I'm really interested in everyone's input, and glad that everyone is being friendly (after perhaps a little initial testiness) about a subject that generates strong opinions. But that's typical of this site, and why I enjoy it here so much.
I agree that illegal immigration is a big problem, and one that needs to be addressed. But the opinion I see a lot of people having is not so much, "oh, those blasted illegal immigrants" as "oh, those blasted Mexicans and other Hispanics." If there's been talk lately of building a fence on the Canadian border to keep out those dangerous Canucks, or off the West Coast to keep out the Asians, I've missed it.
After all, the Asians work hard, go to college, get good grades. The Mexicans just want to take over our jobs, right?
I've done enough immigrating in my lifetime and lived in enough immigrant communities (both in the US and elsewhere) to know exactly how stressful, scary, exhausting, frightening, and emotionally draining immigration is. I would venture to say that people ALWAYS immigrate to create a better life for themselves. They don't immigrate to take over the country or destroy the natives' way of life. (The people who do that are called colonists, and they come with a military.) After all, immigrants come to a particular country because they
appreciate the way of life in that country.
You try leaving everything you've ever known, all your family, all your friends, all your possessions except for what you can easily tote yourself, go to a country where you don't speak the language at all, or just barely. You don't know how the legal system works there, you don't know how the social system works there, if the lights go out in your apartment you don't know who to call about it - for that matter you don't know what the system is for finding an apartment (not every country puts classified ads in the papers, even assuming you could read the papers). You don't even understand people's body language and tone of voice - if someone says something to you, you aren't always sure if they are angry, making a joke, or just stating a fact, and you aren't sure how to respond to make it clear what
you mean. You can't get permanent residency until you get a full-time job. You can't get a full-time job until you get health insurance. You can't get health insurance until you get permanent residency. You really want to learn the language, but it takes you a while to learn the system enough to figure out how and where language classes for immigrants are offered. And because you don't have a decent job (not being able to speak the language very well and all), you discover, when you
do find a class, that you can't afford it. Once you somehow manage to learn the language a bit, there are plenty of people who won't hire you, because whatever your education back home, it isn't recognized here. Plus you have a funny name. And during all this, you have almost no contact with your family and friends in your native country, because after all, international phone calls are REALLY expensive, and with your earnings, you can't afford to call that often. You can't afford a tv, couldn't understand it if you got it, and books in your native language are really hard to find. It takes a while to crack the social code here, so unless you're lucky enough to move into an enclave of immigrants from your native country, you don't really have many friends to go out with (even assuming you made enough money to go out much anyway). You spend a lot of time alone in your room doing not much.
Sounds like a blast - I can see why so many people want to do it.
What I think is, if conditions in someone's home country are so bad that all of this seems like an improvement, the least we can do is make the process of immigration as easy and humane and sensible as possible. And not waste time and energy asking five-year-olds if they're communists, or berating would-be tourists to the point of tears.
I'm not saying Americans should let down the floodgates completely and holler, "Y'all come!", but I am so sick of the argument that immigrants are going to destroy American life as we know it.
I've seen a political cartoon from roughly the 1850's, when a lot of Irish Catholics were coming to America. People were seriously afraid that this was a Vatican plot to take over the country. In the cartoon, reptilian-looking bishops are swimming up the Mississippi, their mitres equipped with crocodile teeth, to the horror of the citizens trapped on the banks. In the background, the Capitol building is sporting a Vatican flag on one side and an Irish flag on the other, and has been redubbed "United Roman Catholic States" or words to that effect. Off to the side, Lady Liberty is being led to the gallows. We haven't yet started paying taxes to Rome, so I would guess a lot of that worry was unfounded. I see a lot of the same sort of panic these days about Hispanic immigrants.
"At this rate, white people will be in the minority by 2050!" or whatever the date is. So? So what?
