Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
-emma lazarus
Unless they're mexican.
or cuban.
or honduran.
or peruvian.
or someone that threatens our sense of entitlement.
Is that what you're saying, America?
That we'll take anyone who's rich and white and healthy?
Because I'm pretty sure that's not what the motto is. I'm pretty sure that having to provide papers of nationality is how Hitler got started with the Jews. What next, they all wear tiny flags showing their home country? We start heading them into "detainment camps" for "relocation"?
They learn English at gun point before being chucked back over the border?
The new york times says this is a point of generational conflict, that the older generation says it's perfectly acceptable to be inhospitable and cruel to our fellow man while the younger generation is outraged by this law. The times had some stats, showing that the year after woodstock had the least immigration, down 10% from normal influx stats. Maybe it's good that I was born well after then.
I might be young, but I grew up in a neighborhood full of mexicans, legal and illegal, and they were all good people. I worked with them in the garden, played with them in the park, ate their delicious food, and learned their language. All of them had a dream- a dream of fair wages, of opportunity, of rescuing family trapped in their home country.
Which is what I thought America was all about.
But in these later years, I've seen that our country is a money-grubbing power whore, selling herself to the same groups over and over again as bankers and oil rigs despoil and rule over everyone else. We're not about to share the opportunity. We're so concerned with our own personal status that we're glad to see people less well off than ourselves. And we're not going to let go of those farming jobs, by God. We may not want them, but if they have them they will raise themselves up and we won't be able to look down on them any more.
We hated the Irish.
We hated the Blacks.
and now we hate the Mexicans. It's our proud legacy.
This is wrong, people. I know you may not agree with my hippie, socialist ways- but surely we can all agree that the maltreatment of our fellow man is despicable. We should be following in Martin Luther King Jr.'s footsteps, not in Hitler's.
So please- write to the Governor of Arizona. Tell her that this is wrong (Peacefully!) and tell her why. Let's get this law revoked. Our generation will not stand for injustice. Our generation will not stand by while they take everyone else away. Let us return to the ideals of our country.
The address-
The Honorable Jan Brewer
Governor of Arizona
1700 West Washington
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Please, raise your voice.
or cuban.
or honduran.
or peruvian.
or someone that threatens our sense of entitlement.
Is that what you're saying, America?
That we'll take anyone who's rich and white and healthy?
Because I'm pretty sure that's not what the motto is. I'm pretty sure that having to provide papers of nationality is how Hitler got started with the Jews. What next, they all wear tiny flags showing their home country? We start heading them into "detainment camps" for "relocation"?
They learn English at gun point before being chucked back over the border?
The new york times says this is a point of generational conflict, that the older generation says it's perfectly acceptable to be inhospitable and cruel to our fellow man while the younger generation is outraged by this law. The times had some stats, showing that the year after woodstock had the least immigration, down 10% from normal influx stats. Maybe it's good that I was born well after then.
I might be young, but I grew up in a neighborhood full of mexicans, legal and illegal, and they were all good people. I worked with them in the garden, played with them in the park, ate their delicious food, and learned their language. All of them had a dream- a dream of fair wages, of opportunity, of rescuing family trapped in their home country.
Which is what I thought America was all about.
But in these later years, I've seen that our country is a money-grubbing power whore, selling herself to the same groups over and over again as bankers and oil rigs despoil and rule over everyone else. We're not about to share the opportunity. We're so concerned with our own personal status that we're glad to see people less well off than ourselves. And we're not going to let go of those farming jobs, by God. We may not want them, but if they have them they will raise themselves up and we won't be able to look down on them any more.
We hated the Irish.
We hated the Blacks.
and now we hate the Mexicans. It's our proud legacy.
This is wrong, people. I know you may not agree with my hippie, socialist ways- but surely we can all agree that the maltreatment of our fellow man is despicable. We should be following in Martin Luther King Jr.'s footsteps, not in Hitler's.
So please- write to the Governor of Arizona. Tell her that this is wrong (Peacefully!) and tell her why. Let's get this law revoked. Our generation will not stand for injustice. Our generation will not stand by while they take everyone else away. Let us return to the ideals of our country.
The address-
The Honorable Jan Brewer
Governor of Arizona
1700 West Washington
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Please, raise your voice.
I'm going to have to disagree with your assessment here for a number of reasons.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, you need to get over this idiotic, Manichaean division of things where your side of the argument is good and noble and pure while the other side is racist, inhospitable and cruel. It doesn't match reality, and tends to stifle honest debate.
Second, the new Arizona law makes nothing illegal which is not already illegal under Federal Law. In fact, it specifically cites Title 8 of the US Code, sections 1304(e) and 1306(a).
1306(e) reads:
(e) Personal possession of registration or receipt card; penalties
Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d) of this section. Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.
1306(a) reads:
(a) Willful failure to register
Any alien required to apply for registration and to be fingerprinted in the United States who willfully fails or refuses to make such application or to be fingerprinted, and any parent or legal guardian required to apply for the registration of any alien who willfully fails or refuses to file application for the registration of such alien shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, upon conviction thereof, be fined not to exceed $1,000 or be imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
The Arizona law makes them State misdemeanors as well as Federal, and the Arizona law further states: "F. This section does not apply to a person who maintains authorization from the federal government to remain in the United States."
The Federal law has been on the books for seventy years, and last I checked we still aren't Nazi Germany.
Third, for most proponents of the Arizona law, it is not a matter of hatred but a matter of fairness. There are poor, unskilled would-be immigrants all over the world, patiently working their way through the immigration process. Why should a Mexican have a step up on someone from Laos or Tanzania just because they can walk here across a porous border?
The border is really the sticking point. If the Federal government would secure the border and prevent further illegal immigration, steps could (and should) be taken to both normalize otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants and open the border to more legal immigration. Securing the border comes first, though.