The culture of caution - Essay Example

1. What does Patterson mean by the culture of caution Use his analysis of the life of Marcus Garvey and the immigrants' experience to illustrate how that theory plays out. How does he link the life of Garvey, Powell and Farrakhan and immigrants to that culture of caution You may also draw on the lasting effects of the plantation to help explain that culture of caution. By culture of caution Patterson means the tendency to be insecure, which has been instilled into West Indians, especially Jamaicans, as a result of the numerous challenges that The Caribbean islands have presented to these West Indians over time. Challenges like slavery, poverty, overpopulation, the post-emancipation plantation system, eroded peasant hillsides, earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes, which flatten or burn everything in sight from time to time, and are capable of pulling whole cities under the sea. This insecurity has also brought about a theory that Caribbeans, especially the Anglophone Caribbeans perform much better abroad than they do on their homeland. For example, Marcus Garvey of Jamaica was able to galvanize Black Americas into action, to defend their human rights, decades ago George Padmore of Trinidad was also able to champion postwar African independence movement, has brought about a high degree of paternity for the nation of Ghana, as the first nation to be independent in Black Africa. Arthur Lewis of Saint Lucia was unable to gain employment or opportunities that fit his talents at home, so he migrated to England and then the United states, where he had an outstanding public service career and was also a distinguished academician which led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for his amazing work on Third World economics. The plantation system also contributed to this sense of insecurity. 2. Functions of immigrant organizations in North America (U.S). The functions of the immigrant organizations in North America include the implementation of the various immigration laws, issuance of travel documents, carrying out Checks for Case Processing Fees, and the checking of immigrants into the US to ensure that they qualify under the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The immigrant organizations also make sure that criminal aliens and immigrants involved in crime, who have been incarcerated within the federal, state or local prison facilities are not just let into the community again, after they might have completed their sentences. Immigrant organizations avail field level law enforcement officers of the training programs required of them, like programs for correctional personnel, and providing certified instructors to conduct such trainings. Immigrant authorities use the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) to determine when a high-risk alien overstays his visa or fails to report his address and activities after 30 days in the United States. It is vital for state and local police officers have access to information, and are able to act upon such information when they meet an NSEERS violator, for example, in a traffic stop. Also, if a criminal alien is purposely avoiding contact with law enforcement agencies, this might be the only possible way to stop him, and maybe defuse a possible terrorist attack. Other functions of immigration authorities include the Arrest of Suspected Terrorists, Observations of Potential Terrorist Activity, Interception of immigrant or Alien Smuggling and Arrest of Absconders The immigrant organizations in the United States also serve to ensure that immigrants into the United States qualify under the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The second half of the 19th century was characterized by an increase in westward expansion, and industrialization. Also, there was an influx of millions of immigrants. A lot of native-born Americans began to clamor for implementation if immigration restrictions, but others supported the Americanization of these immigrants, because they felt that such restrictions might drastically reduce the supply of unskilled labor. The immigration law of 1924 was implemented by the immigrant organizations in North America, resulting in a great restriction of immigration until the mid-1960s. Since the 1980s though, a large number of new immigrants come to the United States. It is estimated that the proportion of foreign-born people in the population of the United States was as high as 11 percent in 2000. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, there was a significant increase in foreign travel, and immigration laws were liberal. Thus, there was also an influx of other people of non-European origin. There was also large-scale immigration that was caused by a change in American immigration policy, brought about by the implementation of the Immigration Act of 1965, by immigrant organizations in North America (U.S). 3. The political influence of Caribbeans between 1930 and the 1970s. Before 1930, more than 95,000 people migrated to the United States from the Caribbean islands. Most of these migrants came through Panama, due to the fact that the Panama Canal was constructed mainly by workers from Jamaica and Barbados. This migration continued to increase during the first three decades of this century, reaching figures of about 290,000 migrants. The racist immigration law of 1924, however, put an end to this trend of mass immigration into the United States. This resulted in lowering of migrant statistics between the 1930s and 1969 to an average of about 2,000 or less, annually. This first set of migrants from the Caribbeans defined the image of the Caribbeans in America, and Colin Powell is a major success story among this first set. The early immigrants came mainly from lower middle and solidly working-class backgrounds. Powell's background fit this pattern: his father was working class, and his mother's high-school background would have placed her firmly in the middle class at a time when less than 2 percent of Jamaicans had that much education. his light brown complexion is another pointer to this, and is typical of the early immigrants. After 1970, and up till today, there has been a migration of a second wave of migration of West Indians from the Caribbean, and The Hart-Cellar Immigration Reform Act of 1965 came just on time for the West Indian culture of migration. Only three years earlier Britain had closed its doors, blocking a growing movement by the West Indian working classes to the former metropole. The pent-up migratory force broke on America right after. By the late '60s, Jamaica alone was sending more than 10,000 people per annum. Between1960 and 1993 a total of 845,588 arrived, 57 percent from Jamaica. West Indians of the second wave are more complex in social origin than their predecessors. They come mainly from the two extremes of the islands' talent pool: the most and the least able. The upwardly mobile working poor have largely stayed put, as the modernization of the islands' economies has opened up opportunities at the top of West Indian society. Since colonial elites no longer block internal mobility as they did in the 1920s, talented lower middle class and working-class people can now move into the upper middle class instead of emigrating. More educated than American blacks and, like all immigrants, motivated and driven, these early West Indians quickly monopolized the role of intermediary between whites and African Americans. In the early decades of the twentieth century, black Americans remained generally hostile to the Democratic Party, and by the late '30s and '40s it was West Indians who cracked the racist walls around Tammany Hall and came to represent blacks in mainstream electoral politics. These included J. Raymond Jones, the first black to lead the Tammany machine; Bertram Baker, New York's first black state assemblyman; and MacDonald "Mac" Holder, Brooklyn's preeminent power broker for over half a century. References. John, G. "On Being a Caribbean Person," Patterson, O. The Caribbean roots of Powell's decision; the culture of caution. Kasinitz, P. Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race. Kobach, K. W. State and Local Authority to Enforce Immigration Law A Unified Approach for Stopping Terrorists. 2004. from http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/back604.html Read More