merely state that a large number of Mexican peasants have emigrated to US cities. I'm sure you'll be relieved to learn this.

First, because it's inaccurate to call them anything other than "U.S. cities."

This is getting more than a little loopy. If an American person is speaking to an American audience the phrase "our cities" means exactly the same thing as "U.S. cities." You know, just as if we were to say "our notoriously stupid War on Drugs" it would be clear that that meant "the United States's notoriously stupid War on Drugs."

I realize that what you're imputing to this phrase is a kind of protectionist "our precious bodily fluids have been corrupted by the evil Mexican invaders" sentiment but while I am quite sure that some such animus does, in fact, animate the NRO's position on immigration, you're kinda flailing hopelessly here attributing that specific sentiment to phrases which are utterly anodyne, and which if you came across them in an article with an agenda of which you approved would not trouble you in the least.
posted by yoink at 4:40 PM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think the reason why I find the reference to "peasants" so jarring is that Americans of European descent 1) generally like to pretend that such class divisions disappeared when their ancestors immigrated and 2) most probably descended from peasant stock. I certainly did. Americans like to think that peasantry disappeared when they stepped off the boat. The term "peasant", to my ears, carries with it a heavy tone of classist/racist nonsense.

That a Mexican person in Mexico freely refers to themselves as a "campesino" does not remove the sting when I hear it in English. It's not hard to think of terms that a group may willingly apply to themselves, yet others need to use with care. Or the think that a term may be more loaded in one language than in another.
posted by ambrosia at 5:11 PM on August 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

So if "peasant" is out, what is the current euphemism?
posted by IndigoJones at 5:28 PM on August 14, 2013

I responded that the NRO does not provide any evidence for that assertion, unless the term "peasants" is being used to describe all Mexican immigrants

This is just utterly illogical. Nothing in the NRO's statement depends upon the proposition that "all Mexican immigrants" are from a peasant background. All they are saying is that many Mexican migrants are peasants who have chosen to move north rather than move to Mexican cities. That's it. The "all Mexican immigrants are peasants" thing is a chimera that you've conjured out of nowhere. And are you seriously claiming that the claim "many Mexican peasants have emigrated to the US" needs documentation?

That a Mexican person in Mexico freely refers to themselves as a "campesino" does not remove the sting when I hear it in English. It's not hard to think of terms that a group may willingly apply to themselves, yet others need to use with care.

Here, read Mexican Peasant Strategies: Alternatives in the Face of Globalization (pdf). It's a paper by David Barkin, an economist (and editor of The Review of Radical Political Economics) who teaches at the Xochimilco Campus of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in México City and works extensively with impoverished indigenous populations in Mexico. Or read this if you have access to Project Muse (and even without it reading just the titles of the works he is reviewing--many of which use "peasant" in the title--and the abstract of his review, you'll see that "peasant" is alive and well in academic discourse about certain rural populations in Mexico and elsewhere in the world and that it carries, in those contexts, absolutely no pejorative connotations whatsoever. It is, in fact, typically the leftist and variously marxisant writers who are particularly interested in the peasantry and their fate. Yes, the word can be used in a "the peasants are revolting!" kind of way, but the mere fact that someone uses the term "peasantry" simply cannot be used as an index of their political beliefs or as proof that they are vile tory scum (not that proving that the contributors to the NRO are vile tory scum is in any way difficult).
posted by yoink at 5:38 PM on August 14, 2013

I think it's very far from settled that it's out ... I'm pretty much hearing that suggested for the first time here, and I suspect that an entirely understandable desire to find as much as possible wrong with the NRO is behind it.

It basically means "country folk" -- and in that translation is considered a compliment in much of America. Granted, like "rookie", it can be used disparagingly if applied to someone who believes it should not be applied to them, and English-speakers tend to find it charged and prefer other cognates, but its primary use is not only inoffensive, it's about as close as you can generally get to a single word that corresponds to what they call themselves. Compare paisan' in traditionalist Italian-American communities.
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:46 PM on August 14, 2013

Mod note: Folks, make an effort to have a discussion and not just wildly fling poo about, please?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:55 PM on August 14, 2013

Us peasants have dung, not poo. Please.

