Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Home Is Where The... Well... Where The Home Is

With the recent rise in concern about illegal immigration in the United States, I am finding an appalling side effect. Defending the border is important. At least $10 billion a year is spent on schooling, hospitals and medical care for more than 8 million illegal immigrants according to the Center for Immigration Studies. That amount of money affects the education and medical costs of all immigrants and citizens which is not going to abate. The Minuteman Project has brought a lot of these thoughts to the public forum but with it has come racial tensions that don't belong there. There has been a recent rise in angst directed at the Hispanic community. "Go back to where you belong! Go back home!" When I hear something like this it makes my skin crawl. Sounds a lot like something out of the Civil Rights era. If home is where you hang your hat, is home where some of your family came from generations ago? How many generations do you have to live here to call it home? It is silly and obnoxious. I feel that there are a lot of uneducated citizens that are all too willing to lump immigrants, naturalized citizens and citizens into the same category as illegal immigrants. Let's just use this as a platform for racial bias, shall we?

4 comments:

LoraLoo said...
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LoraLoo said...

Having worked in state social services for the last 15 years, this is a touchy subject for me. I do agree that all of our ancestors were immigrants from another country, and racism is NOT the answer; however, I don't agree with the government subsidizing EVERYTHING. I know that my ancestors arrived from other countries and worked hard to provide a better life for their families, which carries down all the way to me. The key words there are "worked hard". I don't mean this to generalize; many arrive in this country and utilize services only to get on their feet while they learn how to succeed in America. If most did that, our state, county and federal social services wouldn't need to increase funding by the billions to assist any and all immigrants - legal and illegal alike. (Disclaimer: I see plenty of American born citizens milk the system too. This problem does not start nor stop with those arriving here from other countries.)

Jenn Doll said...

Reminds me of the fuckhead that said that crap to us in Vegas.

Racism gets the best of me. It's something I don't understand and never will, so when it's in my face, I don't handle it well.

Great post, Mr. Nut.

Lily said...

I wonder if once you factor in inflation if the costs associated with immigration are equivalent to those when our (great) grandparents were immigrating into the US.

If my great grandparents had turned around and went 'back to where they belonged' back to Ireland, Portugal and Italy I would not exist. The US as we know it today (for good or bad) would not be the same either.

This past week during a conversation in the kitchen at work I learned that in the past there were once laws in the US that denied citizenship and naturalization to Asian immigrants, this was shocking to me.

It's so hard for me to get my head around the fact that there are still people today who think the same way about race and immigration as they did a century ago.