Illegal Immigration:                                                                                 

             But it was always legal immigration!
 

(This past Friday (March 25th) a radio station I was listening to interrupted Paul Harvey
(! Blasphemy! Ah....not that I listen to talk radio or nuttin'... Hi, my name is Mike, long time listener, first time caller...) to tell us all, via a live reporter, that 8 to 10 thousand Hispanic marchers were walking to a politician's office in protest of the new law that would make being an illegal immigrant a felony. By the Saturday morning paper headline this number had been doubled to 20 thousand! It also reported that in LA (or LaLaLand) 100,000 had marched in protest. You just have to know that the numbers were inflated. My first thought was why the hell should this politician care what these illegals think? Hell they can't vote! They're illegals! Then I thought, now why oh why did we not round them all up and ship 'em back to Mexico!!?? We missed one hell of a self-made round up, Partner. As a friend noted this irony, here is a group of people who do not respect our laws, as they blatantly disregarded our laws by coming here illegally in the first place, and now these same people want us to respect their feelings in the making our laws...geez...the nerve of some people.

Anyway:

    Last December I went to the local Staples and bought a 2006 desk calendar. You know, the big place mat type calendars where you can write stuff on it and set your coffee cup without staining your desktop. These calendars also have nice little reminders written in the little date boxes telling you about special days, like the 4th Of July and so on. I picked out a nice one for about 12 bucks called "Arizona Sunsets." I'm retired now, and getting lazier by the hour, so I figured this way I can sit here at my desk and look at one of our beautiful sunsets down here in the "Valley Of The Sun" without having to walk all the way out the front door, onto the lawn and turning to my left. Shameful I know, but, life is good.

    The other day I cleaned my office, which is a regular necessity here in Arizona because along with all this gorgeous sunshine comes a whole lot of dust. After everything was wiped off, and re-arraigned so that it really looked like I did something, and because it was the beginning of March, I sat down and removed the February page from my calendar, crumbled it up and threw it in the waste basket. Then I took pen in hand and started to mark off the dates where I had an appointment, or some other date to remember. I have to do this because as a retired person of a slightly advanced age, one finds that along with becoming a little less energetic, there also comes a whole Grand Canyon void of forgetfulness. For example, last month I forgot to write anything at all on my calendar, well except for some mindless doodlings. In fact, there are times that I even forget how lazy I've become and I actually get up and do something, like clean my office. After all, here it was March 6th and I was just now taking the February page off of my calendar. How lazy is that? If I had waited a few more days I would have had to take two pages off instead of one! But then that just goes to show that what they say is true, the lazy man works twice as hard. 

    Anyway, I was writing my appointments on the calendar when I came to March 21. I had a doctor's appointment at 2 PM. But wait a minute. What does that say up in the corner of the little box for the 21st? Benito Juarez's Birthday (M). What? Yep, that's what it says. Benito Juarez's Birthday (M). Wait a minute, did I buy a Mexican calendar? No, there at the top, in English, it says March not Marcha. And there are the days listed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on, not Lunes, Martes, Miércoles! Plus, if it was a Mexican calendar wouldn't it just say Benito Juarez's Cumpleaños. So why, as an American citizen who bought this calendar in the great State of Arizona, and having conducted that entire transaction in English, am I being reminded that the 21st of March is Benito Juarez's Birthday (M)?  

    Just out of curiosity, and forgetting once again how lazy I have become, I get up, walk all the way across the room, and retrieve the February page from the trash basket. Sure enough, there, slightly hidden under all the doodles and coffee cup rings, are the appropriate date boxes marked with Washington's and Lincoln's Birthdays, Valentine's Day and President's Day, or as I like to refer to it in honor of the Pearl, The Combination of the Two, "Whooaaa, whoa, whao, whao, whoa O!"

    However, along with these appropriate notes about American holidays were these about Mexican holidays: February 5, Anniversary of the Constitution (M), February 24, Flag Day (M).

    Looking back on the March page I see that the 1st was Ash Wednesday, the 6th was when Eastern Orthodox Lent begins, the 17th was St. Patrick's Day, the 20th was when Spring begins, and of course on the 21st, good old Benito was a year older, or at least he would be if he was still around.