Fear of immigrants, legal or otherwise, just seems so counter-intuitive that I'm not really sure there can be any actual thought behind holding that position. It's all tribal "othering" bullshit.

In that, light, though, are there any countries in the world who have essentially "open" borders, or super-lightweight immigration requirements? How do they fare?
posted by maxwelton at 6:56 PM on August 14, 2013

[...] are there any countries in the world who have essentially "open" borders, or super-lightweight immigration requirements? How do they fare?

According to this article in National Geographic, "Canada has adopted one of the most open immigration policies in the world". They seem to be doing alright. As did the US before restrictive, new rules came into effect in the 1960s.
posted by Triplanetary at 10:39 PM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Serious question: When did people start exclusively using the term"migrants"? Is this a long-lasting British thing and I just never noticed? Is it politically correct now? (What the hell is wrong with "immigrants"?) It seems to me that "migrants" just conjures up images of gypsies or hippies travelling around everywhere in the world and never staying in one place for long, living on the road. Whereas "immigrants" actually makes sense when describing someone from one country who crosses one border into one other specific country, targeted purposefully. Am I wrong? Please, someone explain this to me so I know what terminology to use.
posted by quincunx at 4:27 AM on August 15, 2013

"Immigrants" is centred on the country that people are moving to, whereas "migrants" is referring to people moving around. Therefore talking about immigration privileges certain things about the country that people are moving to at the expense of the picture of migration as a whole, which is the thing that is actually of signifiance.

If you're worried about population, it's less useful to think only about immigration (people moving to a particular country) than to think about patterns of migration (people moving into and out of a country, and between different countries in general) .The number of people moving [back] to Mexico might be similar to the number of people moving from Mexico, resulting in a much smaller net number of people of Mexican extraction than if you simply look at the immigration numbers.

(That's certainly been the case in the UK, especially when talking about migrants from Europe, particularly Poland and Eastern Europe.)

Because of this, I consider talk of Immigration, particularly if it's scarifying, as a right-wing canard. My wife has begun seriously wondering whether it's a good idea to carry her (Japanese) passport around with her. Until the recent Tory Government racist tub-thumping (the Racist Van, for example), I'd have thought that a ridiculous over-reaction, but now I'm not so sure.
posted by Grangousier at 5:12 AM on August 15, 2013

zombieflanders (quoting "a wildly misleading article by National Review's Mark Krikorian"): Rather than reducing the inflow, however, this intensification of enforcement caused the probability of return migration to fall even faster, ultimately reducing it to an all-time low of 0.08 in 2010.

But... that's EXACTLY the premise! Militarization of the border reduced border crossings, because the Mexicans stopped going back to Mexico.

Is he being ironic (a plant, working from inside The National Review, perhaps)? Or stupidly missing the damned point?

Or am I?

From the FPP's "response in the National Review Online":

That’s supposedly the case because before there was any meaningful enforcement, Mexican migrants happily crossed back and forth across the border with no thought of staying.

Anyone who lived in a border town pre-2001 could confirm that. Hundreds of Mexican day-workers walked north on each of several highways in the mornings, and south in the evenings, during harvest times. They'd be met in town by trucks that would take them to farms, and return their valuable workforce in the evenings.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:33 AM on August 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

yoink: 1. Yes, they actually used the word "peasantry."

I'm on board for pointing and laughing at the NRO but I'm not quite sure why the term "peasant" strikes you as so outlandish. It's not synonymous with "serf" and it seems an appropriate descriptor for many traditional rural communities in Mexico.

Are you seriously suggesting it's not a dogwhistle racial slur?

Prove it. Name one instance where "peasant" is used seriously (unironically, nonhumorously) and not perjoratively to describe modern farmers of any predominantly white nation.
posted by IAmBroom at 11:42 AM on August 15, 2013

But... that's EXACTLY the premise! Militarization of the border reduced border crossings, because the Mexicans stopped going back to Mexico.

