Save Our State - Race cards come in all colors

STRICKLAND: Race cards come in all colors
Race cards come in all
When your position is indefensible, there's always the race, or more exactly, the bigot card.
Toss that puppy on the table ---- as our president has done in response to the desperate support by the residents of Arizona for their state government to take immigration enforcement into its own hands after being repeatedly ignored by the feds ---- and all bets are off.
As you might expect, the splatter hitting the TV screens and emanating from radio speakers has been astounding.
Look, this whole illegal immigrant thing is one of the biggest scams presently perpetrated on we taxpayers and the fact that it is such a political pinata should be proof enough to citizens and illegals alike that they're being violated.
Well, not so much the illegals. They, after all, don't have to pay for health care or public safety or ....
You get the idea. To the tune of billions of dollars each year in California alone.
Still, do you want live the life of a slave to everyone around you? Didn't think so.
Would you do whatever is necessary to save your family from the life you escaped? Thought so.
Would you bring them if you could?
But back to bigotry and the good people of Arizona.
So now they've gone and made it a crime to commit a crime in Arizona. Bigots.
Basing one's bigotry on a single sliver, say race, is undergrad stuff. It just makes it easier. Black and white.
At the post-doctoral level of bigology one learns while some things seem never to change, bigotry manages to evolve as needed.
Taken alone or in combination from its arsenal of objectionable characteristics to suit a bigot's needs, the objections (race and religion are convenient child's play) by the dominant and would-be dominant elements of those practicing its low art foment the brew until it predictably boils over as it has in Arizona.
In a too-brief conversation the other day with a Temecula friend, a retired Latino educator (no Tio Tomas, he), among the many things touched upon that we agree on is that the system is broken and the government of our neighbors to the south is broken as well as threatened.
As we have seen, the combination has fatal consequences for Americans.
But as to the "bigotry" on the part of the people of Arizona, what they've done is a consequence of federal government's substantive inaction at our southern border due to a lack of political will to close our borders so our citizens and legal residents can enjoy the promise that is America.
In fact, if the Mexican government took its northern border as seriously as its southern we could give our Border Patrol agents extra days off and not worry about allowing terrorists, drug runners or the coyotes and their often ill-treated "cargo" to cross the border.
But why should they?
Even with the return home of some illegals, Mexico's remittances only dropped 3.8 percent from $27 billion in 2007 to $26 billion in 2008, according to Mexico's Central Bank. They remain the government's second-largest source of income, surpassed only by oil.
And remember, those are U.S. dollars that will not enter our economy either as taxes or commerce. They're lost economic nourishment. Our fiber as it were.
So now illegals worried they might be deported are shown in footage taped at a Mexican consulate cramming the office to get papers to allow them to bring their children born here back home. You read right.
Apparently it's the law and Mexico, as we know by the example set at its southern border, is very good at enforcing immigration law.
For those here illegally, it is counter productive to attack the people who work to preserve that opportunity you seek to enjoy.
It is your leaders and sympathizers who do you no service in harassing, boycotting, fabricating and vilifying; their time would be better spent in fighting the vermin and system that drive you from your homes to live here in desperation.
But that would be too dangerous. They kill people, lots of people, in that war.
Meanwhile, would-be immigrants wait years to live here legally and with dignity even as the federal government, seemingly oblivious to the fact that you could carry a nuke over the border almost at will, too often views immigration enforcement as a sport (catch and release) and which punishes the employers with barely a wrist slap.
Is it any wonder Arizonans now understand they've been betrayed by the feds and, too often, by the businesses in their communities that continue to devour the slave labor.
When the president says immigration is a federal responsibility, he is correct, but that doesn't mean anything will get done about it.
Rather than applaud jurisdictions that would work with the federal government, it paints them as bigots and dangerous.
As for the millions residing here illegally, their fate was sealed when they crossed the border. The line starts in their country of origin and in no event should an illegal immigrant be granted a place in line in front of those already waiting.
As for the waiting, we are a nation of immigrants; it is that which keeps us fresh, growing. With that in mind, our federal government ---- in consultation with the states ---- needs to cull the best thinking and reset our immigration policy.
As for bigotry, which in this case specifically refers to race, there probably is not one of the leading Latino advocates who is a member of one of the indigenous peoples of what is now Mexico.
You'll find them at the border crossings, infants in their arms, selling Chiclets for whatever you'll give them.
They're the people who were here when 'ol Hernan and his merry band of European compadres arrived back in the 1500s and began the subjugation of all they encountered. Today's advocates must be proud.
Does that trump the race card?
PHIL STRICKLAND writes from Temecula. Contact him at philipestrickland@yahoo.com.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/...d04ed7477.html