    Now I had heard of Benito Juarez, admittedly it was mainly from old westerns I had watched when I was a kid. If I remember correctly, and as I have stated, that's a big if, he was portrayed as a Mexican bandito/general during one of their numerous revolutions, or revoluciones as they say in Spanish.

    To learn more about him I did a Google: http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/history/jtuck/jtbenitojuarez.html

    Now I always thought that was pretty cool how down in Mexico you didn't really have to rise through the ranks to become a General as you do here in the States. Just get a few disgruntled amigos together who where willing to call you General and holy hot tamale, one SNAPPY SALUTE! later, you are a General! Of course you needed a cause, a few rifles and some horses, but there always seemed to be somebody to fight down in Mexico. Seems Benito was pretty darn successful as a bandito/general, too. So much so that he actually became president for a while. He seems to have lived a full life, going from peasant, to bandito/general and then to president. Of course we all know that the only difference between being called a bandit or a general is what side you’re on and the only difference in being called a bandit or a president lies in the number of votes you receive. But probably the real reason he was so successful and ended up getting his name on my calendar is because he became, of all things, a lawyer. First rule of any bandito, if you're going to break the law and get away with it, know what laws you're breaking. That's how so many bandito/lawyers/self-made generals/presidents get away with it, even today.

    Here is why am I having a problem with all of these dates of Mexican holidays printed on my calendar, although I do enjoy reading about history and it was interesting to read what little I did about Juarez. My problem is that this information about someone else's country is being included when I did not ask for it nor seek it out. I am being unwillingly exposed to a history that I did not choose to study for myself. A history that now, it seems, must be included in my daily life even though I do not live in that country. A history that someone else has decided should be just as important to me as the history of my own country. Mexico, too, is divided into states, the closest one to Arizona being Sonora. I would have to bet that you cannot walk into a store anywhere in Sonora, buy a calendar written in Spanish and find any references on the date boxes to Lincoln's birthday or any other date of interest in United States' history. So why is it that I have found these Mexican references on a calendar purchased in Arizona?

    I do not blame the Mexican immigrates, legal or otherwise for these references. It is unfortunately a human fault that some people will get by with whatever they can get away with. This new group of immigrates are being allowed to get by without learning our language. I blame the Mexican government, if you can call that fiasco a government, because they encourage their people to illegally cross our border. There are pamphlets published by the Mexican 'government' that tell them how to safely, illegally come across the border into our United States. The number one export of Mexico is its people into America and its number one import are our tax free dollars. Billions of tax free dollars. I blame our current politicians, corporations and various citizen's groups like the ACLU, who feel that of all things we MUST make these people of Mexico feel welcomed. We must make sure that they feel At Home in our home country by making our culture change for them so they can get by without their making the effort to learn our language or to incorporate into our society. In doing so we now find that we often walk through our cities and shops and wonder if indeed we are not the ones who are in someone else's country. It is to the point that these immigrates no longer have to merge with the rest of us, they are being allowed, no wait, check that, they are being aided and encouraged to stay apart. Whether they came here legally or not. Most of you who will receive this and take the time to plough through it are of European or African decent. So you will all know that at one time or another when your ancestors immigrated here, or in some sad cases where brought here against their will, they did not all speak English. In those times it was up to those individuals to learn the language of our country and to teach their children to do the same. It was expected for these individuals to succeed in this task and it was up to them to assimilate into the American culture. A culture that has always accepted the diversity of others.

    There was but one Golden Rule, We Speak English Here.

    I now live in a state where the taxpayers are being charged one million dollars a day by a Federal Judge until the State Government complies with a ruling that it must set up adequate English classes in all of our schools for students who only speak Spanish. Yet, and here is the good part, it is not that our State Government has not set up such a program, voted on it, passed it, and sent it on to the desk of our Governor to sign the bill that we are being fined. We are being fined one million dollars a day because our Governor does not think that this bill DOES ENOUGH to help these students! 

