Sessions: 'A Good Nation' Doesn't Admit 'Illiterate' Immigrants
Source: Talking Points Memo
By Nicole Lafond | January 17, 2018 8:13 am
Attorney General Jeff Sessions preached the administrations message on merit-based immigration on Fox News Tuesday night, claiming a good nation doesnt admit illiterate immigrants.
What good does it do to bring in somebody who is illiterate in their own country, has no skills and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it, Sessions said, speaking on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Sessions criticized Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for reportedly reciting during a meeting Emma Lazarus poem thats historically affiliated with American immigration and the Statue of Liberty.
Not really a case you would expect a Republican to be making, Carlson said, referencing Grahams use of the poem. Why arent there more articulate Republican members of Congress making the case that you just made?
-snip-
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/sessions-good-nation-doesnt-admit-illiterate-immigrants
ck4829
(35,090 posts)not smart enough to ask why they are getting a raw deal from us... now you want to bring immigrants into this?! Seriously?!"
bucolic_frolic
(43,281 posts)An illiterate is an opportunity to gain a worker, a consumer, a taxpayer, to teach skills. Kind of surprising the source, really, because some church organizations are active in transitioning foreigners and teaching skills. They get a parishoner.
There just is no empathy in the current administration's policies. No goodness at all.
unblock
(52,317 posts)so by definition, they were economically productive members of our society, at least when they arrived. if they're no longer in the workforce, it's likely out of problems arising out of the expired status of their immigration papers. even if they were illiterate, they were nevertheless productive, which negates his argument.
Freethinker65
(10,048 posts)Also illiterate in what language? Their native language? And at what age? So a white experienced professional female is undesirable if she comes with a less skilled husband and young illiterate children?
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)GOP=Blissful Ignorance.
Yup,gota git them white folk from Norway.
Got to be kidding!
MontanaMama
(23,337 posts)Sounds so Jesus-like, doesn't he?
duforsure
(11,885 posts)Doesn't allow an illiterate or illegitimate president to reign terror on its country, or appoint a racist AG either.
LittleGirl
(8,291 posts)True Dough
(17,320 posts)And I mean that in an agnostic sense of the word.
ExciteBike66
(2,374 posts)The one who came over as an indentured servant...
QC
(26,371 posts)so that mule is already out of the barn.
Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,505 posts)Dopers_Greed
(2,640 posts)Considering that his boss is illiterate.
shraby
(21,946 posts)Initech
(100,102 posts)Bleacher Creature
(11,257 posts)I have no doubt that he believes what he said, but it would also help his frayed relationship with Trump if he got back in the good graces with the lunatic fringe - even if he does so to protect himself from being fired.
dvduval
(260 posts)How many languages can you speak Mr. Sessions? Maybe you have only achieved literacy in one? How competitive can our children be when other countries like China Require children to learn a second language, and are kicking their butt in math and science too?
PSPS
(13,614 posts)Here's an old joke:
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? -- A polyglot.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages? -- Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks only one language? -- An American.
Irish_Dem
(47,382 posts)One reason people came here is so their children could be educated and literate.
turbinetree
(24,720 posts)then fucking leave traitor, and lying one at that.....................
UpInArms
(51,284 posts)Attorney General
Stuart G
(38,445 posts)Sessions backs up Trump and the "asshole" comment..That is what it is...
I hope every immigrant in this country, votes against these jerks.
Fummel
(20 posts)For obstruction of justice along with Trump.
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(12,591 posts)Sessions is a moral absolutist, certain in his own warped view of right and wrong. "Good nations don't allow illiterate immigrants," "Good people don't smoke marijuana."
He even makes up facts to fit his narrative (a trait common to Republicans in general and the Trump administration specifically). What evidence does he have to back up the assertion that terrorists have entered the country through the visa lottery program? What about our home grown terrorists (neo-Nazis, KKK, white supremacists)? They entered the country through unregulated birth canals. Should we build a wall around women's vaginas? (Actually, I think my Dad would have done that to protect my kid sister from all the high school boys that came sniffing around.)
"Where's your evidence?" has got to be the automatic response whenever Sessions or tRump or any Repug makes a demonstrably false statement. Otherwise we let them create a fantasy world of alternative facts--one that benefits only them, the very rich, and their corporate masters.
