Aliens: From Mars to Arizona

In light of Arizona's recent enactment of a new immigration law, 3 Quarks Daily author Justin Smith explains on his own blog why the presence of undocumented Hispanic populations in southwestern US states is not quite the same as Polish or Russian nationals overstaying their visits to New York or Chicago.

For a classic example of misplaced journalistic balance, read this New York Times article on the immigration 'debate' in Arizona. See how level-headed and concerned the supporters of the bill are! They don't hate Mexicans, see, it's just that they don't want them to be there illegally. 

The problem with this is that the American West was only able to appear as Anglo territory, for a spell, as a result of a relatively recent (late 19th century) and concerted campaign of ethnic cleansing. It is astounding to me that people have to be reminded of the historical fact that in order for the American West to become white, other people had to be displaced. To the extent that Americans recognize this at all, they tend to remember the displacement as targeting Native Americans, in contrast with 'Hispanics'. But what this distinction misses is that the population of Mexico is somewhere between 60 and 80% Mestizo, and that for them the line drawn by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 reflects no natural or deep-seated historical boundary.

A couple of days ago, I suggested to my co-authors that one of us should try and weave a story out of three different news items which to me seemed vaguely connected (here, here and here). No one offered to try. But the same challenge on my Facebook page produced a taker. Norman Costa, another 3 Quarks Daily author cobbled together a three part story. You see, just substituting the word Martian in relevant places in the original stories tied things together and produced a fair parody of the nationalistic xenophobia that is sweeping some parts of America. See Dr. Costa's piece below the fold. But before that, here is a clip from Jon Stewart's Daily Show.

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More Expatriates Give Up Martian Citizenship

Most are Headed to Earth – Many Have Family in America

Scientist Steven Hawking says, “Don't Let Them Land Here.”

Viking One City, Mars — Amid mounting frustration over taxation and banking problems, small but growing numbers of Martians are taking the weighty step of renouncing their Martian citizenship.

“What we have seen is a substantial change in mentality among the Martian expat community in the past two years,” said Jackie Bugnion, director of Martian Citizens Off-Planet, an advocacy group based in the Martian capitol, Viking One City. “Before, no one would dare mention to other Martians that they were even thinking of renouncing their nationality. Now, it is an openly discussed issue.”

The Martian Register, the government publication that records such decisions, shows that 5,020 Martian expatriates gave up their Martian citizenship or permanent residency status in the last quarter of 2009. That is about one percent of the 5.2 million Martians estimated to be living off-planet.

Still, 5,020 was the largest quarterly figure in years, more than twice the total for all of 2008, and it looms larger, given how agonizing the decision can be. There were 2,358 renunciations in 2008 and 7,437 last year. Waiting periods to meet with consular officers to formalize renunciations have grown.

Anecdotally, frustrations over tax and banking questions, not political considerations, appear to be the main drivers of the surge. Expat advocates say that as it becomes more difficult for Martians to live and work off-planet, it will become harder for Martian companies to compete.

Martian expats have long complained that Mars is the only industrialized planet to tax citizens on income earned off-planet, even when they are taxed on their planet of residence, though they are allowed to exclude their first 91,400 Martian dollars in off-planet-earned income.

One Martian business executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of sensitive family issues, said she weighed the decision for 10 years. She had lived off-planet for years but had pleasant memories of service in the Mars Marine Corps.

Yet the notion of double taxation — and of future tax obligations for her children, who will receive few Mars services — finally pushed her to renounce, she said.

“I loved my time in the Marines, and Mars is still a great planet,” she said. “But having lived on Earth for 20 years and having to pay and file while seeing other planets’ nationals not having to do that, I just think it’s grossly unfair.”

“It’s taxation without representation,” she added.

Stringent new banking regulations — aimed both at curbing tax evasion , preventing money from flowing to terrorist planets — have inadvertently made it harder for some Martian expats to keep bank accounts in America.

Some  Mars-based banks have closed Martian expats’ accounts because of difficulty in certifying that the account holders maintain American addresses.

“It seems the new anti-terrorist rules are having unintended effects,” Daniel Flynn, an expat who lives on Neptune, wrote in a letter quoted by the Martians Off-Planet Caucus in the Mars Congress, in correspondence with the Martian Treasury Department.

“I was born in Very Cold Springs in 1939, served my planet as an army officer from 1961 to 1963, have been paying Martian income taxes for 57 years, since 1952, have continually maintained Martian voting residence, and hold a valid Martian passport.”

Mr. Flynn had held an account with a Mars bank for 44 years. Still, he wrote, “they said that the new anti-terrorism rules required them to close our account because of our address outside Mars.”