Is he being ironic (a plant, working from inside The National Review, perhaps)? Or stupidly missing the damned point?

Or am I?

That's from the response to NRO, sorry if that wasn't clear.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:07 PM on August 15, 2013

Prove it.

Try following the links I helpfully provided. I already proved it. And the "OMG, it's not used about contemporary predominantly white nations" thing I have also addressed. The economic conditions of farming in Kansas are simply not the same as the economic conditions of farming in rural Mexico. I will happily provide you links, however, describing white people as "peasant farmers" in the past--links written by left wing, socially progressive academics. Do you really need me to do that for you, though?
posted by yoink at 12:24 PM on August 15, 2013

What the RNC chair considers 'horrific' and 'racist'

It's certainly welcome news that the chair of the RNC considers "self-deportation" horrific and racist, but it also comes as quite a surprise. As recently as a year ago, Priebus helped oversee the completion of his party's national platform, and guess what it said on immigration? "Republican delegates hammered out an immigration plank calling for tough border enforcement and opposing 'any forms of amnesty' for illegal immigrants, instead endorsing 'humane procedures to encourage illegal aliens to return home voluntarily,' a policy of self-deportation."

As recently as October 2012, the presidential nominee of Priebus' party was still defending "self-deportation" on national television. As recently as April 2013, a prominent House Republican was defending the concept, too.

If Priebus now considers this horrific and racist, I'm delighted, but I hope he'll clarify his position a bit more. Does the RNC chair reject the policy or the use of the literal rhetorical phrase? Is Priebus offended by the idea of making undocumented immigrants' lives so miserable that they'll leave the country voluntarily, or does he support the policy while finding himself offended by the label?

posted by zombieflanders at 7:05 AM on August 16, 2013

I followed all the links you helpfully provided and I don't see a single instance in them where "peasant" is used in the way IAmBroom is asking you to prove it is used.

You need to read a little more carefully. IAmBroom asked me to prove "it's not a dogwhistle racial slur." I proved that by showing how commonly the term is used by people who clearly are not using it that way. Let me add some recent examples from Mother Jones--I assume you'll agree that commentators in Mother Jones aren't likely to be using the word "peasant" as a "dogwhistle racial slur"?

Here's Kevin Drum, talking about a hypothetical current day "Indian peasant."
Here's Jaeah Lee, talking about the threat to present day peasant farmers from GMO crops.
Here's Tom Engelhardt talking about Chinese peasants, past and present.
Here's Tom Philpott talking about peasant farmers in Guatemala.
More Chinese peasants from Michael Klare.
Ooh! Some C20th Russian peasants (OMG!!! White peasants! Hold the phone!) from Kiera Butler.
Oh look! Here's Tom Philpott referring to the fact that the population of Mexico was, in the mid-C20th "largely made up of peasant farmers." Wow, what a racist he must be!

I could go on and on and on and on--and I'm only taking examples from one left-wing publication here. But I think I've proved my point (yet again) pretty thoroughly. It makes no sense, at all, to point to someone using the word "peasant" to describe large numbers of rural Mexicans and claim that that proves that the person using that word is racist or is trying to portray Mexicans in a bad light. They may in fact be both racist AND trying to portray Mexicans in a bad light, but you aren't gleaning that from their use of the word "peasant" or "peasantry." That word is basically innocent in that particular context.

I'm confused by this statement. It looks like you're agreeing that U.S. agricultural workers - even at the very bottom of the economic scale - are not referred to as "peasants," but you're explaining that you believe that to be the case not because of xenophobia or racism or ethnic bias, but instead because the bottom of the U.S. agricultural economic scale is simply not as low as what exists in Mexico.

