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February 21, 2004
Candidate Howard
Kaloogian comes up with a lulu proposal.
By Patrick Osio,
Jr./HispanicVista.com
Racism is the mother
of all ignorance, and racist-ignorance
has a multiplier effect seeking through
its own ignorance, new venues for its
justification through constant new
expressions. Those afflicted with
racist-ignorance lose sight of reason,
logic and good sense – they simply
charge blindly ahead truly believing
within themselves theirs is a just cause,
God is on their side, and freedom is at
stake, ignoring their own ignorance. In
this political year, we have yet one more
case in point – meet Howard
Kaloogian, California candidate for the
Republican nomination for the US Senate.
Kaloogian didn’t
invent the anti immigrant political
campaigning as a potent appeal to voters
during economic downturns, he’s not
that smart. But in his ignorant attempt
at finding something new to add – a
new twist – he came up with a lulu.
The poor man reasons
that the way to stop illegal immigration
is to cut off their ability to send money
back to their families – oh yes, you
read right. Over the radio waves
Kaloogian proposes to bar wire transfers
of money abroad without proof of legal
status in the US – this he said,
would encourage illegal immigrants to go
home. “We have to find ways to
remove the benefits of being here
illegally for the illegal aliens that are
here,” he was quoted.
So if California
voters were to elect Kaloogian as their US
Senator, he would propose a law barring
anyone but US citizens and legal
residents from wiring money out of the
country. "When you win with
me," Kaloogian said, "you'll
never have to ask, `What did we
win?'" - Wow, is he right!
It doesn’t take
much imagination to see this poor sap in
front of the US Senate making this
proposal and the fifteen-minute recess
thereafter while the laughter subdues.
Therein is part of
the problem with racist-ignorance.
Kaloogian is incapable of seeing how
preposterous his idea is. He would
convert every clerk at a money-wiring
service office into immigrant officers.
He doesn’t bother thinking the
process through – or even keep up
with the times.
An immigrant opens a
bank account – he/she sends the
family an ATM card – they draw funds
out of the account wherever in the world
there is a banking system. Presto no
wiring money – that is already in
place, and gaining in popularity as the
most inexpensive method of ‘sending’
remittances.
In California we
know that Kaloogian is aiming at
Mexicans, ignoring the presence of
immigrants from a host of other countries
– he wants voters to concentrate on
the nearly $14 billion sent to Mexico in
2003. In his ignorance, Kaloogian sees
this as ‘them doing us wrong’
– never mind they worked for the
money; nor on the benefits it brings to
Mexico (and other countries receiving
remittances), and the direct and indirect
benefits to the US.
For many countries,
remittances are a substantial share of
national income. In Latin America and the
Caribbean, for example, remittances in
2001 equaled 7.9% of the gross domestic
product (GDP) of Ecuador, 8.5% of the GDP
of Honduras, 9.3% of the GDP of the
Dominican Republic, 13.5% of the GDP of
Jamaica, 13.8% of the GDP of El Salvador,
and 16.2% of the GDP of Nicaragua. On
average, a 10 percent increase in the
share of international migrants in a
country’s population will lead to a
1.9 percent decline in the share of
people living in poverty ($1.00 a person
a day).
On October 1, 2003 Assistant
Treasury Secretary Abernathy’s
Testimony on Remittances to House
Financial Services Committee provided the
above information and added, “There
is a rather paternalistic view that
remittances are used for so-called
non-productive purposes. This idea is
wrong. Remittances are used for the same
variety of purposes that people here in
this country use income, first and
foremost, in improving the living
standards of their own family. Just as in
the United States, families devote a
large share of that income for investment
in physical and human capital. For
example, one large bank that is active in
this market told us that they estimate
that 17% of remittances in the Mexican
market are used to finance home
improvement and construction. As another
example, one study has shown that
families in El Salvador that receive
remittances keep their children in school
longer than families that do not receive
remittances.”
The Mexican
government estimates that remittances
provide income to 13% of its population
– that’s 13 million people. I
am sure Kaloogian can’t see how this
benefits the US – and that is a
symptom of racist-ignorance.
________________________________________________________
Patrick Osio, Jr. is
Editor of HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com).
Contact at: posiojr@aol.com
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