WanderMama

OMG.  We got a swearing in date.  March 26, 2009.  I have waited so long for this day.  Please let this be the end of the immigration road.  Please please please.

So we put the bumper sticker on our car.  It’s my first ever and I really like it — it’s funny and true.  But I’ve come to realize that: 1.  Alot of people are very anti-immigrant 2.  Only crazies (like me) put morality lessons on the butt of their cars. 

Today I saw: “GET US OUT (big letters) of the United Nations (small letters).  Whaaaaah?  P.S. I live 5 miles north of Boston, MA not Lubbock, TX.

On NPR yesterday, I heard a pre-Primary report from Derry, NH.  I wish that I could get a transcript.  Most of the interviewees hedged and said immigrants were fine but illegal immigrants were breaking the law.  But one honest guys said, and I paraphrase, “I moved from MA to get away from the immigrants.  Don’t get me wrong I’m not racist but I had to get away from them.”  Ummm… sure you’re not racist.

Which bring me to an editorial (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1692059,00.html) by Micheal Kinsley that I liked alot in Time.  Basically it takes on the whole socially-accepted “I don’t have a problem with immigrants but illegal immigrants are breaking the law.”   A quote from the article: 

“…Why are you so upset about this particular form of lawbreaking? After all, there are lots of laws, not all of them enforced with vigor. The suspicion naturally arises that the illegality is not what bothers you. What bothers you is the immigration. There is an easy way to test this. Reducing illegal immigration is hard, but increasing legal immigration would be easy. If your view is that legal immigration is good and illegal immigration is bad, how about increasing legal immigration? How about doubling it? Any takers? So in the end, this is not really a debate about illegal immigration. This is a debate about immigration.”

My husband, an immigrant himself, says the issue is not black and white.  But I say, it definitely is about color.  It’s not the financial cost of immigrants in our schools as much as the worry that Spanish will someday be taught there. 

It’s easy for people to take pot-shots at illegal immigrants.  But what would we boot-strapping Americans do if our families were hungry and we lived 50 miles from the land of milk & honey?  Perhaps we need to recognize our own racism and try out a little empathy.

WanderPapa and I saw this bumper sticker on a car in Provincetown over the past weekend.  Such a good one.

WP is an immigrant, so the anti-immigrant rhetoric hits close to home.  But it’s not just that. 

As a human being, I am offended by politicians’ efforts to stir up xenophobia.  Let’s face it – this country has lost the respect of many around the world in recent years.  Yet, it is still a place where,  regardless of language or faith, you can build a life.  At least for the time being.  

Efforts to build walls, to ensure English as the only language, to intimidate migrant workers smack of fear to me.  The thing I find scary is that these efforts might succeed.  Then America, which has long been the destination for the poor but ambitious, will lose a powerful economic driver and a wonderful part of its identity.