Exactly what does an illegal immigrant look like?

Is he a Hispanic who doesn’t speak English, as most people seem to think?  Or, is he Oriental?  Maybe he is of apparent Mid-Eastern origin and without a doubt would be Muslim terrorist out to kill us all.  Or, maybe she is an Anglo with perfect English and apparent middle-class values who is in the United States as a Russian spy with fabricated papers.

Whoever these illegal immigrants are, where ever they came from, and whatever it is they are doing here, every politician who comes screaming into my living room insists that we have got to send them back where they came from.

This whole question of how to identify these miscreants is the focus this week as a Tennessee lawmaker claims he had been on the Nashville Music City Center construction site and had seen workers he suspects are illegal.  Really?  Dude, what made them so obviously illegal?  How does one look at an individual working his butt off in the sweltering Nashville heat and humidity and immediately determine he is illegal and should be loaded on the next boat and shipped back to wherever he came from?

How does an illegal immigrant differ from a legal immigrant?  Does one speak English and the other doesn’t?  Is one dressed better than the other?  I wonder — do they smell different?

This issue is so complex and deep that I can’t even begin to unwrap it.  I’m disturbed by the American mentality of I got mine and I’m keeping it.

Let’s step back from the emotion just a bit.  There is this imposing statue in the New York harbor with a torch lifted high in the air.  I’m pretty sure the inscription on that statue says something about giving me “your tired, your poor, your hungry.”  Until about 1810, we were all about that idea.  But, then we started limiting and establishing quotas for who could get off the boat.  The limitations are consistently based on fear.  Quotas have shifted with the fears.

Apparently, it is time to extinguish the torch, get the lady out of the harbor and close the door.  We’ve reached the point where we are content to be just us and no more.  The land of opportunity is now closed.  The American dream is no longer available. It’s just you and me, buddy.  And, by the way, I need to see your papers.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 4:54 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.