Only In America
Deborah Venable
04/01/06
With
the illegal alien issue marching across the headlines now, perhaps it will not
so easily be shoved back under the carpet to take up its usual residence with
the undisturbed dust bunnies in American homes. The issue is so important and so big that the hump will always
show – even if the lights go off again.
We will continue to trip on it and fall flat on our faces if we don’t
permanently remove the problem.
This
is certainly not a new issue. It is
just one of those things that Americans would rather not be bothered with most
of the time. It causes such brain
probing thought and scratches at old wounds still not healed of race relations
and discrimination, sweat shops and boat people, not to mention Ellis Island
versus Japanese relocation camps.
America
has always treated outsiders with disdain according to some. Hell, the whole economy was dependent on
slave labor in the beginning – right?
America turns on herself every time the question of trusting outside
groups to drive the economy comes up.
This time is no different and everybody else in the world knows it
whether we do or not.
I
have questions. Where else in the whole
world could foreigners invade without armies and demand anything of the government
and the people and get away with it? If
Mexico is supposed to be so oil rich and our government is hell bent on
starting wars for oil, why haven’t WE invaded THEM with armies and taken over
the oil fields? And if we need slave
labor so badly to do all those jobs that Americans won’t do, why haven’t we
just rounded up all we needed and reinstated the lucrative slave business
again? To hell with “undocumented
workers,” we could just make them all slaves so we could fight another civil
war in hundred years or so and free them.
I mean, our revised history books have laid out the perfect template to
accomplish that – right?
As
for the OTMs that are flowing across our borders and assuming Mexican names to
blend in, well we ought to be able to round them all up, place them in
relocation camps until we win this damned war on terrorism, turn them loose as
citizens, and go rebuild all their faltering countries so that they can compete
with our economy of ill gotten gains.
It fits perfectly with what America is supposed to be all about!
But
what about the people of the world who wish for nothing more than to reach our
shores, go through the Ellis Island brand of application and proudly assimilate
into the culture that allowed there to be hope for freedom and opportunity for
the last 230 years? What about the
citizens who have gone through that process – not to mention their
descendants? What is just? What is morally right? Do we care?
Hey, I’ve got my American born birth certificate – thanks to my ancestors
from a couple generations ago, so no one is going to ship me back to anywhere
else. Why do I care?
Well,
I DO care. The ONLY reason that the
above-mentioned ideas have not been made into reality is that the backbone of
this country is NOT made up of the evil human spirit that could do any of those
things. That backbone has bent
backwards to accommodate the tiniest spark of worthiness in the human
soul. If people hate America so much,
it is only because they are incapable or unwilling to understand or respect
her. Trying to convince such folks that
America is not the immoral, cold hearted, satin that needs to fall to a hill of
flower power and kneel at the alter of political correctness is a losing battle. Just like my father always said – “Convince
a fool against his will and he’s a bigger fool still.” (My dad loved to put things
poetically.) There are an awful lot of
fools in the world – too many of them residing right here within our borders –
legally and illegally. I wonder how
many times we have to trip over that hump and land on our faces before we
handle the problem once and for all?
Our
well-paid legislators are certainly attacking the problem with proposals for
“new” legislation and all sorts of “programs” designed to save the American
economy at all costs. Good grief, how
many times do you have write the same laws?
They are so convoluted now that the enforcers can’t use them. It is easier to catch and release than it is
to try and figure out how to apply “the law” to illegal aliens. Meanwhile, the aliens think they have a
right to be protected by the very laws they are breaking.
Only
in America, folks! Try that anywhere
else and see if it flies.