I find myself more and more amazed that Americans, especially those who support Arizona's new divisive law and refer to the “Own Bootstrap” theory, as well as those riled about higher taxes and depleting resources, are not more pro-immigration reform. It’s simple to me, really, because although it may be moral, it’s simply good business: 1) educating the population, irrespective of immigration status, will NOT turn our country into a “3rd world country”, because an education population is vibrant, entrepreneurial and resilient; 2) denying access to education will not cause “them” to leave, but instead need assistance and “burden” the system- pay now or pay later; 3) statistically speaking, "majority" US populations continue to decline while “non-white” populations continue to increase, so instead of a potential decrease to the tax base, why not embrace the opportunity for and INCREASE to the tax base, that is if “they” are allowed to work and pay taxes, 5) the threat to the “American way of life” is more likely when we have an uneducated population, an apartheid society, and one that forgets that its entire hystory is an immigrant one. A larger tax base, whole families (not split up by deportation), and engaged civic participants is good business—that should resonate with the Red and Blue states alike. So, it makes me wonder if it’s really not just about immigrating and being eligible for a driver’s license and social security number, if maybe it’s really about race and ethnicity, the elephant in the room.
Here in the northwest, a new border to me, I’m finding this elephant in many of the board rooms, conference rooms, and college and university offices I’ve been in.
I want to write poetry instead, work steadfastly to foster mathematicians and scientists, increase educational access, live (paint, play the guitar, make love, hopefully write more) eat fresh produce, shop large home improvement stores, and yet I see can’t stop seeing that four-legged beast always nearby. Can I turn it off, that sigh-seeing power to see the beast everywhere? I’m trying to find the poetic in what is unseen, unheard, like Thom Gunn:
What place is this
And what is it that broodsBarley beyond its own creation’s course
And not abstracted from it, not the Word,
But overlapping it like wet low clouds
the riveting images-their unstopped source,
its roar unheard from being always heard.*
For now, I will hope that our national need for decreasing the nation deficit and funding an almost broke government will motivate immigration reform, not that mushy stuff about human rights and not splitting families up, and such non-tax based silliness. Elephants in a rooms are silly enough.
(*From At the Centre” poem from the Molly Collection)
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America Now: Children of the Harvest
For thousands of children in America , summer means hard labor in the hot sun. They're migrant laborers working alongside their struggling parents on America 's farms. Dateline took its cameras and found a story of hardship, perserverence, and love.
