Immigration

I don’t have the time or energy to write much on this. However, I want to make sure everyone on this list, at least, knows one thing about the current immigration debate going on in this country right now.

The House passed a proposal recently which makes it illegal for anyone to offer food, shelter, medical care, and/or counseling to any undocumented illegal immigrant. This holds for individuals as well as charities, churches, doctors, hospitals, etc. Best of all, it is not just illegal. It is a felony.

Alright. Read on if your enraged. If you’re not, let me know and I’ll take you off this list. Right after I have you committed.

No wonder there were 500,000 people in the streets of LA and Phoenix a couple of days ago to protest immigration laws in the US. The most amazing part, however, is how bad things are already. Whether one looks at grapes in California, or meatpacking in Texas and Nebraska, or oranges in Florida, or countless industries (like WalMart) with massive records of exploiting illegals, we may as well continue to have slaves in America. The most hilarious part, though, is the insane and dangerous hypocrisy within factions of the Republican party on this one. The libertarian and more “traditional” crowd of Republicans has apparently awoken from their spell under the neo-cons, but only in order to choose this as their issue! How spectacular that the party with the most self-identifying Christians is salivating over a bill that would make it a felony to give a person food. Why not just go ahead and call these people godless savage mongoloids? The big business wing, however, is scared as hell. They know that the economy would tank if we suddenly dried up the virtually free labor force that has been guaranteed for the last however many years. What’s more, these people do all the jobs that normal Americans won’t do. The lower-middle class heartland Republican may not realize it, they say, but no American is stupid enough to work in a job with no benefits that requires you to risk life and limb, work overtime without extra pay, and pays $3 an hour. Finally, the party wonks are chewing their fingers to pieces. With supposedly 11 million illegals in the country, even if one supposed that all or most of them did not pay taxes on wages (which is untrue, by the way), nevertheless they all pay taxes every single time they buy anything. How much do you think state coffers will be hit, let alone the economy? $3/hr. is not a lot of buying power, but 11 million people is a major chunk of the economy, regardless of how you slice it.

The shame! This statement has been said by everyone under the sun, from the illegals and their leaders to the president himself. My God, how offensive is it that our own president has said outloud that Mexicans (et al) do jobs that are too utterly atrocious for an American to even consider. Regardless of how downtrodden and abject an American could get, she would never work in the meatpacking industry (which, by the way, has consistently been ranked as the most dangerous job in America; this is particularly amazing considering that a large percentage of its workers never report their lost limbs, as they have been told by the company that they will thereby be fired and thrown in jail for being illegals).

Are we really so stupid as all this? Is it really so inevitable that we would pass this type of legislation because people like my own father have jumped on the xenophobic, proud-to-be-an-American bandwagon? Is the populace so unbelievably retarded as to not recognize that they would be complaining within a year of the massive price increase on every single agricultural product in the country? Can’t you just see it now? Angry middle-Americans upset about massive price inflation at the grocery store, demanding that Congress find some way to deal with it without raising taxes or giving in to those touchy-feely-liberal types who want to help out anybody except for me and my wallet or my racism (depending on the day). And remember: I’m not taking about Democrat or Republican. Unfortunately, Stupid is the third unifying party that is rapidly gobbling up the ranks of both sides. Finally, are we so brainwashed by Hollywood and bad textbooks in high school as to forget the fundamental irony of this position? I.e., that these laws are tantamount to urinating in the face of the Native Americans, whose situation as a whole in this country need not even be mentioned? (I presume that everyone here is so aware of their impoverished world that you all share my consistent apathy. That is, once you have had something proven so absolutely to you, yet at the same time not had your life affected by it, it would seem that the only sane response is complete resignation and lack of concern. Simon Weil is at least right about that: evil is not the opposite of good, but apathy is.) After all, they are the sole folks who can put the word NATIVE before America. Where is Toby Keith’s song for them?

Too bad these people are so disastrously desperate that they can’t and won’t go on strike. Just imagine: 11 million undocumented workers suddenly go on strike. Just imagine! All those same people who want to kick them out of the country would suddenly call for the government to send out the national guard and force those ungrateful wetback spics to go back to work! That’s right, shoot a few if you have to, but I’ll be damned if I have to pay more than 30 cents/pound for grapes!

-W.