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Monday, August 2,1993
The Battalion
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The Battalion Editorial Board
Jason Loughman, editor in chief
Mark Evans, managing editor
Stephanie Pattillo, city editor
Dave Thomas, night news editor
Mack Harrison, opinion editor
Kyle Burnett, sports editor
Susan Owen, sports editor
Anas Ben-Musa, Aggielife editor
Billy Moran, photo editor
Editorial
Border order
Immigration policy ensures safety
Last week. President Clinton un
veiled a new immigration policy
that should go far in helping the
United States regain control of its
borders and curb the number of ter-
wrist incidents here at home.
The plan calls for providing addi
tional funcling to border patrols,
making it harder for people who
may pose a security threat to enter
the country undetected.
In addition, it would speed the
process of denying asylum to those
people whose requests are found
unmerited.
"The simple fact is that we must
not, and we will not, surrender our
borders to those who wish to ex
ploit our history of compassion and
justice," Clinton said.
The State Department would re
ceive $45 million to upgrade its
database that lists the names of sus
pected terrorists and international
criminals, people who should not
be allowed in the country.
Perhaps if this had been done
several years ago the World Trade
Center bombing could have been
prevented. The man who authori
ties believe is behind the bombing,
Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, entered
the United States in 1990 and was
granted a "green card," or perma
nent resident alien status.
When the Immigration and Natu
ralization Service discovered Rah
man's revolutionary background, it
tried to deport him.
However, the current deportation
process is so bogged down that the
case is still being tossed around in
the courts. Even if the courts do
find Rahman deportable, they have
yet to consider his request for politi
cal asylum, a procedure that cur
rently takes at least one year before
action is taken.
Administration officials contend
that under Clinton's proposal Rah
man and his followers would have
been denied visas and not allowed
into the United States to begin with.
And if Rahman had come request
ing political asylum, the process in
volved would be cut to five days.
More than half the money needed
to fund these proposals would come
not from tax increases but from a
surcharge on visas and an increase
in the immigration inspection fees
international travelers pay when
they arrive in the United States.
In the past year, the United States
has seen terrorists bomb its build
ings and kill and injure its citizens.
It has stood idly by and watched as
immigrants continued to flood
across its borders unchecked.
Clinton's plan offers a viable so
lution to regain control over these
borders and takes needed steps to
ensure the safety of the United
States and its people.
Songs open windows into the past
Slave spirituals carry messages that still apply today
S ongs and stories are handed
down from generation to genera
tion because they tell of a partic
ular history. They display the beauty
and sufferings of the heritage their
ancestors were a part of. This is char
acteristic of every group — but par
ticularly African-Americans.
These songs were of an open, spiri
tual nature that spoke of survival and
the long enduring hope for freedom.
The slave spirituals of old carried
hidden messages of dignity and faith
that told of a new world they would
someday inherit.
For instance, the song "Steal
Away" states:
Steal away, steal away to Jesus!
Steal away home, I ain't got long to stay here!
My Lord calls me,
He calls me by thunder, The trumpet sounds within a my soul,
I ain't got long to stay here.
Steal away home to Jesus ....
In certain ways, the old spirituals were the slaves' efforts
to communicate with one another honestly and without
fear of being reprimanded by the slave masters.
Slaves talked among themselves about a world where
justice reined and good people were not punished or kept
in chains.
They spoke among themselves about the retribution re
ceived on judgement day : How all slaves would be grant
ed their rewards for the hard, dehumanizing years they
spent in bondage while the white master would receive his
just punishment for the chains he'd wrapped around their
ankles.
A perfect example of this belief can be found in "Go
Down, Moses
When Israel was in Egypt's land
Let my people go
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
Let my people go
Go down, Moses, 'way down in Egyp Hand,
Tell ole Pharoah, let my people go.
No more shall they in bondage toil
Let them come out with Egypt's soil
The Lord told Moses what to do
Afire by night, a shade by day ...
We need not always weep and moan
And wear these slavery chains forlorn ....
And then, some spirituals were created to praise God for
the strength he'd given them to go on. They did not believe
that it was the inherent power of their bodies alone that
sustained them through 12 to!6 hours each day in the hot
sun and the occasional times they were caught without
enough food to eat.
This back-breaking labor was their cross to bear because
if Jesus could bear hardship, so should they:
... He never said a mumbalin word.
They nailed him to the tree,
And they pierced his side, And the blood came streamin down,
He never said a mumbalin word, As he hung his head and
died —
Be still and know,
For he nev>er said a mumbalin word ....
The African-American gospel culture is so very rich be
cause of the open, real pain and agony displayed by those
who created them as a tangible source of hope.
The feeling of being a dignified, unjustly punished peo
ple in the eyes of their God is deeply enmeshed in the spiri
tuals and myths of our ancestors.
In spite of the ugliness and debasement the slaves suf
fered, they were still able to create a world about them that
contained beauty and long lasting hope.
