About eight years ago, there are next to no Mexicans in my town. Lately, Mexicans -- nearly all from Oaxaca -- are easily the biggest minority in town. In this 4,500+-population town there are Mexican restaurants, convenience stores and more. Just like in SoCal, there is a place where guys congregate in the morning, making themselves available for work. The local community health center has had to add bilingual workers, and local drug stories do a tidy business in phone cards that allow callers to call Mexico cheaply.
Suddenly, our small park evenings are filled with guys playing soccer or basketball. The local school now has kids coming in that speak little English, making it necessary for the school to hire translators. The local pantry, formerly place where area homeless people went to supplement their diet, now has a Mexican majority. Likewise the local thrift store. Likewise a lot of places.
I am to the left of Ron Dellums on most issues. However, what has been happening to my town has given me pause. The US, conservative on many areas, tolerates illegal immigration. It lets kids of illegals who are born here become full citizens. It allows kids to go to school and provides free healthcare. We are much more tolerant of illegal immigrants that pretty much other developed country, who for the most part ghettoize folk or treat them as less than human.
I think the best of all worlds would do away with borders entirely. People can create laws, but people will find away around them. Basically, people will find a way to get to places that allow them and their families access to a better life. People in developed countries get lazy and shun the kind of work their forefathers happily took on. They don't want to work 18 hours a day, and they don't for the most part want to work with their hands.
You don't have to go very far to see the passions this whole situation engenders. Go to any newspaper site or open discussion forum. People complain about Mexicans, Brazilians, whomever. They dream of an American that simply doesn't exist any more. Where minorities were minorities and acted like minorities. And now there's this guy called Obama. What is the world coming to?
There are no easy solutions. About the only thing Bush got right during his presidency was his "guest worker" proposal. McCain, the senator of a border state, saw the sense of it also. But the Republican base doesn't like it. There are people who think that the whole mess would be solved by forcibly exporting folk back to Mexico. But come on, that's not going to happen. Forget the morality of the thing. Can you imagine how much it would cost?
Me, I mostly get to practice my Spanish. The guys'll talk with me, but the women mostly just look straight ahead. They are focused on their kids, getting them into schools, getting them ready to exploit this new rich land.
My little town, now like a lot of towns across the USA.
It's a brown nation now, Amelia. Getting more so every day.
