Every
opportunity they get, they engage in trash talk about the reforms that would
accept the fact that there was no legitimate reason to deny valid visas to many
millions of the people who are now living in this country without official
status.
BUT
I CAN’T get too worked up about these people whose political morals are
repulsive – largely because I realize the momentum is working against those
individuals. Come another three or so decades, and these same people are going to
be the ones engaging in doubletalk to explain how they ever could have been
quite so vacuous with their current rhetoric!
Kind
of like now how the surviving people who once were critical of Mayor Harold
Washington now try to claim it was a misunderstanding and they were really,
really on Harold’s side way back in the 1980s.
Easing
the restrictions on people wishing to come to this country and realizing the
ones who are already here are making worthwhile contributions to our society is
going to seem so blatantly obvious someday.
Now
in my family’s case, it was my grandfathers who were the immigrants from Mexico
who ultimately settled in the South Chicago neighborhood, where they wound up
working in the steel mills that used to be all over the place near the
Illinois/Indiana border.
ONE
OF MY grandfathers came prior to the first federal immigration policy being put
in place, while the other came during the period when Mexican citizens were
specifically exempted from immigration restrictions (because the ideologues of
that era were more concerned with keeping “the Jews!” out of this country).
Yet
when I look at the modern-day people who are allegedly in this country “illegally”
(that’s INS bureaucrat-speak, because people are NOT illegal by nature), I don’t
see any real difference from my grandfathers – who came here because they saw
an opportunity to work toward a better life.
The
only people who see a difference are those people with ethnic-inspired hang-ups
that shouldn’t be allowed to influence our nation’s laws.
That
is why I was pleased to learn how Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is working the nation,
so to speak, to try to influence people everywhere to lighten up on their
hostility toward newcomers to this country.
GUTIERREZ
IS IN Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday and North Charleston, S.C., on Friday, before
returning to Chicago Saturday for an event at the Rebaño Church in the Humboldt
Park neighborhood.
In
coming weeks, he will speak to groups in Minneapolis and Houston, and also a
Valentine’s Day event in suburban Des Plaines, where he is scheduled to appear with
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., to talk about the issue.
Although
I’m sure there are those who will quickly dismiss anything Gutierrez has to
say. Their hang-ups are that strong.
It
is with them in mind that I’m wondering what they’ll think of statements earlier
this month by Pope Francis, who is scheduled to make an east coast tour of the
United States (New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.) later this year.
THE
POPE SAYS he’d also like to include a stop in northern Mexico in which he would
go to the Rio Grande and cross over the river into south Texas – replicating the
same image that the bigots of our society would have you think was made by many
millions of people who snuck into the United States to subvert our society.
Which
is such a nonsense statement that it makes me laugh just to write it!
Perhaps
one of those “Minutemen” nincompoops along the U.S./Mexico border (whose use of
historic images is even more gross than those ‘Tea Party’ types) thinks it will
be cool to be the guy who “stops” the pope from crossing the river into the
United States.
Then
again, it probably would take that blatant of an image to make the bulk of
people realize how obscene much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric truly is.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment