Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Friday, May 16, 2008

while i was driving down to austin, i overheard...

while i was driving down to austin, i overheard a gentleman say that mexicans are coming up here to take our jobs.

seriously, that's the stupidest thing anyone can say about the illegal immigrants. it sounds like a comedy skit.

dude is sitting in a DQ, with his wife and kids, and his franchise-owner shirt on his back.

i can see it now. "pablo" crosses the river in the dark, with all his possessions on his back. he dodges vigilantes, coyotes, dobermans, and cops. he shuffles to the highways and barely escapes getting hit by a semi. he eventually gets a hitchhike up to a city, to a bus station, and eventually he finds himself at a small business in central texas. he waltzes in, and makes a beeline for the owner's box.

the owner says, "can i help you?"

pablo says, "get out of this office right now. you don't work here anymore."

the owner says, "excuse me?"

pablo places his belongings on a chair. he looks around the office. "this is a nice office you got here. i'm really going to like working here."

the owner, coming to a realization looks at the mexican immigrant, from his duct-taped shoes to his sweaty, travel-stained clothes. "Oh, you're a Mexican, and you've come up here to take our jobs!"

"Si, muchacho. Now get out of here. According to our Democratic President, I come up here, and I take your job!"

Yup, that's exactly what doesn't happen in the real world.

Mexicans started coming up here because we had a sever shortage of people willing to pick crops back in the forties and fifties. Thus, we had a guest worker program. Then, people panicked. Because brown-skinned people were coming and going at will and taking jobs Americans could have!

Then, we stopped the guest-worker program. Which did absolutely nothing to stop the farmers and workers who knew each other really well by now from getting the job done, anyway. Then, we started to panic because pedophiles and terrorists and gangs are going to slip into our country in the night and cause all sorts of dangerous, scary, un-American things.

Instead of treating our neighbors like potential enemies, lets start treating them like potention friends. get rid of that dumb, expensive, ineffective wall, already, red-wing lunatics. if you want to end illegal immigrant workers, find ways to legalize what will occur whether that vein in your forehead is about to pop out from your yelling or not.

No comments: