I recently posted a video on my facebook page. It briefly tells the story of a modern day internment camp--in Texas. I thought it would inspire some action and it did. I got the following response from a person--it shocked me. Before you read the response, please take a second to view the video:
"...Why should I give a *&#@ about the &*%$! who get caught coming into our country illegally?! If life is so bad down south, what makes them think it'll be any better here?! If you want my sympathy, Try coming into the country legally and get rejected. Then I'll care."
Does the response seem typical of American sentiments? What role should our government play? How should we treat people with an unresolved immigration status? How does past immigration policies inform our present policy? How is the current immigration trend different from that of the early 1900s? Please consider the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty---it gives away my position.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
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3 comments:
I just came over from the SJ Watch blog to see how life is treating you. I of course checked out your posting on immigration and I find it appalling that someone would really make a statement like that. How can we as humans fault other humans for trying to make a better life for them selves and then how can we as humans treat others so poorly when they do try? The only answer is a person who makes a comment like that is obviously very selfish and I have to feel sorry for them for being so. It is also sad that our Government has become so overran by these same folks to the point that they will lock up innocent children.
I do hope life is treating you and yours well!
Thanks Marcel for the comments. I wasn't sure what to do with the comment. It was surprising and so wrong. I wanted to publicly share it as a way to expose his hurtful and polarizing comments. Life is well...we miss Sitka---I drank the water four times:)
Well, it helped that McCain took, at least for a long while, a less-right-wing view on immigration, and it never became central during the 2008 election campaign post-conventions.
However, there's no doubt that the "screw-you, Jose" viewpoint is prevalent in this country, if hardly a majority view. It's not hard to understand and it's not all racism, either. Especially easy to grasp if you live where illegal or legal immigrants are perceived as stressing an already collapsing economy and taking jobs (so to speak) from more long-standing citizens. One of the lovely things about capitalism, modern and not so modern, is its ability to use shortages, many of which it causes, to drive wedges between poor people. Don't want to sound like Karl Marx or even Groucho, but it's glaringly obvious that the Bushies have done a fabulous job of ruining our economy and simultaneously promoting wedge-issue politics. Coincidence? Don't bet on it.
Worth looking at Richard Rorty's "Literary Criticism and the Poetics of World-Making" in his first or second book of collected essays, where he uses the metaphor of the English gentlemen's club vs. the Kuwaiti bazaar in this context.
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