It's easy to be racist when it's nearly 2:30 in the morning and you're stuck on the last bus home and it's filled to the brim with multi-colored faces. It's easy to claim pure-blood nationalism when you go to the grocery store (with is pure hell in itself) and all you hear is the constant unfamiliar chatter of foreign languages about you. It's easy to get upset when you hear the statistics on the amount of illegal drugs being smuggled into this country with the single purpose to addict our children on a daily basis.

It's also easy to get upset when you hear the stories of officials prying open abandoned boxcars revealing their rotten human cargo inside. It's easy to fight when you look into the downright shitjobs immigrants are taking because 'no one else will'. It's easy to raise an eyebrow when you think 'well, when you get right down to it we're ALL IMMIGRANTS in some way or another'.
Before we start building midevil concrete barriers and rallying in the street we need to take a step back and we need to take RESPONSIBILITY. When you get right down to it that was the core fundamental our founding fathers(and mothers) based our radical new government on-RESPONSIBILITY.
They key word in ths whole debate that I have an issue with is ILLEGAL. Illegal (as far as I've always been taught implies that a law is being broken. And laws are set to maintain equilibrium and provide a working system and blah blah blah amen. It makes pure sense here that if a law is being broken then why are we allowing it to continue..why are we condoning it. I remember a handful of years ago when a little Cuban boy found floating in a raft with his dead family on board was sent packing back to his little island of communistic horrors. Meanwhile hordes of illegal immigrants are charging (and I do mean charging) across our borders daily. A crime is a crime-that bitch justice tips her scales for no one (Yeah, right).
If you want the freedoms that this nation supposedly provides then you must EARN them. Even those of us who were born into this mess need to get to it and do something. If you want your citizenship come on in , fill out the dotted lines, bust your balls, go through the motions like the rest of us. Pay your taxes (like we all do-right?), follow the rules, and take on that RESPONSIBILITY.
But, I'd be living insome sort of fantasy world if I thought that America's gargantuan industries did not benefit nor exploit the work of illegal immigrants. I'd start bitching if the price of my LARRY THE CABLE GUY boxer shorts and STAR WARS Pez dispensers skyrocketed because of an increase in legal wages. But let's not forget that there are a lot of legal citizens that would love to have some of those 'less than white' jobs you hear about so much in this debate.
And if you love this country so much to risk your precious life running across the desert and facing the fact of failure just to get into it then -STAY IN IT! Because money made here and sent somewhere else is a slap in the face. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. One of my best friends in High School came from a mexican family and everyone straight down to his older brothers worked the fields to earn a living. They became citizens , not by hopping a fence and milking the system, but by hard work and a desire to be a part of it. The family maintained their heritage and his mother was a very vocal member of the growing Mexican community in our developing town. Their past had not been dilluted along the way-better yet, it had been brought with them to the table.
And I can't help but think that there's a kind of polar mirror effect going on here. That just maybe the thing that makes us born-n-bred citizens feel so 'uncomfortable' with the growing number of immigrants is that unbridled desire to work these people have when they've got so much to lose. Are we maybe just a wee bit afraid of being shown up?
Here are just some ideas to help both sides out.
CITIZENS: learn some spanish, go out and get those jobs neccessary to make this country work, vote, try to understand others
IMMIGRANTS: learn some english, take the legal steps to citizenship, try to understand others
And if Mexico or whatever country you come from is so bad then why don't you put the effort into trying to fix it instead of fleeing it.

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