Cold War Spook
(1,279 posts)the Statue of Liberty is no longer relevant.
itcfish
(1,828 posts)never met an illiterate immigrant and I live in NYC. You may have immigrants that do not speak English, but they are literate in their own language. I have also met very highly educated immigrants. Bachelors, Masters, PhDs. Again no ILLITERATES.
zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)Even the ones from Texas can't be THAT bad.
Rollo
(2,559 posts)hypotwit
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)See how stupid you sound Jeff?
riversedge
(70,299 posts)good one!
BillyBobBrilliant
(805 posts)The GOP state governments of the south (i.e. to produce illiterate residents).
Sophia4
(3,515 posts)Jeff Sessions. That's who.
He needs to look at the family history websites.
Many of our ancestors came here as slaves and indentured servants. That is if we came here long enough ago.
And indentured servants and slaves sent their children to school as soon as they could. Today, the descendants are scientists and teachers and preachers and lawyers and engineers, farmers and grocers and construction workers -- doing all kinds of productive things.
Jeff Sessions needs a lesson in history. I suggest that he go to the law library and look up some of the earliest case law in the US that concerned indentured servants. He should know better.
Here is where he went to school himself:
After attending Wilcox County High School in nearby Camden, Sessions studied at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, graduating with a B.A. degree in 1969. He was active in the Young Republicans and was student body president.[14] Sessions attended the University of Alabama School of Law and graduated with a J.D. degree in 1973.[15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sessions
It's very sad when an attorney general knows so little about American history.
We all know the history of slavery and civil rights, but what was an indentured servant?
Indentured servants
Between one-half and two-thirds of white immigrants to the American colonies between the 1630s and American Revolution had come under indentures.[2] However, while almost half the European immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies were indentured servants, at any one time they were outnumbered by workers who had never been indentured, or whose indenture had expired, and thus free wage labor was the more prevalent for Europeans in the colonies.[3] Indentured people were numerically important mostly in the region from Virginia north to New Jersey. Other colonies saw far fewer of them. The total number of European immigrants to all 13 colonies before 1775 was about 500,000; of these 55,000 were involuntary prisoners. Of the 450,000 or so European arrivals who came voluntarily, Tomlins estimates that 48% were indentured.[4] About 75% of these were under the age of 25. The age of adulthood for men was 24 years (not 21); those over 24 generally came on contracts lasting about 3 years.[5] Regarding the children who came, Gary Nash reports that "many of the servants were actually nephews, nieces, cousins and children of friends of emigrating Englishmen, who paid their passage in return for their labor once in America."[6]
Several instances of trepanning[7] for transportation to the Americas are recorded such as that of Peter Williamson (17301799). As historian Richard Hofstadter pointed out, "Although efforts were made to regulate or check their activities, and they diminished in importance in the eighteenth century, it remains true that a certain small part of the white colonial population of America was brought by force, and a much larger portion came in response to deceit and misrepresentation on the part of the spirits [recruiting agents]."[8] One "spirit" named William Thiene was known to have spirited away[9] 840 people from Britain to the colonies in a single year.[10] Historian Lerone Bennett, Jr. notes that "Masters given to flogging often did not care whether their victims were black or white."[11]
Indentured servants could not marry without the permission of their master, were sometimes subject to physical punishment and did not receive legal favor from the courts. To ensure that the indenture contract was satisfied completely with the allotted amount of time, the term of indenture was lengthened for female servants if they became pregnant. Upon finishing their term they received "freedom dues" and were set free.[12]
. . . .
The American and British governments passed several laws that helped foster the decline of indentures. The UK Parliament's Passenger Vessels Act 1803 regulated travel conditions aboard ships to make transportation more expensive, so as to hinder landlords' tenants seeking a better life. An American law passed in 1833 abolished imprisonment of debtors, which made prosecuting runaway servants more difficult, increasing the risk of indenture contract purchases. The 13th Amendment, passed in the wake of the American Civil War, made indentured servitude illegal in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude
As for education?
Public education in Europe did not become common until into the 19th century, maybe 200 years ago.
ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_England
Maria Theresa of Austria was one of the leaders in the movement in which governments funded public education:
Aware of the inadequacy of bureaucracy in Austria, and wishing to improve it, Maria Theresa reformed education in 1775. In a new school system based on the Prussian one, all children of both genders from the ages of six to twelve were required to attend school. Education reform was met with hostility from many villages; Maria Theresa crushed the dissent by ordering the arrest of all those opposed. Although the idea had merit, the reforms were not as successful as they were expected to be since no funding was offered from the state; in some parts of Austria, half of the population was illiterate well into the 19th century.[119][138]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa
The basic foundations of a generic Prussian primary education system were laid out by Frederick the Great with his Generallandschulreglement, a decree of 1763, authored by Johann Julius Hecker. Hecker had already before (in 1748) founded the first teacher's seminary in Prussia. His concept of providing teachers with the means to cultivate mulberries for homespun silk, which was one of Frederick's favorite projects, found the King's favour.[3] It expanded the existing schooling system significantly and required that all young citizens, both girls and boys, be educated by mainly municipality-funded schools from the age of 5 to 13 or 14. Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education.[4] In comparison, in France and Great Britain, compulsory schooling was not successfully enacted until the 1880s.[5]
The Prussian system consisted of an eight-year course of primary education, called Volksschule. It provided not only basic technical skills needed in a modernizing world (such as reading and writing), but also music (singing) and religious (Christian) education in close cooperation with the churches and tried to impose a strict ethos of duty, sobriety and discipline. Mathematics and calculus were not compulsory at the start and taking such courses required additional payment by parents. Frederick the Great also formalized further educational stages, the Realschule and as the highest stage the gymnasium (state-funded secondary school), which served as a university-preparatory school.[6]
Construction of schools received some state support, but they were often built on private initiative. Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow, a member of the local gentry and former cavalry officer in Reckahn, Brandenburg, installed such a school. Von Rochow cooperated with Heinrich Julius Bruns (17461794), a talented teacher of modest background. The two installed a model school for rural education that attracted more than 1,200 notable visitors between 1777 and 1794.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system
England was a late learner when it came to establishing a strong public education system.
In August 1833, Parliament voted sums of money each year for the construction of schools for poor children, the first time the state had become involved with education in England and Wales (whereas a programme for universal education in Scotland had been initiated in the seventeenth century). A meeting in Manchester in 1837, chaired by Mark Philips, led to the creation of the Lancashire Public Schools' Association. The association proposed that non-denominational schools should be funded from local taxes. Also 1837, the Whig former Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham presented a bill for public education.[16]
In 1839 government grants for the construction and maintenance of schools were switched to voluntary bodies, and became conditional on a satisfactory inspection.
In 1840 the Grammar Schools Act expanded the Grammar School curriculum from classical studies to include science and literature. In 1861 the Royal Commission on the state of popular education in England, chaired by the Duke of Newcastle, reported "The number of children whose names ought [in summer 1858 in England and Wales] to have been on the school books, in order that all might receive some education, was 2,655,767. The number we found to be actually on the books was 2,535,462, thus leaving 120,305 children without any school instruction whatever."[17]
In fee-paying public schools, which served the upper-class, important reforms were initiated by Thomas Arnold in Rugby. They redefined standards of masculinity, putting a heavy emphasis on sports and teamwork.[18][19]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_England#National_schools_and_British_Schools
The history of public education in the South is something no southerner should be proud of. Jeff Sessions should read up before speaking.
Republican governments during the Reconstruction era established the first public school systems to be supported by general taxes. Both whites and blacks would be admitted, but legislators agreed on racially segregated schools. (The few integrated schools were located in New Orleans).
Particularly after white Democrats regained control of the state legislatures in former Confederate states, they consistently underfunded public schools for blacks which continued until 1954 when the United States Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.
Generally public schooling in rural areas did not extend beyond the elementary grades for either whites or blacks. This was known as "eighth grade school"[17] After 1900, some cities began to establish high schools, primarily for middle class whites. In the 1930s roughly one fourth of the US population still lived and worked on farms and few rural Southerners of either race went beyond the 8th grade until after 1945.[18][19][20][21]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_United_States
Horrors! Jeff Sessions' got some larnin to do.
Paladin
(28,272 posts)And a Good Nation wouldn't put up with a racist scofflaw for its attorney general.
We're not a very Good Nation, as things currently stand.
yellowcanine
(35,701 posts)That is all.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)I think that many immigrants over our history were illiterate. Especially those from over a century ago.
The Italians? Some of the Irish? Mexicans? (I now current admin spits on Mexicans and thinks they're sh*holes, but the fact is we have many productive citizens of Mexican descent, and more than a few politicians!)
My ancestors from France in the late 1700's? They could have been illiterate. Almost certainly they didn't speak English.
riversedge
(70,299 posts)Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)Leave the low wage crap for the native born.
EarthFirst
(2,904 posts)The tenuous grasp of the English language by the GOP consituency is mind-boggling!
Full, outright American citizens.