Current Immigration Problems Illustrate American Long-Term Memory Loss
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04 June 2010
President Obama met with the Governor of Arizona June 3 2010 to talk about the much maligned immigration law recently passed in Arizona which makes it possible for the authorities to ask random people to prove that they are in the country legally. Supporters of the law claim that authorities won't be able to profile people on the street. However, in my opinion, the only way to enforce this law is if police make snap judgments and jump to conclusions about whoever it is they have stopped for some other reason. What's worse is that we as Americans appear to have no understanding of history and seem to think that our willpower can produce a cut and dry solution to this incredibly difficult situation.
To be honest, discussions about the immigration law in Arizona really ticked me off. Despite the current discomfort which non-latino residents of Arizona feel about immigration, it's ironic as hell that so many people whose ancestors may have been involved directly with (or prospered as a result of) the massacre of Native Americans, would be so downright hateful towards another group coming into this country in a different time in history. Those people of history and illegal immigrants from Mexico don't have the same goals.
Every person in this country who isn't Native American is an immigrant of some form. The ancestors of a large portion of this nation came here illegally and engaged in a system of thievery and murder the likes this country wouldn't see again until... well....until they began to buy slaves from Africa. But that's a whole other despicable part of American history.
I know we don't really want to hear that and we want to make endless excuses for why some of our ancestors made heinous decisions to further their own human existence. But am I supposed to see something gravely wrong with Jose, or Juan, or Pablo or Maria coming here to work so he/she can keep his/her family from starving? Is it supposed to be okay that such desperate actions draw the ire of a current generation of children who have systematically benefited in some way from their forefathers' treachery? Seriously?
The majority of people from other parts of the world aren't coming here with the same intentions some of our forefathers had. There are not Armadas of ships coming from the East to colonize Arizona nor is there an invasion of people from Mexico who seek to occupy our sovereign country by busting down our doors, pointing machine guns in our faces, searching our houses, taking over control of our natural resources and refusing to learn our language as we disintegrate into chaos. (Psstt. That stuff should sound familiar to you.) That, we could deal with! Maybe!
What's happening is we are being hit in the pocketbook by illegal immigrants. And of course for many of us the pocketbook is where our hearts are located so the pain is almost unbearable.
>Both sides?
I understand the dichotomy of the two sides. On one hand, I think some people who are anti-Arizona, so to speak, should come off of their high horse. Nobody really owes these people a damn thing if they came to this country by breaking its laws. Screaming for rights in a country you illegally entered -- rights for which you don't legally qualify -- is the definition of gall. Those people want to share in the wealth of this nation without our permission and cut in line ahead of other immigrants who seek to enter the hard, legal way.
To be blunt, marching in the streets and trying to force white people to accept the fact that you are here is not a way to gain acceptance because the first and oldest collective American reaction to outside agitation is to take up arms and "defend our way of life". I use the words 'white people' because they are currently the majority.
For most periods of history, defending our way of life had a negative racial connotation to it. But take note: Despite the obvious division and hellish consequences, they fought with their own fellow Americans -- from the more outrageous civil war to the current more tame tea party as they chant of 'taking our country back' while claiming everybody else is a Nazi. So what makes illegals think they won't be the targets of such wrath as well?
Further, if such folk end up becoming a drain on an already stressed system, those in charge will seek to handle the situation with the most obvious response.
On the other hand, for years this nation's more well-off Americans have used the dirt cheap labor of illegal immigrants for everything from gardening to raising their children. The hypocrisy and greed of those who benefited from such labor to now be whining that there are too many people is asinine. There wouldn't be more people coming here if they weren't offered jobs by the very people who are now complaining about an overrun of illegals. To put it metaphorically, you were happily taking advantage of Maria. Don't cry now that there are 100 Marias just on your block alone looking for the very types of jobs you broke the law to give to her predecessors.
There is an estimated 12 million people in the country illegally. How the hell does one deal with 12 million people -- 12 million that you know of -- without engaging in local wars all over the country? It is impossible to round up 12 million people and arrange for them all to be stripped of their current lifestyles and thrown back to their various places of origin. Talk about a drain on the system! The system wouldn't exist in any effective way if such measures were performed.
And be sure that businesses, especially those with enough money to lobby Congress, will hear none of it. There is way too much money to be made from not paying American workers a fair wage, cutting their benefits and making them do two jobs for the pay of one.
>Are businesses to blame?
People wouldn't be entering this country looking for work if people weren't hiring. How does one handle a state of affairs where large and small businesses prefer to hire Pablo because he works fast, hard and dirt cheap instead of a fellow American who also has a family to feed? Larger businesses have been some of the worst perpetrators of what I see as chicanery; there is fraud and deception in looking the other way so long as production quotas are met and stock prices rise.
Businesses exist to make as much money as possible by (almost) any means necessary, even to the detriment of the larger society. If the profit margin and stock prices increase as they race towards the bottom by every means available, whose fault is that? Who loses most if there are no consequences for such actions? And if those businesses ultimately get bitten in the a$$ by Pablo -- who now owns his own construction company and is systematically underbidding his former massa/boss -- Is that really Pablo's fault?
Does Juan benefit by being paid 'next to nothing', which is still better than the 'nothing' he was getting in his own country? And if Juan goes on to own or manage a gas station in your neighborhood when you're struggling to fill up your tank, whose fault of that? Thusly, what happens if these business owners don't understand the fruitlessness of their complaints after the very people they formerly took advantage of have now moved up to become masters of their own fates and the largest non-white population in the United States?
Businesses took jobs away from their fellow American because it was fine to just pay an illegal immigrant much less money to do the same job. As far as I'm concerned, we brought this situation on ourselves.
In effect, this is an economic issue wrapped up in shades of both conscious racism and subconscious racism, in my opinion. If wealthy, well off light skinned people from another country were entering the US illegally to buy up our merchandise, we wouldn't give two hoots about illegal immigration because those "illegals" would be putting Americans to work in the production of goods and services. There would be no Arizona law trying to keep those "illegals" out even though they too would be breaking the country's laws.
It is mostly because such illegal immigrants are often desperately poor, often brown-skinned, and often seek to better their lives and move out of being taken advantage of that many Americans have a problem. Would Americans still have a problem if such a group of "illegals" only sought to work like dogs in the same rundown conditions for the rest of their lives instead of seeking political and economic power? I don't think so.
It is also childish, tactless, knee-jerk and ill-thought out to assume that every single legal or illegal immigrant working anywhere must somehow have taken that job from Americans. Truth be told, in some limited situations where the business is a small one, that owner probably could not afford to hire anyone other than someone who would work for dangerously pathetic wages, very long hours and no healthcare coverage. So the job wouldn't exist for a fellow American who wouldn't look twice at the job because of the ineffectual wage of $3 and hour... maybe $3 an hour.
>Why should you be held responsible for the actions of your ancestors?
No one is suggesting we hold ourselves accountable for the bad decisions of people who lived before we were born. But we can't pretend there wouldn't be consequences for their actions. Moreover, one has to understand that just like the forefathers of America saw their current situations and economic prospects as unbearable enough to move to another country, other people from other places feel that same way.
This nation has progressed exponentially since the 1776. But we don't get to run away from the cycles of human existence nor do we get to turn our backs on American history simply because we have a mini-laptop, a twitter account, an HDTV, and a facebook page. The superficialities of current life can be wiped out in an instant leaving only our humanity and how we deal with other people. And, conversely, how they deal with us. What matters is that the base of our collective human decency is strong and that me make realistic if not idealistic decisions as a result.
FInding the evasive solution will be difficult because we don't even know how to deal with an issue like this as a nation. Our highfalutin, hippy ideals like equity and fairness stood in the way of a good land-grab back when "we" were the illegals. "We" have never had to wrap our heads around the idea that millions of people would come here leaving us without any way to track their movements because the process of becoming a legal immigrant takes so long for some people that they could die of starvation or criminal activity in their native country before being legally admitted into this one.
Maybe some people in this nation are so hateful towards immigrants (both legal and illegal) because they DO know what some of their own ancestors did and have become paranoid that they could lose the benefits of the power their forefathers took from someone else.
Our collective preferences also color our judgment in this issue. Would Americans be as resentful if there were thousands of Swedes coming into the United States illegally instead? If blonde-haired Greta was the one walking the street, would she be stopped and asked to prove whether or not she was an American citizen? If not, then we cannot afford to handle the situation of immigration with such childish, tactless, knee-jerk and ill-thought-out reactions. And please don't kid yourselves into thinking that your response would be just as hateful.
How exactly are we supposed to handle people from someplace else coming over here without permission and seeking to benefit economically off of the land and it's people? Let's ask Native Americans how they..... uuuhhh..... nevermind.
© whisperDispatch
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