I receive a lot of angry e-mails. You can tell a lot about where America is at by the angry e-mails you receive. A month ago, my e-mails told me many Americans were upset about the price of gas. They didn’t stop driving, but they wrote a lot of e-mails blaming the oil companies and the politicians – actually they blamed everybody but those Americans who demand big cars and cheap gas as if it were a divine right. But that was yesterday, this is today.
Although as far as I can tell, gas prices are higher than ever, but angry Americans have moved on. The angry e-mails now consist pretty much of bashing immigrants. Yes, we are a nation of immigrants, but bashing immigrants has become our country’s second favorite sport (pro football will always be number one so long as there’s a bookie who will take your bet).
The establishment news media has fooled itself into thinking America’s anger against immigrants is directed against the illegals – national security and jobs being the key issues. But of course like much of what the news media reports, it suffers from one serious deficiency – it isn’t true. As I read my e-mails, most Americans are angry about immigrants whether they are illegal or not. The legality issue is a smoke screen, in fact so are the issues of national security and jobs.
Take the issue of legal immigrants versus illegal immigrants. Americans claim it’s just a matter of fairness. We say we don’t want illegals rewarded for breaking the law. After all, our grandparents didn’t get any special treatment. Well, actually, they did. Legal immigration wasn’t as restricted as it is today. If you had the promise of work, that was pretty much it. Not that there weren’t similar complaints about immigrants back then. Our grandparents were treated pretty shabbily by those "true Americans" already here. They weren’t the right religion; they were "dirty" and worked long hours for cheap pay and took jobs away from real Americans; and they didn’t speak much English. In short, they were the Mexicans of their day.
Many of the immigrant-haters have seized upon the issue of English as a national language. The Republicans, always in need of a divisive social issue to make the working class forget how they screw them over on economic issues, have happily become the party in favor of the English language. Is that a big problem in this country – that we speak too many languages? Is there any immigrant who doesn’t know that in order to succeed in America, you better learn English? Would it really be so harmful if kids grew up speaking English and the language of their parents? But no, according to the e-mails I receive, Americans are peeved because if they press one (1) when they call a place of business, they get Spanish. We’re going to change that street sign in Los Angeles from La Cienaga to what? Schwarzenegger Boulevard? No more Taco Bells and let’s ban those Zorro movies too while we’re at it. I’d be in favor of English as the national language, but the way we mangle it, how many of us would qualify as speaking the Queen’s English?
Look, I’m all for building the Great Wall of America to seal off the border. We should be able to control who comes in and out of the country. The plain fact is the folks swimming across the Rio Grande aren’t coming here to kill us. They want to pick our fruit and take care of rich people’s kids. Let’s admit it, we almost like cheap produce as much as we like cheap gas. It’s our right, we’re Americans. As for taking our jobs, how many Americans do you know who just can’t wait to get those cushy jobs picking fruit or wiping the runny nose of some spoiled rich kid?
Most of the angry Americans aren’t interested in whether immigrants have all their papers in order, they just want them to go home. These are the same people who disrespect Italian immigrants, sometimes even their own grandparents, by calling them "greaseballs." In this case, the greaseballs have become the "wetbacks." Pat Buchanan sees immigration as a threat to our European culture. Buchanan is wrong, but at least he is honest. It wasn’t so long ago Southern European immigrants were seen as the same kind of threat to American culture.
When times get rough, people take it out on strangers. Immigrants are an easy scapegoat. Solving terrorism or gas prices – not easy, so instead we have our scapegoats. But, if we could send all the Mexicans back across the border, we would soon find out our problems would still be with us. And we’d be paying more for fruit.
