A reader's response on the illegal immigration issue

Since 05-03-06

Posted by Duane in Commentary (Monday April 10, 2006 at 12:38 am)

http://blackinformant.com/2006/04/10/a-readers-response-on-the-illegal-immigration-issue/

Tracy writes:

“Where is the leadership of the African American community when it counts these days? \

The issue of ILLEGAL immigration has gripped the nation for the past few weeks and it’s infuriating to see that the elected officials and political pundits have been completely inadequate in expressing the concerns of the African Americans they claim to represent.

The Congressional Black Caucus is a disgrace in its failure to raise the arguments against ILLEGAL immigration. Juan Williams, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, the SCLC and the rest of the self appointed voice of Black America have also sold Black people out and let them down.

How could they remain silent when throngs of protesters took over the streets of Los Angeles and other cities across the country to denounce ILLEGAL immigration reform? The crowd was warmly received by LA Mayor Antonio Villaragosa on the steps of City Hall.

He assumed a posture of sympathy to their cause, “I come to you today, Mayor of the city of Los Angeles, to welcome you, the immigrants, who built this city, God bless you,” Villaraigosa said. The crowd roared and chanted “Si, se puede,” Spanish for, “Yes, it can be done.” They waved the Mexican flag and signs calling for “Amnestia”.

They said they were marching for their parents, their relatives, for Mexico and for Cezar Chavez. One by one, Hispanic elected officials and community leaders stoked the crowd that LA Spanish radio delivered after days of counseling their listeners on their ‘responsibilidad’.

“This is the new civil-rights movement,” said Maria Elena Durazo, a top Los Angeles labor leader. Nothing could be further from the truth but the gangs of self-righteous truants ditched school for days after the rally and by the end of the week they were trying to block traffic on the 101 Freeway.

The mass gatherings seem to have shamed the American pubic and the vote-hungry legislature into bowing to their demands for leniency on ILLEGAL immigration because of their loud cries of racism and the news media ate it up. The frenzy of coverage was sympathetic and pulled on the heartstrings of humanity and inclusion.

All that ‘melting pot’ rhetoric that taints anyone whose views can be spun into racism is a catch-22 for African Americans. Since the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties was the fight against the denial of supposedly inalienable legal rights of African American citizens, it’s a cruel irony that today’s Black leadership stands in silence while its cause is hijacked.

True, the corrections to the Constitution that were made on behalf of Black people benefit all Americans but let’s not lose sight of the reason the Civil Rights Movement was necessary: Slavery, Jim Crow, voting Rights atrocities, the terrorism of KKK and the lack of the government on the local, state and Federal level to protect, educate and provide services tax paying citizens simply because of their race.

It’s despicable that the Hispanic protesters and their illegal relatives would use the progress that Black people fought for against them?

Any tax-paying American citizen, regardless of the race or national origin, who has any understanding of Economics can see that ILLEGAL immigration undercuts the economy for everyone, not just Black people. American tax payers have had to foot the bill for 11 million ILLEGAL aliens since we ‘absorbed’ them the last time.

In 1994 Proposition 187, that would have denied ILLEGAL immigrants social services in California, was passed by voters but was later overturned by the courts. Too bad no American president has had the brilliant idea of forwarding the social services bills to President Vincente Fox.

Bush is warm to the illegal immigration for the same reason as the rest of the politicians: the coveted Hispanic vote (No one has informed Bush that ILLEGALS can’t vote unless the GOP knows something we don’t).

What I can’t understand is why Hispanic voters and their misguided elected officials can’t see that ILLEGAL immigration is the Federal government’s way of subsidizing the farm and constriction industries with cheap, uneducated workers, willing to do ‘stoop labor’(today’s euphemism for slavery) at half the going rate.

Their ILLEGAL compadres are plundering the accomplishments of the Mexican American immigrants who came here legally.

Hispanic leaders are selling out the memory of Cezar Chavez and his followers should be disgusted as well. Mr. Chavez was a third generation American citizen whose family was forced into migrant farm work when they lost their farm after a drought.

He fought tirelessly against ILLEGAL immigration in his quest to organize farm workers. He knew the economics of ILLEGALLY importing cheap, unskilled labor.

It keeps wages down and gives the employer the opportunity to exploit the workforce with impunity. Mr. Chavez picketed the offices of the I.N.S. and led United Farm Workers in marches and demonstrations against ILLEGAL strike breakers with squads of men that patrolled the borders much like the Minutemen of today.

The only benefit from the demonstrations was a chance for the American public to see the magnitude of the problem.

Those throngs of kids represent the masses of people that the American tax payers have had to make room for in our schools, clinics, hospitals and as evidenced by the recent outbreak of race riots in California, our prisons. (One of the reported causes of the race riots is the fact that the Hispanics outnumber the Blacks by about 2:1)

Mexican president Vicente Fox is unsympathetic to the negative impact of the flood of uneducated people to the US as evidenced last May by his incendiary comment that, “…there is no doubt that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States.”

Fox appears to be in the same time warp as his uneducated citizens crawling over the border to escape the ill-effects of his laughable excuse for a government. The truth of the matter is that African Americans never came here willingly to be slaves as his people are, so why would they want to continue claiming slave labor as their own once they fought to desegregate public education?

There appears to be no love lost between Blacks and Mexicans. The Reverend AL Sharpton says that, “illegal immigrants,” are “the closest thing to a slave you can be.” So why isn’t he voicing his opposition to the encouragement of modern slavery?

Sadly, Black and Hispanic leaders have each made the wrong choice in the unavoidable question that politicians face in a ‘melting pot’ society: Do they owe allegiance to the race or the cause? Both factions have allowed big business capitalists to use America’s disease of racism into perpetuating, however euphemised, modern day slavery.

The Mexican people are no different from any other and I’ve met my share of people who came here seeking a better life. What sets the ILLEGALS apart is their obnoxious sense of entitlement.

I’ve asked the multitude of legal immigrants that I’ve worked with over the last 20 years of I.C.U. Nursing the same questions and no matter what their national origin, whether it be Karachi, the Phillippines, Saudi Arabia, India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Cameroon or Syria, they ALL admit that it would have been much easier for them today if they’d had the opportunity to sneak over the border instead of applying for a VISA and going through the long process of legally immigrating to the US from the other side of the world.

More interesting is that every person I’ve asked now thinks in English and not the language they spoke in their country of origin.

It makes me wonder what U.S. healthcare would be like today if all the Phillippino nurses had refused to learn English and demanded that the nursing board exams be translated into Tagala.

As evidenced by the US Nursing shortage of crisis proportions, they are only taking jobs that Americans won’t. That demonstrates another difference, most Mexican ILLEGALS show up uneducated, unwilling to learn English, with the goal of stealing the ‘American Dream’ with an arrogant disregard for the weight they bear of the backs of the American tax payers.

I say, build the wall. Then, electrify it.”

1 comment for A reader’s response on the illegal immigration issue »

I just read an article that we all need to check out. Immigration, African Americans, and Race Discorse by Stephen Steinberg. He said it beautifully. I believe that any african american witnessing these immigration protests be outraged and insulted. We made it possible for them to have a job and still white America kicks us in the A%$

Comment by Ty — 4/19/2006 @ 4:52 pm