Monday, April 03, 2006

lots and lots of talk about immigration

As someone that lives in a "border town" (San Diego), my quick thoughts for now:

First of all, as to the Mexicans crossing the border, it's very hard to fault someone from wanting to jump across a line to a quite possibly better life.

Second, I DO fault the actions of the US and the Mexican governments.
The US and the individual states will NEVER go after companies that use illegals for labor. That is a given.
Cheap labor, crappy working conditions and an endless supply of bodies.
Just what every good corporate pig wants
I am completely for allowing people to come here and work.
BUT, neither they, nor anyone born here should be subjected to bad wages or working conditions.
The exploitation of hard working people keeps a depression down on ALL working people and the overall economy of both countries.

Third, no matter how hard some people try to hide it, or paint the discussion a different way, their "problem" with immigrants from anywhere lies firmly in their racism.

And last, the flag-waving that has so many up in arms.
Imagine that you came here from another country looking for a better life.
Called, maybe by Lady Liberty, or by the thousands of employers looking for labor (and yes, a lot of it stuff we won't do).
You get here and you work hard. Really fucking hard.
You are the offspring of family that came here and worked really damn hard, maybe even fought in a foreign war.
And how are you treated by a good number of the population? Even though you may be a fully assimilated and legal citizen now? You are treated like crap. Called names.
Yet still expected in numbers to clean that fucking toilet.
You know what, I would wave my flag high and with pride, because it may bring me pride and more.
Just a thought..

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen! My Brother...

Even term "illegal" is very derogatory term. What people don't understand is just because your grandparents got her first doesn't mean this country belongs to them. I was watching Fox News and Sean Hannity says his grandparents came to this country legally. That's bunch of BS because back then there was no such thing as classifying people by their status. As long as you manage to come to US, then you were pretty much welcome but today it's much different. There is no legal avenue to immigrate to this country unless you marry American or get sponsored by Family members. In other words, you can't immigrate to this country if you don't have any relatives here or already married. Go figure!

The Blog Tribune

Unknown said...

The racism thing is what has me worried here. Never have I seen such a backlash about flags in this country except for the flag burning issue some years back. This is a free country and there should never be any shame with people wanting to display the flag of their homeland. This is ultra right wing stuff gone crazy.

Mike V. said...

and what happens, just like the gays, just like the "intelligent" design, it becomes a wedge issue.

SheaNC said...

"The US and the individual states will NEVER go after companies that use illegals for labor."

That is absolutely, positively, the A-number-one thing that comes to my mind whenever this issue comes up (which it has, often, since I started blogging in Oct 2004). Until this issue is addressed, all their other rascist blatherings are moot.