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Talk about the Eyes of Texas. While the Governor is feeding reporters stories about how he's going to let you patrol the border from your laptop, his staff is printing final drafts of a memo that will deploy National Guard, not actually to enforce immigration law, says everyone from Alberto Gonzales on up (and down), but to help with construction, transportation, and translation.Construction, transportation, and bilingualism, let's see. The words alone could apply to repairing schools and getting kids to summer language classes, but no, that end of the issue can't be touched by the Governor's pen. Instead, the border is going to get a wall. Migrant workers are going to be turned into criminals who will need transportation to jail, apparently with someone in the vicinity who can explica the whole thing in Spanish.
Meanwhile, Halliburton will be standing by to build camps as needed. Voice of America reports that a new detention program for immigrants in the Del Rio sector seems to be working well enough to apply elsewhere: "the secret to the program's success is the application of existing law and the use of penalties spelled out in the statutes. " Instead of sending folks back to Mexico, they get six months and a criminal record. Border crossings in the Del Rio sector are down 50 to 70 percent.
Activists stretched to the limit by immigration policy in Washington and military policy in Iran seem to be standing this one out, even as the infrastructure of empire comes home to roost. The difference between the Minutemen last year and the giant immigrant marches this year is that the Minutemen are still on the side of history in the making, if not the promise of history to come.