Kathleen Rittenhouse, who lives in Very Hot Springs, on Venus, wrote that until she encountered a similar problem, “I did not know that they placed me in the same category as terrorists, arms dealers and money launderers.”

Andy Sundberg, another director of Martian Citizens Off-Planet, said, “These banks are closing our accounts as acts of prudent self-defense.” But the result, he said, is that Martian expats have become “toxic citizens.”

The Martians Off-Planet Caucus, headed by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, and Representative Joe Wilson, has made repeated entreaties to the Martian Treasury Department.

In response, the Martian treasury secretary wrote Ms. Maloney on Feb. 24 that “nothing in Martian financial law and regulation should make it impossible for Martians living off-planet to access financial services here on Mars, from their planet of residence.”

But banks, Treasury officials note, are free to ignore that advice.

Relinquishing Martian citizenship is relatively simple. The Martian must appear before a Martian consular or diplomatic official on a foreign planet and sign a renunciation oath. This does not allow a Martian to escape old tax bills or military obligations.

Now, Martian expats’ representatives fear renunciations will become more common.

“It is a sad outcome,” Ms. Bugnion said, “but I personally feel that we are now seeing only the tip of the carbondioxdeberg.”  

Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Illegal Martians

PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the nation’s toughest bill on illegal Aliens into law on Friday. Its aim is to identify, prosecute and deport illegal aliens.The move unleashed immediate protests and reignited the divisive battle over Martian immigration reform nationally. Even before she signed the bill at an afternoon news conference here, President Obama strongly criticized it.

Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty service members in the Rose Garden, he called for a federal overhaul of Martians immigration laws, which Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon, to avoid “irresponsibility by others.”

The law, which proponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest Martian immigration measure in generations, would make the failure to carry Martian documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain Martians suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have called it an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Martians regardless of their citizenship status.

The political debate leading up to Ms. Brewer’s decision, and Mr. Obama’s criticism of the law — presidents very rarely weigh in on state legislation — underscored the power of the Martian immigration debater.

Mars said  that it was worried about the rights of its Martians and relations with Arizona. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles said the authorities’ ability to demand Martians' documents was like “Nazism.”

Legal Martians, in particular, who were not long ago courted by the Republican Party as a swing voting bloc, railed against the law as a recipe for Martian profiling. “Governor Brewer caved to the radical fringe,” a statement by the Martian Legal Defense Fund said, predicting that the law would create “a spiral of pervasive fear, community distrust, increased crime and costly litigation, with nationwide repercussions.”

While police demands of Martians documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that Martian immigrants meet federal requirements to carry Martian identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.

Ms. Brewer acknowledged critics’ concerns, saying she would work to ensure that the police have proper training to carry out the law. But she sided with arguments by the law’s sponsors that it provides an indispensable tool for the police in a state that is a magnet for illegal Martians. She said Martian profiling would not be tolerated, adding, “We have to trust our law enforcement.”

Ms. Brewer and other elected leaders have come under intense political pressure here, made worse by the killing of a rancher in southern Arizona by a suspected Martian smuggler a couple of weeks before the State Legislature voted on the bill. His death was invoked Thursday by Ms. Brewer herself, as she announced a plan urging the federal government to post National Guard troops at inter-planetary space ports.

The bill, sponsored by Russell Pearce, a state senator and a firebrand on Martians immigration issues, has several provisions.

It requires police officers, “when practicable,” to detain Martians they reasonably suspect are in the country without authorization and to verify their status with federal officials, unless doing so would hinder an investigation or emergency medical treatment.

It also makes it a state crime — a misdemeanor — to not carry Martian immigration papers. In addition, it allows people to sue local government or agencies if they believe federal or state Martians immigration law is not being enforced.

Stephen Hawking Martians Warning: Don't Let Them In!

So says renowned physicist Stephen Hawking: Martians should be avoided, lest we want to risk becoming an imperial outpost.

Imagine if millions of Martians came to Earth to plunder its rich natural resources. Says Stephen Hawking: Martians could do that precisely – sort of like 'Avatar' in reverse, looking to mine Easilyobtanium..

According to renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, Martians are not to be trifled with. In his new Discovery Network TV series, Mr. Hawking says Martians are leeches and parasites, and that we don’t want them down here on Earth, since they’re likely to view our precious blue marble of a planet as a tasty, exploitable resource.

That’s right, nothing to see here, Mr. Martian. Just move along. We hear Pluto is lovely this time of year – last pseudo planet away from the Sun, on the right.

“If too many Martians move here, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the native Americans,” Hawking said on his show.

