BY JODY BENSON
Los AIamos
I fully agree with Kathleene Parker’s mandate that students learn the truth about immigration. https://losalamosreporter.com/2026/02/12/lte-are-students-being-taught-all-immigration-history/
Since the London Company of Virginia founded Jamestown in 1607 thus beginning the decimation of the native populations, immigration provided cheap labor for resource extraction. With British expansion, those who owned the resources imported indentured servants, criminals, and slaves. When those workers fought for their rights, the US didn’t become a nation of equals; rather, those with the assets simply imported different cheap labor. And despite the Revolutionary War’s rallying cry of no taxation without representation, only White, landowning males could vote.
While Whites in the Southern climate required African slaves (legally residing in the US, but illegal as human beings), the North’s industrialization brought the onslaught of potato-starved Irish. The over-breeding, idol-worshipping Catholics worked on the gangs building railroads and canals until those men refused to be exploited anymore. Then the railroads imported Chinese. They were among those legally residing in the US, but illegal as human beings. After the Chinese laborers finished the infrastructure that united the continent, they were deported or faced decades of discrimination. While White Irish could change their names and blend into the population, Chinese couldn’t blend in by changing their name to Smith.
Although the slaves won their freedom, Congress broke all Lincoln’s promises. The South wasn’t required to compensate families for generations of free labor. The people weren’t freed to Liberty and Justice, but economic servitude. Farm laborers finally organized for human dignity.
To undercut those demands, landowners imported migrant labor, mostly from Mexico, whom they could pay even less than Black Americans. Starving Black laborers would be forced to stagger back to their White employers for even less pay and worse conditions. Didn’t work.
The 1965 event Kathleene Parker relates is the strike by California (primarily) grape pickers who earned from $100 to $1000 for half-a-year’s work. To break the strike, farm owners brought in Mexican workers with the goal of intimidating American workers into accepting a lower wage and conceding to being abused and dehumanized while picking grapes for wine for the masters’ tables. Cesar Chavez wasn’t against immigrants; he was outraged at exploiting immigrants to undermine the livelihoods of vulnerable Americans.
Our system requires a constant supply of people more vulnerable than the current, underpaid, overworked Americans. The GOP’s threat of immigrant hoards surging in to rape, pillage, eat your dog, steal your job, turn your sons and daughters into gays and lesbians, offer transgender surgeries and abortions during lunch in high school restrooms, is a powerful way to turn the attention of the most exploited Americans from the real source of the economic and cultural catastrophe that is the Miller/Trump Regime.
The point is that this Regime, not undocumented immigrants, is America’s raper, pillager, job-killer, and denier of benefits to the workers who Make America Great. In the exploiters’ point of view, only Donald Trump is America. The economic rewards of making him great belong to those few individuals with enough money to pay to tear down the East Wing, build his Golden Arch, give gifts of property, planes, golden trophies/golf clubs/crowns/crypto/medals, and be invited to parties hosted by a friend who gives girls away as party favors. The rest of us, even if we’re here legally, are being stripped of our legal rights.
By the way, there is not one native American in the current Regime. It’s a violent gang of immigrants behaving both illegally and immorally. In that regard, I reiterate: I agree with Kathleene Parker’s mandate to learn the truth about immigration. As we do, let’s learn about American laws, and what it means to act legally and morally. Then, informed, and as our students are demanding, we can go after the truly dangerous immigrants and bring them and their victims to justice. The world is watching.