No, "peasant agriculture" describes a certain kind of economic/agricultural system. It isn't a particularly precisely defined system, so it's always a little fuzzy at the definitional edges (it's one of those Wittgensteinian "family resemblance" categories). But it's pretty clear that farmers in contemporary Kansas are NOT peasant farmers while it is perfectly reasonable to describe farmers in the rural hinterlands of contemporary Mexico--at least in many instances--as peasant farmers. All we're talking about here is the fact that the economic conditions of most "predominantly white" countries in the world have changed such that it is difficult to find in them the kinds of agricultural practice and social organization that are characteristic of peasant agriculture. There are no "predominantly white" cultures in the world that we would describe as "matrilineal," either--but that doesn't somehow show that "matrilineal" is a pejorative, racist term.

IAmBroom only asked you to name one instance. So you don't need to provide a bunch of links. Just one example.

Really? O.K., let's stick to Mother Jones then: here's one. Steve Fraser and Joshua Freeman talking about the US immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. OMG! They use the "p-word"! If you want more, you can always Google "Italian peasants" or "French peasants" or "German peasants" or "English peasants" or just "European peasants" and you'll find lots and lots and lots and lots of examples for you to while away your time with.
posted by yoink at 2:13 PM on August 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

Tennessee Republican Rejects Trembling Little Girl’s Request For Help at Town Hall Meeting

Tennessee Republican State Rep Scott DesJarlais was presiding over a Tea Party town hall meeting in Murfreesboro, Tennessee this past week, and was approached by a Hispanic girl, eleven-year-old Josie Molina.

Josie took the mic and, with a trembling voice, said to DesJarlais, “Mr. DesJarlais, I have papers but my daddy doesn’t, what can you do to make sure he can stay?”

Josie’s father is currently in deportation proceedings and she is undergoing therapy to deal with the anxiety.

DesJarlais thanked her for the question but said, “the answer remains the same. We have laws and we should follow those laws.” The pro-Tea Party, mostly anti-immigration crowd cheered loudly in approval to his response.

DesJarlais, who is a doctor and anti-abortion, has had numerous affairs, including with some of his patients, and once pressured a mistress to have an abortion. But, he says that “God has totally forgiven him” for that.

posted by zombieflanders at 6:54 PM on August 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

yoink: IAmBroom asked me to prove "it's not a dogwhistle racial slur." I proved that by showing how commonly the term is used by people who clearly are not using it that way.

No, you've only shown that some people use the term in ways that are not dogwhistles. Primatologists use the term "macaca" literally - it's a type of monkey - but that hardly proves George Allen wasn't dogwhistling when he referred to a reporter as one. In fact, it rather cements the idea.

Referring to Mexican immigrants as peasants equally cements in the reader's mind an image. And that image is a dogwhistle.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:49 AM on August 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

GOP Congressman criticizes constituent’s Mexican flag

“I don’t want to put this gentleman on the spot, but it does, just a little bit—okay, honestly, more than a little bit—it does strike me as a bit odd that I would get a question as to why we shouldn’t just automatically make it legal for people who didn’t come here under a legal circumstance with a flag of another country draped around his neck,” Womack said.

That generated a round of applause from the audience, which a local report pegged as about 250 people. Womack continued after it subsided, still looking away from the attendee who had raised the question.

“I want to say this to you…this suggestion, good old friendly advice, that if you want to win friends and influence people on the issues that you’re talking about, I would suggest a little different approach in terms of my attire when I’m appealing to an audience like this,” Womack said. ”I mean, that’s just a little friendly advice, ok?”

The Mexican flag has been a contentious issue in immigrations debates. Critics of immigration reform during the 2006-2007 immigration debate often decried the display of flags from Latin American countries at pro-reform marches as a sign of divided loyalty. These complaints struck some as unfair given that Irish or Italian flags are generally seen as a harmless indicator of cultural pride. Nonetheless, the perception has prompted some immigration activists to make a special point of emphasizing the American flag at pro-reform events.

“Congressman Womack respects this young man’s pride in his heritage,” Claire Burghoff, a spokeswoman for Womack, told MSNBC in an e-mail. “However, he firmly believes actions such as this—whether out of pride or provocation—are not constructive to the obviously divisive immigration debate.”

posted by zombieflanders at 1:15 PM on September 9, 2013