How you can get rid of illegal aliens

Mike (my employer) recently gave me an unexpected compliment. He told me that I was such a good auditor because of my analytical nature. In thinking about my thought processes over the course of a day I realize that he is right. Sometimes being analytical is a boon, like when it comes to solving a problem. It can also be a curse, like when I want to explore alternative angles in a conversation and come across as “argumentative” as AJ recently reminded me.

Now that I’ve gotten that little self-analysis out of the way, I’d like to get to the meat of this post. That first paragraph is relevant because in order to be analytical I must first be observant. A theme that has been on the minds of so many people is illegal immigration. The level of anger and, dare I say, hatred towards our fellow humans who weren’t so fortunate as to be born in this country, is swelling like the belly of the “Octomom”.

The Nationalist sentiment has taken a stronghold with people in my circle. Whether via chain emails or in person, I get almost a daily dose of immigration indignation. The messages are crafted to stir up resentment towards those who are perceived as stealing away that which we hold so dear (namely our jobs and social services) without reciprocation in the form of taxation and citizenship. The idea seems to be that if we could just wall off our country and keep those dirty immigrants on their side of the fence we could continue to exist in our Utopian States of America.  Since I’m so analytical I find myself with a lot of unanswered questions about our immigration dilemma.

What I do know is that many of those, who complain the loudest, are far removed from the actual immigrants. It is so much more difficult to harbor ill will towards another human when you are in direct contact with them. I was raised in the Nazarene Church. One of the things I really appreciated about the Nazarene teachings is that there wasn’t a whole lot of fire and brimstone. The overwhelming theme was one of compassion and acceptance. The verses “Love thy neighbor as you love thyself ” and “Judge not, lest ye be not judged” were commonly quoted in the sermons I attended.

It wasn’t until later (when I came to live in the South, actually) that I found out that religion wasn’t all about love and kindness. I read the Bible, from cover to cover, when I was 13 and became confused by the contradictions; but I believed my Sunday School teacher when she said that we must choose to live by the good parts. So, even then I began to see that the practice of Christianity is a highly subjective process. What it seems to come down to is that you can justify a great deal as long as you put forth a good amount of effort trying to convert others. As I grew older I found that other people put as much stock in the negative teachings as I did in the positive. While I was practicing “Turn the other cheek” I was dealing with those who practiced “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”.

The South seems to have a special talent for discrimination, and so many of the Christians down here are often full of venom towards those they consider inferior. Granted, this is a sentiment that transcends religious bounds. Plenty of “heathens” express hatred towards selected groups as well, it’s just that they haven’t made a commitment to be nice, so they are “excused”.

I’m composing this post in the “stream of consciousness” style, and while surfing the net I found an article that former President Jimmy Carter wrote: “Losing my religion for equality”. It appears that he has defected from the Baptist Church in disgust with their discriminatory treatment of women. I found his words to be quite apropos to my own thinking.

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasize the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

This sums up my perspective fairly well. Unfortunately, Christianity is often used to manipulate and control the masses. Because the teachings of the Bible are so antiquated and full of contradictions, anyone can tease out the scriptures that suit their purposes, while abandoning the rest. Honestly, this doesn’t work for me. I just can’t force myself to believe that I am going to burn in an eternal lake of fire because I didn’t follow some modern day man’s interpretation of an ancient text. And that is what it boils down to. Furthermore, if I were to try and force myself to believe something I just can’t believe then I would be headed to the fiery lake anyway, because I’d be an unrepentant liar.

So, I’m going to take my own route (incidentally based on my early Christian training) and say that I don’t resent illegal aliens and I don’t will them back to the hopeless, squalid conditions from whence they came. I don’t believe that God roped off this big patch of land so that we could live our lives of excess and wastefulness while condescending towards those who have been born under less fortunate circumstances. If this were the case we wouldn’t have had to take the country by force in the first place. And let’s not forget that all of our ancestors might be considered “illegal aliens” had the Native Americans believed in the concept of the earth as a possession.

The irony that strikes me is that Jesus was the ultimate liberal. The Bible would have us believe that he wandered around associating with social outcasts and sick people. He was quite busy helping and feeding the disadvantaged while compelling others to give up their belongings and follow him on this path. I have to imagine that not only would Jesus support the idea of helping the illegals, but would encourage his followers to go across the border and make a hands-on effort to improve their situation. At the very least he would inspire us to stop supporting the corporate entities and government policies which are heavily responsible for this crisis.

Now, before I continue to fuel the uproar I may be starting, let me say that I do believe in equality of responsibility. And that’s what we are really talking about when it comes to illegal immigration. We want them to follow the rules we have set up for getting into the country. We want them to pay taxes and not be a drain on our welfare system; the system that was set up for the unfortunate few who are not able to get by in this “Land of Plenty” that we now “own”.

