Blaming "Illegals" For Everything That's Wrong

You've been had, folks.

There are serious issues in this country, and nothing is going to fix them except admitting the system we use is broken, and opening ourselves up to the idea of changing our policies, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. Our only other choice is to wallow in the mess we have and complain. We may as well shout at the wind.

You've been tricked. You look at your life and everything that's wrong. You see the traffic - too much of it. You look at the taxes they take out of your paycheck and say you should be able to keep your money, or at least more of it. You look at the news and hear everything that's bad and you say to yourself, why? Why is it like this? Surely there must be some evil force behind it all, making my life hard. It can't just be that life sometimes doesn't give you everything you want, right when you want it; no, there is evil afoot, keeping things bad.

You think, if I'm getting screwed, someone else must be getting the benefit. It's so simple, you think - if I am losing, someone else must be winning. So we look around for someone who is getting a bigger piece of the pie. Someone who gets government money, or benefits from our government's generosity and we point our fingers and say "There! There is the person who is reaping the rewards for MY suffering!"

We listen to talk radio, watch Fox News, and they tell us it's all the IMMIGRANTS' fault. Look at them, coming to OUR country and getting on welfare, getting free medical care in OUR emergency rooms, killing and raping OUR women and children, driving on OUR roads without licenses or insurance. Who do these people think they are? How dare they enjoy the richness of our country? THEY'RE the reasons everything is so bad in this country! If we could just get rid of them, everything would be wonderful! There would be no crime! We'd never have to wait to see a doctor again! Our kids would all get straight A's and get top-quality educations! Our streets would be safe again! Oh, what a paradise it would be, if only we could get all of those dirty filthy criminal immigrants rounded up and deported! Oh sweet dreams of paradise!

You've been spoon-fed lies in the form of statistics that sound so convincing. You've been shown news reports that were spun in such a way as to give you just the right conclusion. You've been trained and conditioned to believe that ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS are the cause of all your misery, and that they're a bigger threat to our way of life than Al Qaeda, AIDS and the Legion of Doom.

You've been told that these people lurk in your own towns, waiting for you to let your guard down so they can steal your car, rape your daughters, use up all the medical care and make babies. SOMETHING MUST BE DONE, you get told, and in your panic, you buy it. You buy all of it.

What they aren't telling you is that immigrants, whether here legally or illegally, are just trying to survive. They don't have the benefit of citizenship, and the comfort we enjoy. Their lives are lived in the shadows, in secret. They've waited for years for the beauracracy of the American Immigration system to give them legal status. Many of these people work demeaning, low-paying jobs, cannot get health benefits, cannot get protection from the police, for fear that someone is going to ask to see their papers. They have families, some here, some back in their native countries that are counting on them to provide the kind of financial support that they can't get in their own countries.

These people aren't living in mansions, sitting behind powerful desks in big offices. They're washing cars. They're busing tables. They're mowing lawns. They're nannying. They're cooks, construction workers, farmhands, and waitresses. They are the servant class in our great society, and we benefit from them as much as they benefit from us. They're not making a lot of money, but even what they make is better than they did back in their home countries. They don't complain, except when they get treated as something less than human. They only want a chance to make a life for themselves. They aren't greedy.

And yes, some people come to this country illegally and commit crimes. They rob, they steal and they kill. And they should be punished, no matter how sad their hard-luck story is. They shouldn't be allowed to stay in this country. Let's forget for a moment that these ne'er-do-well's make up a very small portion of the overall immigrant population. Let us not forget that we have a slow and incompetent system that fails to provide people the documentation they need, when they need it. Ask yourselves; in your own dealings with the government, when have they ever been prompt or accurate? The red tape in any government agency is enough to choke on, and how much more so when working for people who aren't even taxpaying citizens? Instead of streamlining the immigration process, we just throw money at hiring more guards, more border patrol agents, more guns and badges. We don't address the problem. It's easier to give you a scapegoat - it's easier to say "it's the mexicans' fault" than it is to take a serious look at the problem.

The next time you find yourself complaining about "the mexicans", ask yourself - what would it be like if all the illegal immigrants left? How would it affect me? It would, you can be sure. But would it be a positive thing? Ask yourself how many cheap goods and services you enjoy, from fruit at the supermarket to low prices at Wal-Mart, to beautifully manicured lawns and cheap prices at your favorite restaurant. Imagine the people who provide those goods and services, many who are paid less than minimum wage, who don't get health insurance, suddenly having a right to those things. What would that do to the prices you pay? They would SKYROCKET. And you could console yourself that at least no illegals are stealing jobs anymore. When you pay two to three times what you currently pay for fruit, when your lawnmowing service doubles its prices, when your favorite restaurants double the prices on the menu, will it make you happy to pay it, knowing that we live in an illegal-immigrant-free society?

Let's try to keep in mind, that this is a nation of immigrants, and immigrants' descendents. Your ancestors, whenever they came here, may just as easily have come illegally. History conveniently omits that the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock were illegally here; they didn't have the approval of the people who were already here, they just showed up. The settlers at Jamestown didn't get written authorization from the natives before building their colony. Christopher Columbus, Cortez, and all the European explorers who paved the way for the white man were illegal aliens. They just chose to disregard the laws of the indigenous people. They simply didn't care. Under the banner of "Manifest Destiny", they just went where they wanted, took what they wanted, and killed anyone who got in their way. Lewis and Clark didn't offer to wash the dishes of the people whose land they were invading; they didn't offer to cook and clean. In the early 1900's wave after wave of immigrant came to Ellis Island to build a new life. And from these immigrants we got the mafia, the drug trade, bootlegging, and murder for hire.

And let's not forget that many of them had blond hair and blue eyes.