My friend Judy forwarded me an email today with the note, "How should I reply?".
She had been sent the following images from a business acquaintance, complete with the multiple return/scrolldown within the body of the email to build up the suspense. And comments like, "Keep your blood pressure meds handy!"
http://urbanlegends.about.com/...
And of course this rhetoric, that almost hurts my brain to read, although the word "subsumed" was used, and I gotta give props for that. (Then again, was the text simply poached from some Michelle Malkin ranting?):
I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/ amnesty plan on the table in Washington ... The image of the American flag subsumed to another and turned upside down on American soil is already spreading on Internet forums and via e-mail.
Pass this along to every American citizen in your address books and to every representative in the state and federal government.. If you choose to remain uninvolved, do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be 'redistributed' to the activists whileyou are so peacefully staying out of the 'fray'. Check history, it is full of nations/empires that disappeared when its citizens no longer held their core beliefs and values. One person CAN make a difference....
One plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one........ ..
The battle for our secure borders and immigration laws that actually mean something, however, hasn't even begun.
If this ticks YOU off....PASS IT ON!
IF IT DOESN'T IT SHOULD!
But Judy's request about how would I respond became the first time I was able to articulate how I felt about immigration reform into actual written words. To talk about a complex issue in a simple way is not so simple. So this is what I wrote her:
Hi Judy,
This one threw me...just for a bit. Until I found this link on Snopes.com
http://www.snopes.com/...
Turns out, the photos are from 2006...Yeah, that's right, FOUR years ago...It is ascribed to Montebello High School in California, but if you read the text from Snopes, the flag was purposely hung, and yes, to protest immigration laws, but by a large group of students from neighboring schools, not Montebello. That's just the first hazy premise on this whole thing. About.com reported that the kid who flipped the flag was later reprimanded. But it'll go viral—once again—and Montebello will continue to get letters and for the wrong reasons, not to mention long after a lot of these kids graduate!
We know the right will use it to yammer on about how "our country is being taken away from us by those dirty illegals". Code for racism, plain and simple.
Because, as progressives, even though we understand what a complex issue immigration reform is, we continue to navigate through it all ourselves. I know I am. At least we have the common sense not to jump to the racism idiocy right off the bat. We tell each other to use the term "undocumented" instead of illegal immigrants because even if at worse, every brown skinned person is subject to being accused of not having papers, it's still alleged, it's not proven. You'd have to ask every brown person if they were a citizen. (The nazi's in every movie you've ever seen, say, "show us your papers"!) And wouldn't the right love to do that? Oh yeah...that's right...Arizona. Add to that hispanic people speaking their native language in public--which, surprise, a lot of immigrants do. My Mom, although she always spoke Italian to her sisters, she didn't speak it in public to us kids (though I wish she did, I'd be bilingual today), but people were ALWAYS asking her where she was from. When my dad often spoke German because his parents were from Hanover, he was accused of being unpatriotic (yeah, a guy who served in two wars and was a POW with the Japanese). But for a hispanic person, well, they must be illegal because they speak spanish to their husband and kids at the grocery store.
Whenever there is a highly contested issue, I always ask the question, What do we know for sure? First off, the immigration laws that are in place must not be that clear and they aren't enforced. We have a lot of undocumented workers in this country, though we can't seem to agree upon how many. The left might agree that there are 11 million, but the right keeps inching the figure up. I've heard recently they are trying to say there are 40 million(!). But that aside, we also have companies that are hiring them. We also know that our country has a notorious history of treating even it's legal immigrants pretty badly. (I often cite the example that in some states it was illegal to speak German in public during WWI. The perjorative term WOP for Italians, means Without Papers. Every immigrant group was relegated to slums in New York and other large cities. If it wasn't the Italians, it was the Irish, if not them, it was Germans, the Chinese, Japanese Americans...) We also didn't allow Jews to seek refuge in America when they were being sent to concentration camps. As much as I admire FDR, he was responsible for that. We also know that there is a huge wall of silence. No real dialogue between undocumented workers and ordinary citizens. Not too many people are aware of the difficulty that is required to become documented after entering the country illegally. If it was so easy to become a citizen, wouldn't we have a lot fewer undocumented people and wouldn't the rest of the public know exactly what that supposedly "clear path to citizenship" was? And lastly, how far back does anyone, and I mean anyone who is a legal citizen, how far back do they have to go to remember a relative who wasn't born here? In other words, we are all immigrants.
So what's the solution? Reform the laws, then enforce them. And you're going to have to grant amnesty to at least a portion of the undocumented citizens that are here. I would think you'd have to take into consideration the circumstances that forced them to flee to our country. As Pollyanna as this sounds, people come here for a better life. They've been doing it for hundreds of years. If their master plan was to "freeload" in this country because their life was SO good in Mexico, why would they risk so much? It just doesn't make sense.
But maybe Judy, after this loooonng email (are you snoozing yet?), the short answer to the email you got might be:
First off, check the source on this photo on Snopes.com It's four years old, and you aren't providing the full story to have anyone you send these photos to, to make up their minds for themselves (what a concept!). It sounds like just another way to inflame racism and not offer something called a SOLUTION.