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Great Year!

Putin was the Person of It.  Gore was the Peace Nobelist of It. Now, Illegal Immigrant is the Texan of It. Dallas Morning News:   

He breaks the law by his very presence. He hustles to do hard work many Americans won’t, at least not at the low wages he accepts. The American consumer economy depends on him. America as we have known it for generations may not survive him.

We can’t seem to live with him and his family, and if we can live without him, nobody’s figured out how.

He’s the Illegal Immigrant, and he’s the 2007 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year – for better or for worse. Given the public mood, there seems to be little middle ground in debate over illegal immigrants. Spectacular fights over their presence broke out across Texas this year, adding to the national pressure cooker as only Texas can.

To their champions, illegal immigrants are decent, hardworking people who, like generations of European immigrants before them, just want to do better for their families and who contribute to America’s prosperity. They must endure hatred and abuse by those of us who want the benefits of cheap labor but not the presence of illegal immigrants.

Especially here in Texas, his strong back and willing heart help form the cornerstone of our daily lives, in ways that many of us do not, or will not, see. The illegal immigrant is the waiter serving margaritas at our restaurant table, the cook preparing our enchiladas. He works grueling hours at a meatpacking plant, carving up carcasses of cattle for our barbecue (he also picks the lettuce for our burgers). He builds our houses and cuts our grass. She cleans our homes and takes care of our children.

Yet to those who want them sent home, illegal immigrants are essentially lawbreakers who violate the nation’s borders. They use public resources – schools, hospitals – to which they aren’t entitled and expect to be served in a foreign language. They’re rapidly changing Texas neighborhoods, cities and culture, and not always for the better. Those who object get tagged as racists.

It goes on. The Illegal Immigrant should be the Texan of the Year if Texans are too lazy to mix their own margaritas, cook their own enchiladas, mow their own lawns and clean their own houses.  This bloviatory salute makes a pretense at evenhandedness, but pretty much falls back on the Noble Illegal Immigrant argument, huddling masses, etc. 

If critics are correct, we could be seeing the advent of the kind of fractiousness that bedevils public life in Canada and other nations where peoples who speak different languages, and come from different cultural backgrounds, live together only with mutual suspicion and unease.

On the other hand, perhaps the alarmists are wrong. Maybe these ambitious, hard-working immigrants, whatever their documentation, will write the next great chapter of a story that’s still deeply American, though with a different accent. If the optimists are right, much work remains to be done to incorporate all immigrants fully into new cultural traditions.

Last time I checked, the ”optimists” wanted the Border Patrol will retreat a discreet and safe distance to avoid interfering with the rights of rock-throwing immigration facilitators. I’m pretty sure DMN is refering here to the same optimistic people who consider the Engish language an oppressive burden on people yearning to respirar libremente.

Speaking of language, one nitpicking point.  I hate to keep belaboring the point. It’s “Illegal Alien.”  As in “The Illegal Alien is DMN’s Texan of the Year.” 

OK, one more time. “Illegal Immigrant” presumes an intention to settle lawfully, while in many cases the “immigrant” has no intention of staying here, and no intention of engaging in anything resembling lawful behavior.  Immigration is in fact a legal process, involving paperwork, waiting in line, and ultimately government approval.  It does not involve desert hikes, being packed into vans, wading rivers or throwing rocks at border agents.  That’s migration, if you like, though frankly, I’d call it a public safety menace.

“Alien” is frowned on by people who apparently don’t understand what the word “immigration” means, possibly because they also don’t understand what the word “alien” means.  It means someone not from here, not in this application, someone from outer space.  As in “Resident Alien,” the government’s term for someone not from here who has legal permission to be here.  It is not a pejorative or a disparagement or a slur. Like “Illegal Alien,” it is a description of legal status.

Meanwhile, though all the annual salutes seem to be going out to criminals and mountebanks, here’s one for someone who actually did something good.  Quaint, I know.

UK Telegraph: Gen Petraeus, Man with a Message of Hope.

Topics: illegals

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:54 am on Sunday, December 30, 2007

5 Responses to “Great Year!”

1. Fatty Bolger Says:
   December 30th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

   Sounds more like the “strawman” of the year to me. I’m getting a little sick of how objections to illegal immigration are being mischaracterized in order to brand people who want tighter immigration controls as racists.

2. RebeccaH Says:
   December 30th, 2007 at 1:26 pm

   If foreigners want to come to America to do the work that Americans supposedly won’t do, let them file the paperwork and stand in line, as you said. That’s the legal way to do it. The farming states used to have guest worker programs that allowed Mexicans to cross the border and work legally during the season and then take their money and go home when it was done. That was done away with by clueless do-gooders who thought it was demeaning, with the result that we now have a runaway illegal alien problem that doesn’t go home. As their numbers grow, so do the political demands for bilingualism (yes, point at Canada, that’s a fine example, no?) and special consideration, and so does the crime rate. Crime statistics in our major Ohio cities shot up with the increased numbers of illegal aliens living ten and twenty to a house.

   Immigration is what built America, but why does that mean, to some people, lack of any control whatsoever on who enters the nation?

3. websmith Says:
   December 30th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

   Try to imagine the intelligent rationalization behind these decisions. You will come up blank. They seem to have been sudden bursts of uncontrolled emotion. It’s like a deadline was looming and with no ideas, they had to do something.

   Hopefully, somewhere, someone is looking down on these guys and planning replacements.

   It makes you want to pray.

4. maggie katzen Says:
   December 30th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

   but… technically, they aren’t even Texans. and I don’t see Tony Romo anywhere on that list. ;D

5. MikeH Says:
   December 30th, 2007 at 4:34 pm

   “It makes you want to pray.”

   Webby, if you ain’t already past the point of wantin’ and firmly ensconced in the territory of doing, you’re a tad bit tardy.

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