Los Angeles - A few Vietnamese Americans watched the Saturday 25, 2006 massive rallies for immigrant rights in LA with curiosity. If you’re an illegal immigrant, then you already violated a law, so why are you on the street protesting? The United States has a border, and it has the rights to build a wall along that border if it wants to.

Others watched the whole event with indifference. “Illegal immigrants” or “undocumented immigrants”, either way what does it have to do with Vietnamese in America?

In fact, illegal immigration shouldn’t be unfamiliar with Vietnamese overseas. There are more than a million who migrated illegally overseas.

When millions of Vietnamese escaped from Vietnam by boat during the cold war, they violated many laws. They left without passports, and they entered other countries without visas.

Leaving Vietnam, many violated Vietnam’s law. After all, the communist government did not allow its citizens to escape overseas. That is why there are tens of thousands of Vietnamese living overseas who have spent time in jail in Vietnam before they managed to finally escape.

When Vietnamese boat people managed to get to neighboring countries – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, etc – they violated the law of those countries. After all, none of these countries had an open door policy to Vietnamese refugees who entered their territories.

If those countries are generous, they would give Vietnamese the label “Political refugees.” They let the refugees live in a camp, take money from the United Nation to feed them Those countries that are more generous, they let the refugees get out of the camp to go to work to make money, even when the refugee is technically a violator of their migration laws.

Then when their generosities ran out, they started labeling those who came later as “economic refugees” or “illegal immigrants.” Then they set up an interview process to decide whether or not a person is a legitimate political refugee or not.

So here’s the real lesson: When the host countries like you, they give you a nice label, like “political refugee.” When the host countries don’t like you, they give you a bad one, like “illegal immigrant.”

When you escape from a communist country to a country that is anti communist, like a Vietnamese refugee in Thailand, then Thailand refers to you as a real refugee. But if the same refugee escaped to Cambodia, an ally of Vietnam, then he is considered an “illegal immigrant.”

Human Rights Watch has monitored many incidents in which Montagnards tribal people from Vietnam, escaping political oppression in Vietnam to Cambodia, were captured by Cambodian authorities, beaten and then repatriated to Vietnam, only to be imprisoned and then beaten some more. The reason? Cambodian government official, Sao Sokha, simply answered: “They are illegal immigrants.”

Kind and a government will give you a different label. Unkind and it will call you an “illegal immigrant.”

So those who came up from Mexico, Central America, and South America through illegal means to the United States, haven’t they violated American laws? If not legal, then aren’t they “illegal immigrants”?


Maybe yes. Maybe no.

Let’s look at another example in Vietnam, which is under dictatorship.

In Vietnam, whatever you need to do, you need to grease the machine. To build a house you have pay bribe. To open a restaurant you have to pay bribe. To open a store you have to pay bribe.

Bribery becomes a culture, part of the business, and way of life.

So let’s say, one day the police, instead taking bribe, put the cuffs on you and take you in, wouldn’t that make you angry?

Though technically bribery is illegal, but when an entire society itself is awash in corruption, the arrest of a small fry who participates in a way of life that is largely accepted and condoned by everyone involved is something intolerable. It represents something lacking in generosity, honesty, and decency on the part of the authorities.

So is the treatment “illegal immigrants” in the United States.

In the United States, many business sectors need “illegal immigrants” to work for them far under minimum wages. To build a house, you need “illegal immigrants.” To open a restaurant, you need “illegal immigrants.” To open a store, you need “illegal immigrants.”

Employing “illegal immigrants” become a culture, part of the business, and way of life.

So suddenly, in the new immigration bill these same people are considered felons, to be handcuffed for being “illegal immigrants” – The law may appears appropriate, but it lacks generosity, honesty and decency.

But the reason why so many people went protesting on the street is because they do not believe this bill really aims at protecting the borders of the United States. Nor do they believe that the United States wants to deport the 11 million immigrants without papers out of the country. What they believe is that the House of Representatives has created a bill that basically points the finger at them and yells, it’s “those people” who are law breakers, despite the fact that the American society has, for several decades now, relied heavily on the labor resources of those migrant workers who have no papers.

People are not essentially protesting the legitimacy of this law, but they are protesting the dishonesty and indecency hidden behind it.

In a communist country, when a law that is petty and inhumane is passed, no one bothers to speak up. But when a country like the United States is doing the same, well, it’s something quite unacceptable.

Source Immigration Issue

The whole thing is a bad joke. I usually tell the US right wing monkeys that unless and until they get the US government to crack down on the US employers, I am not listening to anything that these monkeys say about illegal immigration.