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.        

 

 

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