These songs and stories were passed on to us as teachers
of ourselves and how we came to be. They imparted the
ideas that beauty was to be found inside the self, no matter
how much ugliness existed in the world. They also taught a
wisdom that doesn't come from books, but only from liv
ing. And these two things — inner beauty and wisdom —
can never be taken away.
These spirituals even speak of our lives today, acting as
a window through which we look back to see the heritage
from where we were borne. They still speak of our hope for
freedom and justice centuries later.
They still tell us of the beauty within ourselves and give
us a spiritual hand we can hold on to in trying times; and
the same hand that impels us to reach our aspirations. Only
through understanding this aspect of our past can we better
understand where we are headed.
Jones is a senior psychology major
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GUEST
COLUMN
J. MAURICE
BELL
T he Mosher In
stitute for In
ternational
Policy Studies is
scheduled to close
at the end of Au
gust. Its loss
would be to the
detriment of Texas
A&M, its students,
faculty, former stu
dents and the state,
of Texas. Ed
Mosher established
it to give the states
of the Southwest a
voice in the forma
tion of American
foreign policy. Its closing would signal
the end of this opportunity.
The Mosher Institute has affected the
policy making process in countless
Ways during its short life. Before
scheduled arms control negotiations ac
tually began, it organized an interna
tional symposium on arms control in
January 1990 that "saved at least two
years of negotiating over false issues"
according to Oleg Grinevsky, the Soviet
Ambassador to the Negotiations on
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
This past winter it sponsored a con
ference in San Antonio on the military's
role in the war on drugs in the United
States and South America. Government
officials from the Pentagon and the
Drug Enforcement Agency marveled at
the quality and usefulness of the confer
ence. Considering that both of these
symposiums were held immediately af
ter the hectic Christmas-New Year's
holiday, the turnouts demonstrated the
significance of both conferences.
Now the Mosher Institute is plan
ning a conference on international and
industrial terrorism to be held later this
year, provided it is still open. It already
has lined up a number of speakers in
cluding William Colby, former Director
of Central Intelligence, William Ses
sions, the former FBI Director, and Dick
Cheney, former Secretary of Defense
under President Bush.
The conference has taken on added
relevance after the April bombing of the
World Trade Center in New York and
the arrests in June of Muslim militants
who allegedly plotted to bomb the
United Nations building in New York
and assassinate a U.S. Senator.
The institute helps the students and
faculty of A&M as well. It has worked
with the student leaders of Memorial
Student Center organizations. The for
mer director of the institute. Dr. Ronald
Hatchett, especially gave freely of his
time and was instrumental in helping
bring to A&M distinguished speakers
such as Dr. Pavel Palazchenko, personal
advisor to former Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev.
Also, the institute's doors are open to
A&M students for research of their
choice on military policy, foreign policy,
and international trade policy issues.
This research is the kind of outside-the-
classroom work that is as important a
component of a college education as any
group of classes a student takes.
On a more personal note, the Mosher
Institute also serves the former students
of A&M. As a Texas Aggie, Class of
'89,1 worked in Angola, Zaire, Cabinda
and Nigeria and spent time in the Mid
dle East and Central America.
I have been working as a research as
sociate at the Mosher Institute doing po
litical analysis on Latin America since
November. However, I will leave in Sep
tember to begin the Latin American
Studies Program at Georgetown Univer
sity in Washington. I will pursue an
honors certificate in International Busi
ness Diplomacy from the Foreign Service
School at Georgetown in addition to a
Masters Degree in Area Studies.
I am very adamant when I say my
work at the Mosher Institute was in
strumental in Georgetown offering me
a slot in their international affairs pro
gram. It is one of four schools consid
ered to be the best in the world in inter
national affairs; the others are Oxford,
Cambridge and the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard.
The overseas work I did obviously
helped, but the work experience under
Dr. Hatchett and Dr. Frank Vandiver
probably carried the most weight. For
this I will be indebted forever to these
two gentlemen and the Mosher Institute.
Other students and former students
will be cut off from the same opportuni
ties that were open to me if the institute
closes. While it is true that a top busi
ness school brings acclaim to a universi
ty, it is also true that former students in
positions of power in the State Depart
ment, the National Security Agency,
and the World Bank would benefit
Texas A&M. Consider, if you will, that
Fred McClure, '72, was on President
Bush's staff at the White House and
played a key role in bringing the Bush
Presidential Library to Texas A&M.
Since I began undergraduate school
here in 1985, Texas A&M has been turn
ing itself into a "world class universi
ty." With the Bush Library due to arrive,
the school's administration would be re
miss in allowing the only international
policy institute in the southwest to sink.
But it will be the students and former
students of Texas A&M who would real
ly lose out on the chance they presently
have to make their voices heard in the
foreign policy of our country.
J. Maurice Bell is a research associate
with the Mosher Institute for International
Policy Studies
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