Illegal Immigration – A Different Perspective for a Progressive

First, as many people here at Alternet know, I am against ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.  I am a fourth generation descendant of LEGAL immigrants and I find this current desire by certain elements in our society to condone the breaking of our laws of entry to be disturbing.  We often read in various articles and blogs here about how corporations are taking away our freedoms, but then the issue of illegal immigration hits the headlines and suddenly it is perfectly all right for non-citizens to come across our borders to work for these very same corporations while Americans go jobless.  What hypocrisy!

The current laws in Arizona are not racist, except in the eyes of those who want you to believe as they do.  I have lived in Arizona off and on over the last 30 years, and I have yet to meet more than two police officers that were not Hispanic.  I am sure that there are more non-Hispanics, but you do not see them very often on the streets – except maybe in SWAT gear.  That is first. So this new law is one that while some officers may use racial profiling, I seriously doubt if the vast majority of them will.  They are too sensitive to it personally.

Second, if you were born after 1960 in a hospital here in the US, you were issued a birth certificate and a Social Security card at the time of your birth.  By the mid-60s your parents had to get you one so that you could be deducted on their IRS tax returns, so if you were a citizen you got a SS card then through your parents.  It was rare that this did not happen, so any officer on a lawful stop who asks you for a driver’s license or state ID, will also ask for your SS card.  That is all.  If you are here legally, they will ask for your driver’s license or state ID and your green card, period.  If you are here visiting from another country, thanks to the Patriot Act, you will have a passport or visa, which you will be asked to produce (and which if you are traveling you should have on you anyway).  If you cannot produce any of these documents, then they may arrest you for whatever they stopped you for originally, and sort it out with a family member at the station.  By the way, a lawful stop means you have committed a felony crime, traffic violation, or misdemeanor, for which you would be stopped anyway if seen by a police officer, so I would not be wasting too many tears on those who are stopped.  The stop must be reasonable, it cannot be random – our laws prevent that, even in Arizona.

Now, since people of all races and ethnicity have been stopped for these kinds of things and have been asked to produce ID for nearly a century, my problem with this is why suddenly Hispanics are claiming that this is racial profiling.  It isn’t.  It is, however, codifying a common practice as a way of addressing an ILLEGAL immigrant problem that has led to human death and crime in much of Arizona.  Anyone who has lived there can tell you how much has changed in the last 35 years, and for someone such as myself who moved in and out of the state about every 5 years, I can tell you the changes are dramatic.  This law is not aimed at Hispanics or anyone group of people, but because most ILLEGAL immigrants in Arizona are Hispanic, it will affect them more.

But perhaps someone should GOOGLE what I did this afternoon: legal immigrants against illegal immigration.  There are 711,700 possible sites for this.  Go and read some of those sites.  These are people who find themselves profiled because of the ILLEGALS, and just like non-Hispanic American workers have found their jobs cut in favor of low-wage illegal immigrants; their neighborhoods become shooting galleries for drugs, human traffickers, and gangs; and their children being forced into classes which they do not want to take because of their ethnic background. LEGAL immigrants resent the presence of the ILLEGAL immigrants almost, if not more, than natural born citizens, and with better cause.

In Arizona when Reagan granted Amnesty and suddenly everything had to be bi-lingual, their budget took a serious hit from which they had a difficult time recovering.  Schools had to cut programs in the arts and special education to cover the costs of mandatory ESL classes.  Social services were swamped in Arizona, and because they were not allowed to ask for proof of citizenship, many that could have qualified did not because there was no money for them.  American citizens and legal immigrants did without because the ILLEGAL immigrants were swamping the system, a fact that still holds true today  (and do not tell me that this is a lie, because too many people who have to deal with the system know that it is spending more on ILLEGAL immigrant needs than they pay in for taxes from their low wage jobs.  The numbers published by state agencies and federal programs each year are fairly accurate on this issue.)  At the time, a single person who needed assistance got $117 per month, and $75 in food stamps, while families with multiple children who were not citizens were getting upwards of $1000 per month plus $500 in food stamps.  (I know I was disabled at the time, and until Social Security disability came in I was dependent on state assistance, and was told this one day by a very disgusted caseworker who wanted to help me more, but could not.)

So my question now, as a fairly progressive liberal, is why should I be upset that Arizona is passing laws that allow law enforcement to do what they have always done – ask for ID that now includes a SS card, passport/visa, or green card – and to re-instate programs that meet the needs of all students, or delete ones that are not all-inclusive or preach sedition and treason?  From what I can see, they are the only ones acting with any sense on this issue.

They go after drug trafficking operations, gangs, human trafficking and kidnapping operations, and they are trying to make the schools for American citizens (after all that is what our public schools are for) less exclusionary in their curriculum as a cost cutting measure, which considering that every other school in the country is having to cut programs seems only fair.  So again I come back to the question of whether I am the only person in the blogosphere who understands that these laws are being made to seem racist because they are addressing the needs of US citizens, naturalized or legal citizens, to be educated, and they are allowing local law enforcement to do what the Border Patrol, which is badly under-manned, cannot, which is enforce the law and at the same time find ILLEGAL immigrants for return to their homelands.  Since they are virtual slaves to corporations here – why is everyone so upset that they are being sent back home where they can be free?

Simple questions that no one is asking.  Why support a corporate agenda that makes people slaves?  Why prevent law enforcement from doing their jobs?  Why cut school budgets for inclusive programs, but allow exclusionary programs to stay because of their topic?  These questions are at the root of the laws everyone is so upset about, and it would seem that the only ones who are making a noise are the very people who will suffer most from not enforcing these laws – the ILLEGAL immigrants themselves, because their corporate controlled advocates need to control the discourse through misrepresentations.  LEGAL immigrants do not want them here.  Natural born citizens, by a vast majority, do not want them here.  So, why are we advocating for keeping them here in virtual slavery where they are not welcome?  Right, because corporate America wants them here and people who do not understand what they have been pawns in allowing to happen – the greatest loss of American wages and jobs in history!  But, hey, if that is what you want to support, go for it.  I cannot, as a fourth generation LEGAL immigrant granddaughter, believe that this is what we as Americans stand for – slavery and ignorance – but maybe I am wrong?