Foreign Nationals Quotes
This Government Instruction to British North African Consular Personnel summarized the policies of the British government with regard to British citizens who run afoul of the law while in Morocco and other North African countries. Essentially, the British almost always insisted on a treaty with the foreign governments that gave jurisdiction to the British Counsul to try any Englishman who was accused of a crime. The national government could not put a British Subject on trial of punish him regardless of the crime. Where local people were the victim of the alleged crime, the national government could send an observer to the trial that the British consul held. To many, this was arrogant and insulting to the host governments. As high handed as it seems, there were and still are great problems with differing concepts of justice, different rights protected and different levels of corruption. In many countries “important” local officials can control or influence the decisions of courts, witnesses can be easily bribed lie, and even judges can readily be bought. Even today, the issue of criminal jurisdiction is one of the most important subjects of negotiations between nations. The United States has similar agreements with Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, Germany, Japan and other nations where we have armed forces. Generally, the better and more sophisticated and honest the host government justice system is, the more willing modern nations are to allow them jurisdiction over criminal matters. But generally, in the world today, these treaties are the exception. Most criminal jurisdiction is with the national government where the alleged crime takes place.
The importance of this quotation is twofold. First immigrants were given exemption from conscription into the army which Russians were subject to. Second, note that civil servants were also drafted. One of the main purposes of this was to be able to bring the few Russians who were literate into the government. If they were literate, they tended to have better options than the civil service and a draft was needed. But Russia was modernizing and the nation needed civil servants to perform the ministerial and administrative functions of a modern state.
JOUAM was a nativist workingmen's organization founded in 1853 to resist the competition for jobs from immigration. See related quote for membership criteria. At its peak it had over 200,000 members. “Mechanics” was the term used for a wide variety of skilled craftsmen from plumbers to bricklayers. JOUAM is the oldest fraternal order in America.
In the aftermath of 9-11, there was a call for giving the law enforcement agencies more authority and the Patriot Act was passed in haste and fear. Some law enforcement personnel then went about picking up Arab Americans and in many cases holding them incommunicado without any charges. No terrorists were discovered by this process and yet good American citizens were abused, traumatized and insulted. In our zeal to protect American freedom, we actually began to resemble some of the capricious and abusive practices of our undemocratic enemies. There were other abuses allowed under the Patriot Act, but at the time of this writing the extent had not yet been revealed, but the refusal of the authorities to make public the national security benefits suggests that there was not much national security benefit and much abuse.
This ordinance opened the door somewhat to slavery again as Austin said it would “permit families to bring the necessary and indispensable house servants and laborers.” Earlier Mexican laws had abolished slavery in most of Mexico but left the door open in Texas. See {613642} and {613644}.
