Immigration Reform, part 1

My thoughts on:

Immigration Reform. This is a topic that makes one experience a myriad of emotions. The comments that one makes on this topic can lead to one being branded a racist, bleeding heart liberal and everything in-between. This isn’t anything new; people have been coming across the border or over the oceans for many decades; even centuries. Our forebears weren’t all born here. We are not a nation of Sioux, Cherokee or Cree.
We are white, Mexican, Cuban, Russian, Swedish, British, Irish, Portuguese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Thai, Puerto Rican(yeah, I know..), Hindu, Canadian, Nigerian, Moroccan, French, Honduran, Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Dominican, Haitian, and every other type of race there is in the world. This is America. America is an idea; an idea that led to a reality. America started as a dream. America was that haven that so many hoped to find. America is a place that one is able to come to and live their lives their own way; lawfully, freely, religiously.

We learned that the Pilgrims, left England and the Netherlands to come to a place where they could live their lives the way that they wanted to. They wanted freedom to practice their religion away from the clutches of the government. Others came to America to etch out a life for themselves with no limits. People came to America to tame a wild land.
America was the new frontier. Everyone was coming here; we just didn’t know that until recently. If you stop and look at all of the cultures that came and explored; we could well belong to the rest of the world.

California for one; my home state, was settled by the Spaniards and peoples from Mexico. Yes it was taken as spoils of war, but that that doesn’t make it right. If you ask me, you should give it back. California is the shining example of why we need immigration reform. We have approximately 8 million guest residents living in the continental United States. They are, without question a blessing and a burden to our economy and culture.

100 years ago, we could continue to say, send us your tired weary and huddled masses. Now the new saying is Welcome to America, now go home! Another friendly one is No Vacancy! You can’t blame most Americans for the feelings they have on this topic. I mentioned earlier that our illegal guests are both a blessing and a curse. They’re a blessing economically because they spend a lot of money in our society. They add billions of dollars to our economy. These people know how to spend money. Their philosophy regarding life is fairly simple: Live in the moment; because tomorrow may not come. If these individuals were suddenly gone tomorrow; we’d be unhappy campers. It’s been said before, but these people do all the jobs no one else wants. They are the dishwashers, the gardeners, house-keepers, day laborers and so on.

I remember a few years ago I watched a movie called A Day Without A Mexican. This movie went on the premise that all the illegal aliens were disappearing off the face of the earth. It was humorous, but it did make one think about the idea behind this movie. These people do give back to society and probably far more than they take from it.

Of course there are always two sides to any topic. The cons are evident in this matter. Some, and unfortunately, I don’t have the percentages, but I will estimate that it is near 40 percent of all immigrants get some sort of help; mostly medical. Being from Southern California and utilizing the health care system in California, one only needs to go to any county hospital emergency room to see how prevalent the illegal guests are. One could go into an E.R. and be there for hours. Our society makes it too easy to get services; at least for immigrants, legal or otherwise. W.I.C. programs, food stamps, welfare, medi-care and whatever else there is for the taking. These individual learn how to use the system. Unfortunately, they are a burden to the system.

Let’s take a look at my former home state of California. California is circling around the drain. They are forever a month away from going bankrupt. Several counties and cities in California have already filed for bankruptcy. Immigration laws don’t work. I don’t know if they ever have. Perhaps they never will. All one has to do is drive through some of the areas in Los Angeles to see how many guest residents there are. I have seen neighborhoods where garages are converted to living quarters and up to 20 people live in one property. There are neighborhoods where this occurs where maybe up to 200 people live in an area where fifty are meant to live.

Finding a parking spot for your vehicle is incredibly difficult sometimes as well. I lived in one of these neighborhoods where every house had a garage and every garage was converted. I remember on several occasions I’d return home from work in the evening and I couldn’t get into my own driveway because there were cars blocking it. I don’t know how many cars I had towed away, not to be mean, but because there was no way to find out whose car it was. There were that many vehicles.

All of these people worked; some out of their homes. The ones that left for work every day, were painters, drywallers, carpenters, all of whom, trained with other people and then decided to venture off on their own. Now bear in mind that all of these peoples worked under the table. They were all guest residents without legal status so they couldn’t work legally on the books. All of these individuals worked without paying taxes. TAX FREE! In case you didn’t notice, this is my only true issue with these people. I think that the govt. has it all wrong, I think that it is time to embrace these people, the new ideas that the GOP and Obama are touting seem to focus on these things. Let everybody who is currently here register for work visas and start to pay taxes. I think once that happens though, they will demand better pay and the individuals who are employing them illegally are going to stop utilizing these people, hence, they won’t be able to pay these taxes should this happen, I believe that work will become scarce and these individuals will be compelled to head home.

I think it’s important to know, that I’ve had a very hard time writing this post. I am torn when it comes to immigration. In some ways, I think those of us whom are so adamant about immigration reform are in a way exhibiting contradictory behavior. If you stop to think about it, 99 percent of the nation are descendants of immigrants. My great grandparents came from Italy, Asia, Europe and Mexico. If there were no immigration from them, I’d have never been born.

A while back, I toyed with the idea of doing a family tree. I soon tired of that. My family comes from all over the world. It was mind torturing. At some point I think that I will make the attempt to work on that. I am going to ask one of my cousins to help out with this because we have to get to talk with the family members that are in the more rural parts of the country and whom are getting older with every passing day.

I one time asked my father about our family roots and for some reason he became very nervous; it was as if he did not want me digging. I’m admittedly lazy, so I didn’t really do very much digging on the subject. I am starting to think more and more that anyone who is so gung ho about immigration reform, should do some exploring of their roots. As I like to state, the only true Americans are the Sioux, Cherokee and other nations of Native Americans. All the rest us are transplants.
Until next time!