Thoughts on Illegal Immigration: Taking Back Our Power

The first of my American ancestors arrived in this country from Sweden in 1634, in what is now the state of Delaware. Too the best of my knowledge (and I am a genealogy buff) this is the only one who could possibly be characterized as an illegal immigrant, and that takes a long stretch of imagination. And, as they say, some of my ancestors were here to meet the boat. So far as I know all those who followed came here legally.

In my family we have the usual European ancestors; British, German and Irish. We also have Latinos, Koreans, and, most recently, a young man from Turkey has married into the family.

My step-grandfather was second generation Italian. I can remember his father because I was so frightened of him. He had dementia and was confined to a wheelchair, and often shouted at us in Italian. After his death, my grandfather refused to allow Italian to be spoken in his home. He said he was American, and English was now the only language his family would use. I thought that was terrible. This was a golden opportunity to learn a foreign language, but it was not to be. The only Italian we learned was from choir. This side of the family lived in a small town often called "Little Italy" but I never heard Italian spoken by any of its residents other than the old man I have mentioned.

When my dad's cousin came home with a Korean war bride, certain parts of his extended family chose not to accept her. My side of the family thought this was a horrible, horrible, situation. But the young couple moved away to another state, and we lost the opportunity to show them how supportive some of the family really was. Thankfully, with the passage of time and after the deaths of the more virulent older family members, the breach has been healed. This young man, by the way, had been a Korean POW.

The children of the Latino-American mother and American father did learn both languages simultaneously. I have met their Latino grandparents and aunts and uncles when they visited; the children served as translators so that the two families could communicate. Both sides of the family got along famously.


But like many Americans, illegal immigration has become a hot-button issue for me. I have grown tired of being called racist because I oppose it. I have grown tired of being told how cold-hearted I am. I become angry when this group tells me to learn Spanish. And I become livid when I learn that one or more of them is taking our taxpayer dollars to by food, housing, medical care. Many times, especially during the winter, ambulances carrying elderly American citizens drive from hospital to hospital trying to find an ER able to accept these sometimes critical patients. These are the people who have lived through the depression, World War ll, and have faithfully paid their taxes all their adult lives--and are now unable to be evaluated in a hospital ER because they are overcrowded. And most of the crowd is illegal aliens who use ER's as their primary care physician.

Our school systems are in financial hardship due, at least in part, to the need to pay ESL teachers, and to pay for free breakfasts and lunches. And, yes, the education has been 'dumbed down' to accommodate them. In the area where I live, there are entire schools without a white or black face to be found. A quick assessment of current books is enough to demonstrate that. Are they or their parents all illegal? Probably not. But how can we really know? No one is allowed to inquire. I do know that the school district, after the well publicized ICE raids in the Midwest and the south a year or so back, was scrambling to find alternative homes to send those children to in case their parents jobs were raided and the parents arrested. This was well publicized. More recently, another well publicized strategy from the school district was to begin sending school children home with food packages each Friday, so they could have plenty of food over the weekend.

Now there is also free summer school and day camps being planned for these children to use during the summer, complete with free meals, and I suppose, more weekend food packages. These food packages, by the way now includes more food that the child can eat. After all, he or she also has at least one parent at home, and probably more than one younger sibling not yet in school. They must eat, too.

These parents either work, taking jobs from Americans, or are on welfare with food stamps, WIC, housing subsidies, free clinics for vaccinations, etc. Why can they not provide food for their families? They use what may have been grocery money to send remittances to their home countries.

A recent news story in this area was about how the poor economy affects extended families in their home countries. It lamented the ways that foreign citizens, in foreign countries, now have less disposable cash because the illegal aliens here have less to send to them.

No, I don't want children to go hungry or without adequate clothing, or clean water. But I am certain that the governments in the country they left are responsible for their care. We are responsible for our own people. Their governments must step up to the plate and care for them. And we must insist our government do the same for our citizens.

Our senior citizens have just been told not to expect a cost of living increase in their Social Security. Often enough they already have times when they must choose between food and medication. or electric bills, or housing. How often have you heard of old people who have died of the heat or the cold in recent years because they were unable to pay a power bill?

So I have begun faxing, writing and calling my state and federal senators and representatives every time I learn of another bill affecting the illegal aliens, for or against, and I let my government representatives know where I stand on whatever the issue is.

It seems every week or so, another bill has come up, or another debate has or will take place. In this weekend alone I have learned of six: The Save Act, promoting E-verify, The Safe Act, to try to end the visa lottery, The Clear Act to strengthen local law enforcements ability to deal with illegal alien crime, The Nuclear Fair Priority to end chain migration, and another to end birthright citizenship. Then there is the current debate occurring about Ag Jobs Amnesty.

In the past several weeks there have been many, many, more. But the average American never hears of these bills or legislation because the media does not report on it--until it is too late for the average American to consider, discuss, and decide where he or she is politically on the topic, and to make these views known to our representatives. And we may not be told then. If we are, it is usually when we accidentally bump into a new law or policy, and then it is likely to be spun
so that it sounds like we are the beneficiaries or that we wanted this to happen.

The illegal alien proponents have well organized and well funded groups advocating for them. Think La Raza, LULAC. MALDEF, and the Catholic Church to name just a few. La Raza (The Race), for example, a group which alleges that Hispanics are the surperior race (yes, remarkably lik Hitler), was recently in the news as an advisor to President Obama about immigration reform.

Why are we not informed about these issues? I, for one, would like the opportunity to vote on the issues in a separate vote with or without an attending election. It seems voting for this person or that simply isn't doing the job. The elected person will vote whichever way the wind happens to be blowing that day, and not necessarily the way we expected when we elected him or her. Too often, it appears they represent the illegal aliens instead of us, the taxpaying American citizens.

So we need to do more. We need to do whatever we must to get these issues bundled into one and brought into the open. One thing I can think of to do would be to organize petitions so that the politicians, and yes, the media, will have to pay attention to us, at least to the degree that we can have a national debate of all the pros and cons and all the consequences of any or all of these and other bills which affect us so profoundly.

We must get the attention of our state and local governments as well as our federal government.
I am told that a full 70 plus percent of Americans want the border secured and the illegal immigration stopped, and we want none of them residing or working in this country illegally, and we want federal, state, and local governments to enforce the laws related to illegal immigration. Many towns and cities have written laws to stop the flow into them, but are told these laws are unconstitutional. The citizens who live there are called racist, and the ALCU attacks the laws.

We must take back our power, and we must do this peacefully and by using the political processes we learned in school.

We CAN do this, and I think we MUST.