You DON’T Understand
Posted: Saturday, November 07, 2009
by Missing Link
I recieved this email today from a dear family member. It makes me sad that these things are being passed around as some warped kind of truth.
Let me see if I understand all this.
IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY
YOU GET 12 YEARS HARD LABOR
IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY,
YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY
IF YOU CROSS THE U.S. BORDER ILLEGALLY,
YOU GET: A DRIVER'S LICENSE
A SOCIAL SECURITY CARD
WELFARE
FOOD STAMPS
FREE EDUCATION
FREE HEALTH CARE?
AND EVENTUALLY SOCIAL SECURITY
Nope, I guess I still don't understand !
My response:
Let me see if I understand all this (or the underlying purposes of the person/people who wrote it). The US should be as harsh/inhumane as North Korea and Iran to people sneaking across the border (as if anyone is actually sneaking into Iran or North Korea except asinine reporters [and ibecillic joy-riding American tourists]).
Since I have some first-hand experience with illegal immigrants here in the US permit me to observe on the rationale of poor Mexican people trying to cross the border to the US:
-you must be desperate enough to hide in the trunk of a car, or cross the desert on foot, or pack into a semi or a cargo box like condemned Jews in a Nazi rail car bound for a death camp
-your family may be starving in a corrupt system that does not allow you any hope of rising above a cardboard box slum due to a fixed class system
-you see that you can make more in the US cutting rich people's grass than you could ever hope to make as a doctor or architect in your own country, positions that you cannot attain there in any case
-you must be willing to risk your life for the sake of your children's future
What would you risk for life in the US?
So I would ask the shallow idiotic author of this email what we should do? Why not offer solutions rather than simply and limply, oh so pathetically and indirectly lament the loss of a few of his tax dollars.
Should we:
a) continue to hate immigrants for being here while simultaneously employing them for every menial job we don't want to do ourselves and which our money will allow us to pay someone else to do while we sit on our fat lazy asses,
b) begin jailing them for life,
c) begin jailing them for twelve years,
d) admit we can't even nation-build one kilometer south of the border (so why in the hell are we trying it half way around the world?),
e) or if immigration is really a problem, where is the "public will" to build a defensible border? We can certainly build a new Yankee stadium and Cowboy stadium without a whimper.
The originator of this email should offer something more than implied hatred for poor people who are willing to risk their lives (because that's all they've got to risk for a better life in the US). We aren't seeing the rich or the middle class of Mexico/Latin America coming here folks. It's the poor, your huddled masses longing to be free, longing for education (yeah, FREE and EQUAL education), it's just plain folks who see that risking it all could mean a better life for themselves and their children. It means leaving family and friends and home, it means travelling many miles sometimes on foot, dealing with con men and worse, it means landing in a place where you don't speak the language, it means finding a place to live and a job and food and all the while caring for your family.
It takes guts and hard work and I would think that we would welcome a few people like that. I thought about the teenagers I saw in Church this week, two spoiled, plump teenage girls who sat and talked and text messaged in the middle of the crowd throughout the service and whose miserable excuses for parents threw them a glare once in a while with a finger to their collagen-plumped lips as their disgustingly rude children disrupted the service. They probably don't even have to clean their own rooms because their Mexican maid does it for them while their Honduran gardener cuts the lawn and the Nicaraguan painter touches up the trim and the Guatemalan contractor lays a deck around their backyard pool installed by their Colombian pool man, to be cleaned by their El Salvadorean pool service man. I imagine that this email was from someone like the girl's Daddy who sends out nasty emails whining about illegal immigrants and then pays them cash out the back door at a fraction of what legitimate workers would cost him.
And by the way, all those documents they get are false, and the employers who employ them don't give a damn, and neither do the people who get their employees, services and products at half price. Their only complaint would be that someone "lesser and legal" isn't willing to likewise work for slave wages, living four families to a house in the worst part of town to take those jobs and those wages so the "rich" can continue to live the life they think they've earned, when the truth is that by luck of the draw they were born, here or brought here themselves, or snuck in and already "made it". Priviledge in this world has a lot to do with location, that's why the illegals are coming. People in poverty in Mexico work their butts off where the work week is 6 days, not five and the hours are whatever you're required to do, not necessarily limited to 9-5.
Taking advantage of cheap immigrant labor is probably true for the author of the email as well. We're all pimps of the illegals at one level or another, we all benefit from the cheap labor, we all gain from their willingness to work like dogs for dog wages just to be here in this country. And what do they get for it? They get spit on by the priviledged who take advantage of them with one hand and pound the table and demand their heads on a platter with the other.
Last word to the author, "Thank your lucky stars that your country isn't right next door to a place like India or Sri Lanka where the poor would be pouring over your borders like the water over Niagra: where your "Christian ethics" might truly be put to the test.
Dear Lord forgive us as a nation our selfishness and our hypocrisy.
Nope, you don't understand.
"Jesus told him,' If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then, come and follow me.'" Matthew 19:21 (NLT)
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Top-level comments on this article: (7 total)Good insight.Thanks for commenting! ML
I will say simply: Whoa! Wow! Thank you.Thanks for reading Edward.