OK, so we shouldn’t be down on the beach waving “hello” to those incoming galleons, metaphorically speaking. Should we be peering through the trees – in an effort to spot illegal Martians in secret, before they spot us?

What about other galaxies and planets?

In the past, we earthlings have launched spacecraft with drawings of humans and directions to our planet. We have beamed radio waves towards the heavens as a sort of electromagnetic greeting. This sort of active Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is just the sort of thing Hawking believes we should not do.

“It's too late for the Martians.They're already here, procreating like rabbits, making curry, and eating garlic. In Oxford, they have their own M.P.”

Martians looking for more off-planet colonies might not necessarily be friendly, writes Carrigan in an echo of Hawking’s warning.

“Alien immigration from Mars could have an agenda behind it,” the Fermi scientist writes. “This agenda might not necessarily be positive. Indeed, it might be malevolent.”

Comments

[Elatia Harris]

Extremely funny, Norman. Most cogent, both of you. Worthy responses to Ruchira's challenge!

[razib]

"To the extent that Americans recognize this at all, they tend to remember the displacement as targeting Native Americans, in contrast with 'Hispanics'. But what this distinction misses is that the population of Mexico is somewhere between 60 and 80% Mestizo"

what's that supposed mean? one drop of colored blood makes you of-one? i'm not too interested in contemporary politics, but the history of the southwest was characterized by a lot of brutality on the part of mexicans, creole, mestizo, and indigenous, against the native peoples (google "pueblo revolt"). they're not all the same, nor did they have common interests. clear from the history of the apaches. if a conservative lumped in all the native populations of the new world into one category i'm sure that would elicit a wave of 'quotes' and 'contextualization' that it's eurocentric to view them as an undifferentiated mass without diversity. but if it's in the interests of the your politics, i guess that's fine, hey?

also, on the last US census 50% of the members of la raza put their race down as "white." fwiw.

[Dean C. Rowan]

Another response to the Hawking story.

I'm afraid nobody--conservative, liberal, or correct--would tolerate anybody else bearing even one drop of Martian blood. One drop, there goes the neighborhood. And as for Columbus, it is worth taking account of the full story.

[narayan]

In Hispanic America a Mexican (mejicano/mejicana) is a person who is a citizen of Mexico. If by creole one intends criollo, a variety of meanings may be inferred: a person with a white ancestor; native to America (whatever that means); 'de origen espanol' (excuse the typography); and slyly, criolla could mean coward. Mestizo, similarly, is one of mixed white and original native ancestry - drops of blood be damned. Pre-Columbian people of the Americas are indigenas. (To Hispanics the man was Cristobal Colon, so I should think pre-Colonic would have been more appropriate, or better still, BC, now that that term has been relegated to the PC dustbin).

The 'one drop' rule does not work the same in Latino & Luso America as it does in Norte America; if at all, it works the other way around. In Brasil at least, branco can be practically anyone with some white blood and mostly has to do with ones looks, and indigena and indio mean BC people.

Talking of 'indigenous' brutalizing 'native peoples' makes little sense syntactically either in English (where they mean the same thing) or in Spanish (where native=>natural=>natal has to do with where one was born). Further, there was no such entity as Mexico, hence no Mexicans, at the time of the Pueblo Revolt. Of course by that time the armies of New Spain must have included many of mixed race, but can you imagine such a foot soldier declining to brutalize a puebla, saying perhaps, "No thanks, we're mestizo!".

The Wiki article doesn't mention creole or mestizo, and I am not inclined to scour the Internet for credible evidence of their brutality as I firmly believe that the wearing of googles can be blinkering.

[razib]

narayan, out of curiosity, what was the point of your comment? i think mine was clear. some mexican american nationalists portray a model whereby the border moved, and we took their land. groups like the zuni or apache might wonder at this framing. the details you point to are generally correct, but they're not relevant. i could do the same thing to the block quoted above, but that would be besides the point (that is, semantic problematizing). lol. nice with the quotations, that's what i mean!

[narayan]

Razib : I sensed more outrage than point in your original. Forgive me if I was toying with you. At least it provoked you into making a clearer statement of what you had in mind. A simple 'huh?' wouldn't have served. Your original required too much interpolation and head scratching for my addled brain - I invoke the excuse of dying grey cells. From this and other blogs, including your own, I know that you have a lot of good ideas and information to convey and I would like to benefit from them. As a writer you surely understand that clarity is in the eye of the beholder, not that you're anywhere near Homi K. Bhabha.

[Ruchira]

And I thought it was only about the law and not ethnicity.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575213883276427528.html