Immigrant describes someone that has taken up residence in a foreign country. Kind of like when the pilgrams landed at Plymouth Rock. If you understand history, you can completely understand why so many Americans hate immigrants. Especially ones that don't look or talk like us. Immigrants from Mexico seem to be especially scary these days. Maybe it is because killer bees emigrated from south of the border too. They are called 'Illegals" or "Illegal Aliens" or "Wetbacks". They come here and take our jobs. They overwhelm our social services. They cause blight and crime. People are naturally afraid and anxious about immigration. Why? Look what we did to native culture in America when we left England. Google "Trail of Tears" for a quick lesson in American perpetrated holocaust. It's no wonder these Americans are scared. Few things are as powerfuly frightening as a guiltly conscience passed along from generation to generation.
The immigrants I know are hard-working, family-centric people that embody many of the same principles and values that were core to our ancestors (with the possible exception of the ethnic cleansing thing). Therefore I view immigration from a different perspective. While I think it is important for a free and open society to remain, well, free and open -there should nevertheless be some formal process to make sure that people can can contribute to us and we can contribute to them. If we owned an apartment building, we'd want to make sure we could at least cover our costs (and hopefully make a little profit --we are afterall capitalists!). When we have an available space for a new tenant we'd want to make sure that even if the new tenant could pay rent that their behavior wouldn't drive all the other tenants out. And we'd want to try to make sure the experience was good for our tenant so they can stay and contribute to the small community represented by everyone that lives in the building.
Another issue is if there are two apartment communities, ours and lets say the apartment community to our south, and there is empty space in each community --and ours has new carpet, has been freshly painted and we just added the community entertainment center -then of course people living in the other complex would like to come to ours. But what if through our own actions we caused blight in the other community? Look at American Foreign Policy in El Salvador during the Reagan years. Not that Reagan was culpable (I'm not sure he knew where he was for most of his two terms), the people that surrounded him were evil little neocons many of whom have proved durable enough to perpetuate crimes during the Bush Presidency (Bush I) and later two terms of the Bush Occupation (Bush II). If we devastate an economy and participate in the killing and torture of teachers, doctors, lawyers --I am not sure we should be curious as to why people would want to flock to our economic environment.
There should be meaningful immigration reform, to make sure that there is a fair method for people to become productive and valued citizens and to ensure that they are not exploited and abused. And we should make sure that a new American government represents the will of the American people and forms a coherent, benevolent foreign policy that provides security for the American people, and not just profits for corporations. In so doing, we will allow other economies to grow and flourish which might then create a better world balance. In order to make sweeping changes (sooner, rather than later) I leave with two other "I" words. Impeach (check out http://www.impeachabletreason.com) AND Imprison.
Just a few thoughts from my over-caffeinated alphabetic mind.
About the Author: Mr. Polisner founded alonovo.com in March of 2005. He has been working in most aspects of Information Technology since 1981 and was an early commercial adopter of the UNIX operating system. Prior to founding alonovo.com earlier this year, George was a Director at Oracle Corporation. He is a frequent contributor to newspapers regarding political and economic policy and often appears as a guest on radio programs. In fact, when it comes to alonovo.com, it's pretty difficult to get him to stop talking.