     I have a friend who just built a house in California. She was at a nursery buying plants for the landscaping and having great difficulty trying to understand what the Mexican worker was saying to her about the plants she was looking for. Frustrated, she kept saying, "I can't understand you." Finally the worker said, in slightly better English than he had been previously using, "You mean you live in southern California and you don't know Spanish?" To which she replied, "You mean you live in America and you don't know English?" She then went to a different nursery. This worker's attitude is not uncommon as it has become the accepted attitude of these illegals that WE are the ones who must change.

    I grew up in an industrial area in Illinois with a mixture of many different nationalities and cultures influenced by the various countries of our ancestors' origins, including many Mexican families. As children we heard any number of varying different accents when the English language was spoken. Many of these people spoke their native languages in their homes as well. But the underlying bond between us all was that in public, in business and in our schools we all spoke English. There were no special programs set up by the government to teach Jose, Pepe, Boris, Jean-Pierre, Hans, Horst, or Erik The Freakin' Viking English. This is why such a small thing like Flag Day (M) disturbs me when I find such references on my calendar.

People are smart. They always start out with the little things which lead to the bigger things. That way you don't feel like you are being hit over the head with a sledgehammer, it just sort of sneaks up on you. For example: Some of you, who have read this far, may be too young to remember a time when we called our banks, government offices, hospitals, and various businesses and did not have to "Press One for English", or, "Prensa dos para el español." None of us, who are old enough to remember those times, remember when all that started. All we recall is that sometime or another in the not so distant past we picked up the phone and called our credit union and got, "press one for English", and then some foreign language, we did not understand, was being barked at us. Most of us took the phone away from our ear and mumbled, "What the ....?" Today you cannot call any business and not get these options. It won't be long now until you cannot buy a calendar without it noting Benito Juarez's Birthday (M).

    The bottom line is that Mexican immigrants today are being allowed, and encouraged, to not learn the English language or to incorporate into our society. Meanwhile the American citizen is made to pay for any and all programs that will help these illegals get by while they are here illegally. Can you see the insanity of it all? We are being told by the politicians and business owners that America cannot survive without these workers that are supplied by this illegal immigration. We are being told that we could not afford a head of lettuce or other produce if it was not being picked by migante labor. We are being told that these illegals do the jobs that no one else will do and that we cannot afford to pay someone else more money to do these jobs. We are being told by activist groups that these people have a right to come here, and to try to stop them, i.e. militia groups, closing off the easiest routes, etc., are inhumane. We are being told that it is the illegals right to speak Spanish and not learn English, that they are only trying to improve their lot, that we all came here the same way and that we must not discriminate against them. And that my friends is not true. A recent study shows that, yes, we would spend more for produce and other items we purchased if not for illegal labor. But we would save billions on taxes, free welfare, medical care and by keeping the money earned IN THE UNITED STATES! Billions of our dollars are being mailed to families in Mexico every year. These are billions of US dollars that are not taxed and are not returned to help our economy. The other part of this falsehood is the question, "Who did these jobs before the illegals came to town?" Well, when was the last time you saw a high school kid making an extra buck by cutting someone's lawn? The illegals don't come into our country and take skilled jobs, they come in and take those jobs that our young people used to do. But then this all comes back to the bandito/general/president/ lawyers who make the laws. Most States now have laws that a college or high school student cannot make that extra buck without being licensed, bonded and insured. So for the simple reason that contractors and businesses, who are licensed, bonded and insured, can pay an illegal a few bucks less than a young American starting out, we are seeing America destroyed from within. You just have to watch those bandito/lawyers and their big business buddies.

    I have never been against a working man trying to improve his lot. My ancestors immigrated here in the late 1800's to do just that. Dennis Miller put it the same way along with this little note, "For Christ sake sign the guest book on the way in will ya?"

After all, we're just asking for legal immigration. If you do it otherwise, you're breaking OUR laws. Comprenda? Entienda?

Now wake up! I'm done.

SF,

Mike 

03/27/06

"Copyright 2006.  Michael E. Tank   All rights reserved. No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted, or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author."