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If you can’t get in, you can’t get out, so let’s pass diabolical laws.

By Patrick Osio, Jr./HispanicVista.com

   August 7, 2006

 

  

                   

If you can’t get in, you can’t get out, so let’s pass diabolical laws.

By Patrick Osio, Jr

As a regular at a local restaurant, I’ve gotten to know the Mexican help. On a recent visit, kidding in Spanish with one of them I said, “What? You’re still here? I thought by now with all the fuzz, yelling and screaming about Mexicans you had returned to Mexico.” He replied, “The fence, immigrant-hunters (vigilantes), Migra (Border Patrol), and now soldiers I couldn’t cross over. So I stay.”

We laughed but he’s right. Fences and all things meant to keep people out also keep people in. And that is precisely what’s taken place for tens-of-thousands of illegal immigrants that worked the “season” and returned home. For the last 10 or so years, crossing back has been made harder. Each year more and more began to stay. Instead of saving money to buy a home in Mexico, money would be sent for living expenses and to save enough to bring the family over to stay.

As their numbers grew, tempers of long ago descendants of immigrants got shorter. Short tempers abandon calm reason, reacting only to anger driven emotions. Otherwise reasonable people begin to be engulfed in the emotional heated and escalating rhetoric. In the name of patriotism, love of country, and obedience to (selective) laws, a mob mentality sets in which no foolish idea is held back; no obligation to civility exists; no insult towards a people is out of bounds.

To this national tragedy we mix the rhetoric of the political ambitious and rating-driven media commentators feeding the mob mentality of so many Americans with errors in fact, misinformation, distortions, half-truths and downright untruths to the point of bringing the nation to the rim of a national calamity.

Mobs need the excuse that law enforcement is not doing the job in order to justify taking the law into their own hands. Mobs need to be the victims correcting an injustice so as to avoid facing the reality of their unjust and unlawful deeds. So they name the culprits – the Executive Branch of the government and the illegal immigrant.

Politicians out to preserve “white-culture” in concert with media commentators with the same goals, feed the mob introducing some diabolical or in some cases, very dumb laws allegedly with the intent of “stopping illegal immigration” but in reality are thinly veiled attacks on Hispanic culture and its expansion in the United States.

Among the more diabolical is the proposal by Arizona candidate for governor, Don Goldwater, to confine illegal immigrants in concentration camps to use as labor for cleaning the desert and build fences along the border. Possibly more diabolical is the proposal by VeriChip Corporation to implant microchips in immigrants’ arms to know their whereabouts just as is “done to pets.” Or Congressman Steve King’s proposal that border fences should be electrified, not to kill, just to discourage, “We do that with livestock all the time.” Or the reprehensible Sensenbrenner HR-4437 legislation calling for prosecution of anyone helping an illegal immigrant. Under this law giving water to a dying illegal immigrant could bring about prosecution.

In the dumb category one of the worst is legislation being introduced and passed by a number of states and on ballots for voter approval making it a crime to sell or rent a home/apartment to an illegal immigrant. Making landlords, realtors, home sellers, and property managers into immigration inspectors is neither bright nor constitutional. Were such nonsense to actually be enacted and enforced, it would soon become a fee-bonanza for attorneys filing discrimination suits the very first time a blond-blue-eyed-white person would not be made to prove citizenship, or conversely a brown faced US citizen be denied rental or purchase of property.

And how bright is it to pass a law as Georgia did calling on a tax on remittances sent out of the country? Haven’t they heard that all that is needed is a bank account sending an ATM card to out of country family where they can access funds at a local bank? Or remittance services that will spring up in other no-tax on remittance states where funds are sent intra-state and then remitted out of country?

And hypocrisy and/or ignorance abounds with such statements like, “American will do the work if the pay is better.”  This is heard from many elected officials and media commentators, yet when the question of raising minimum wage comes up, those same officials and media commentators oppose such measure saying it will hurt small businesses needing to employ low wage labor.

Hello, isn’t that what illegal immigrants are?

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Patrick Osio, Jr is Editor of HispanicVista (www.hispanicvista.com). Contact at: Posiojr@hispanicvista.com

(The opinions expressed by Patrick Osio, Jr. are solely his and do not necessarily reflect those of HispanicVista.com, editorial board of advisors or it’s contributing writers.)

Patrick Osio, Jr. has written a short but intensive manual on the Mexican perspective on numerous issues between our two countries. The manual is an in depth primer on the culture and protocol for better understanding Mexicans that in turn allows establishing personal and business relationships, and how to avoid the most common faux pas that can ruin relationships and business deals.

The manual is available through Electronic delivery for $9.95 making it possible to download the manual for save on your hard drive, printing its entirety or particular sections while reaping considerable savings over printed copies.