In order to address this point I am going to have to trample all over the false religion we have all been raised to worship, “The Cult of Growth”. The concept of prosperity through growth is just a big, fat, reeking lie. A “Growth Based Economy” is nothing more than a one way street from our resources to the landfills. If you don’t believe me, look around you and tell me how many of those items do you truly expect to have in a week, in a year, in ten years? In order for the rich to continue getting richer (and ultimately more powerful) it is imperative that we live covetous lives of continuous consumption. This is an unsustainable system, and in order for us to constantly acquire more than we have earned with our labor we must pave this one way street with the blood, sweat and tears of our neighbors.

Although we are to believe that we live in “The Land of the Free”, we are being led to slaughter by our corporate masters. We have been tricked into thinking that life should be cheap and easy and that we shouldn’t have to worry or think about where anything comes from, or how it got to us. I challenge you to look around you, once again, and try to guess the true value of each item you see, had it been manufactured here in the US, by legal US citizens. Use your imagination. Assuming you had the skills and materials to produce a given object, or grow a particular vegetable, would you be willing to work a 12 hour shift making that object for just enough money to put a roof over your head and some rice or tortillas on your plate? Would you volunteer to do it with no health care and while putting your health in danger? Would you ride a bus or a bicycle to that factory or to the fields and everywhere else you needed to go? I’m going to stick my neck out and guess that you wouldn’t do these things unless you had no other choice. Yet isn’t that what we are asking of these people, these fellow humans, who simply had the misfortune of emerging from the womb in the wrong place, at the wrong time?

We are so smug as to sit onour throne as a (current) world superpower and expect others to suffer in silence so that we may continue on just a little longer with our Grand Deception. Did you know that a portion of your precious tax dollars goes towards corn subsidies which flood the Mexican markets with corn priced below market value, thus forcing millions of Mexican farmers out of business? Do you care?

How would you feel if Canada suddenly dumped their wheat on us in the same fashion? I have family in the agriculture business, and I can guarantee that if we were faced with starvation, while the country that destroyed our livelihoods prospered, we would find a way to get work and feed our families. I would break the rules and do whatever I had to in order to survive. It is especially hard to respect the rules of a nation that doesn’t play fair; and if you look closely, we don’t play fair.

To make matters worse, our injustices are not relegated to beyond our borders. If you dig a little deeper, you will see that many of the U.S. corporations, that you patronize, knowingly and willingly employ these illegal aliens in order to produce their cheap goods services. I’d collect a bunch of examples and post links if I thought I had to convince you, but I suspect that most Americans are very well aware of this fact. If you really want to make a stand, walk into the kitchen of your favorite restaurant and demand to see the documentation all the kitchen staff. You may not be surprised to find that there is a work visa for an immigrant. What you might not realize is that the documents may be forged; and if they are legal, there may be a few of his friends or relatives working under the same visa. Next, you should go to the restaurant owner and demand that they hire only American citizens and raise their prices accordingly. If you follow this process through the source of every food item in the restaurant, you will have successfully priced yourself out of dining out (and dining in, for that matter). It may be uncomfortable and you may have to start growing your own food, but you could easily solve the illegal alien crisis by simply putting your patriotic energy to work on your own buying habits.

Another pinnacle of irony is the fact that the same people who are pissed about the illegal immigrants seem to be thrilled to send their tax dollars off to destroy and “rebuild” Middle Eastern countries based on a huge lie told by their beloved former leader. When this man was leading us down the path of financial ruin the overwhelming sentiment was “We must support our president, no matter what”. Funny that I’m already hearing a different tune regarding our current figurehead “We must respect him, but we don’t have to support him”. Isn’t that convenient? Honestly, I’d prefer that my tax dollars went to help out a Mexican family who came here looking for a better life than to bomb out a city in Iraq so that U.S. oil companies can take control of the oil fields (which they have now done, by the way). I’m still mad about the billions of dollars lost (and by “lost” I mean “stolen”) at the hands of U.S. defense contractors in the Middle East. I’m still disgusted that we are attacking just about every other country except the one from which the supposed 9/11 terrorists were from, namely Saudi Arabia.

Isn’t it convenient that we are embroiled in this immigration debate while the money we are wasting overseas could be used to rebuild the economies in the hometowns of the immigrants, thus giving them a good reason to leave on their own accord? It is much less difficult to exact hatred towards a nebulous bunch of people than it is to go directly to the source of our problems and convict our criminal leaders of treason.

Really want to solve the immigration problem? Call your representatives and inform them that you will no longer be paying taxes until they stop taking money from all corporations which benefit from the use of illegal immigrants or even legal immigrants who harbor illegal friends and family members. Voting along party lines will get you nowhere because representatives of both parties are beholden to their corporate sponsors. So, it’s back to the corporations which run this world. Stop patronizing them and the immigration problem will be solved on its own accord.