The demonstrations nationwide and the local student walkouts
protesting proposed immigration reform has put the issue front and
center.
The demonstrations nationwide and the local student walkouts protesting proposed immigration reform has put the issue front and center. Editorials, columns, letters to the editor, and news articles on proposed legislation other than HR 4437 on the federal and state levels will fill these pages for weeks to come, until, as fellow columnist Lisa Pampuch has said, the election is over. Until then, legislators on both sides of the aisle and interest groups both red and blue will use this issue to drive a wedge among Americans and in our community.
And what will be the result of all this debate and activity? Nothing. Well, nothing in terms of meaningful change. The election will be over, and the legislators will go back to sessions in which they will again do little to address the root causes of poverty and injustice.
I’m not usually so jaded, but history shows us that illegal immigration is a tough issue to tackle, evidenced by the fact that Americans have attempted to address the problem repeatedly over centuries.
Forget the fact that Medicare changes drains our coffers more than the impact of illegal immigrants on public services; folks still find a way to direct the electorate’s ire toward people who are mostly voiceless and away from policies and actions that keep our men and women at war in the Middle East and from finding out whose legislative activity was plied with money from Jack Abramoff.
There are as many as 25 different bills proposed to reform how America and California specifically deal with illegal immigrants. Not one will require Mexico’s political administration to change its economic policies and practices that create abject poverty for its citizens and drive them north in the first place.
Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other countries in Central America don’t leave their families and decimate their communities with their exodus for the free health care and education.
They come simply because even the lowest paying American jobs provide them with more income in a week than they would earn in months, sometimes a year, at home. It is a move by the desperate, not the adventurous.
The proposed legislation contains lots of consequences that make it tough on immigrants to come or be here, all of which they have risked before and will continue to do so. None of it proposes ways to make staying in Mexico the better choice.
Mexico’s economy receives billions of dollars sent home to families left behind, so there is little motivation for any Mexican administration to discourage it.
Given our nation’s ability to make most of the world accede to our will, the lack of movement from our administration to tie its current and future aid to make that happen is what should be making us angry.
On a totally different topic, ask a parent of a college-bound senior how things are going, and you are likely to hear a sigh and see a shaking head in response before she tells you how Junior’s attitude has “changed so much!”
It seems no matter how intense or benign their rebellion was in the “middle school monster” years or at age 15, when a teen’s sense of power really kicks in, nothing compares to the great amounts of “attitude” thrown at parents right now as students ponder their ability to finally leave their parents by moving away to college (and even start practicing their soon-to-be freedom in bits).
You might find that even students who are not leaving home, simply graduating from the constraints of high school and reaching voting age, are rewarding parents with such joyful noise to their ears as “I’m 18. You really don’t have a say anymore.”
A friend of mine has assured us it’s a human developmental stage. If our soon to be more independent children didn’t show themselves to be so unlikable during this period, we would have a tough time letting them go and miss them terribly while they’re gone.
While these two months to graduation seem interminable, it’s worth the wait.
We’ve waited a long time to get them to this point in their lives, and our goals have been for them to branch out on their own and create their own lives.
And because of this period, when they seem to be at their worst, when the time comes, we will wave them off with glad, loving hearts and an undeniable feeling of relief.
And then we can look forward to the Christmas break.