The measure of a country is how many are trying to enter versus how many are leaving. I don't see people lining up to leave the US. Nicely done.Thanks for writing!
Very thought provoking and interesting. An excellent read. Thank you.
Maybe we need some work on streamlining the process so that they can fill out the papers and come in to the country legally? Just a thought. I am sure that is what brought many of our relatives here to begin with "give me your poor, tired and weary...."I agree, that we need to control the border and make sure people are coming in legally. But to do less is to give implicit permission and to allow those with money to take advantage of illegal status for gain. So many industries and individuals use these poor folks and gain by cheaper products and services. In the end we're all getting hurt by it because jobs are lost to regular people here. But it's cheaper, and greed rules the day, and we all allow it to happen through lack of avocacy. I wonder how many of us have written to a congressman or senator demanding they secure the border, demanding fair wages for jobs now filled by illegals, demanding that employers get punished for hiring undocumented workers. I doubt many out there reading in this site have done so. It's a free country, but inaction implies consent to the immigration issue to lawmakers, and so nothing is changed and emails like the one I responded to are mere hypocrisy. It amazes me that people write things that make them sound incredulous that these "criminals" are coming here to work when we make it relatively easy to get in with many miles of unsecured border, and even easier to find work here.
Sadly, it's you who does not understand. It would be nice if we had limitless wealth and could bestow upon everyone a perfect life ... but we cannot. We are indeed lucky to live in the US, and we should appreciate it greatly, but we cannot take upon ourselves the responsibility for everyone's happiness. The core idea behind socialism, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", sounds wonderful but has empirically been shown not to work: humans just don't operate this way. When rewards are separated from effort, the vast majority of people choose to output less effort. Wealth does not usually exist as a gift from God: it must be created and earned. People who inherit wealth generally don't understand this principle, preach to others about the sins of greed, and fritter away their parents' hard-earned bequests ... not understanding the true cost of what they are giving away (whether it's money, or in this case, services and even our freedoms). Then their children begin the cycle anew, starting with very little. If you want to send all your personal wealth to other countries to improve other people's lives, please feel free to do so. But to preserve our own successful way of living we need to be able to regulate the influx of people into our country, especially as we begin to tax people more to provide a higher level of base services.You don't understand that everything you've got is a gift. Not sure what empirical research you are referring to about socialism but Canadians are a pretty happy bunch. While I've earned every dime I have, I've had it all and lost it all only to have it again; dust to dust brother - dust to dust. Jesus wasn't talking about not having anything, he was talking about giving freely and not clinging selfishly to material things when the souls of people are so much more important. Thinking that you've earned anything is only an arrogant illusion. My real point is not to simply open the borders, I simply questioned the blatant hypocrisy of the pundits who accept the benefits of illegal immigration while pounding the table about border enforcement. I question what is stronger, "public will" or greed? Because so much of what is"earned" is increased by ill-gotten gains off the backs of virtual slaves - here and abroad - I suspect it is greed. Try paying farm labor a living wage in this country and see what your food will cost you. Sadly, I find that the "privileged right" does not see beyond their botox prejudices, beyond their secluded boxstore suburbia, beyond their Lexus self-righteousness or their latte judgement. I find often there is no desire to understand, there is only the desire to preserve a plastic lifestyle at any cost to others. I do not condemn American culture, only the greed, self-righeousness and selfishness it has inspired in an extremely spoiled generation, that is now reproducing and spoiling the next, taking them farther and farther away from the service and sacrifice that Jesus taught, that Americans used to aspire to through Peace Corps and the like.Anyway, thanks for the discussion and for your kind permission to send my wealth abroad which I do quite a lot of actually, so pleased that you approve! MLNever seen a U-Haul following a hearse. Anonymous better get her short-sighted priorities straight.Well, unless it was the relatives lining up to collect :0.
Very well-said. Your words give one food for thought; however, your comment above about the 'privileged right' I found rather offensive. If you look at the statistics, the majority of the right are found in the red states -- not the places of great wealth. In addition, would you not think that the most Botox, private jets, and gas-guzzling vehicles might just be found in Hollywood as well as Al Gore's and Nancy Pelosi's neck of the woods? Love the hypocrisy there. Other than that, great article!Unless you look at your own greed, hatred and delusions regarding your fellow men and women, Anonymous, your values won't change, and if they don't, you will continue in your constant state of anger instead of peace. It's always your call. It's always your Karma. Good luck.If you read my comment, I never once mentioned those coming into our country in order to lead a better life. My comment referred only to the remark about the privileged right. Is there no such thing as the privileged left?Regarding peace, I would love to see it as well because our lack of peace is one of the things tearing our country apart.By the way, why are you so angry?My anger is your assumption. Peace can only begin within yourself. If you would really love to see it, peace that is, begin by seeing your own motives and values, not what you want to see, but actually what is. Meditation can help you do this. Otherwise your thoughts and opinions are in contriol of your rmind; thoughts and opiniopns usually based on what you hear and read and probably seldom from personal experience.Touche on the botox! However, the term "priviledged right" wasn't meant to offend or mislead; hence the word "priviledged", so those not in that class would be largely excluded. The privileged, I believe are the ones leading the right too far right.
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