Current Immigration Debate and Political Rhetoric

As a recently-retired career bilingul (okay, trilingual) social worker who met with, worked with and helped non-English speaking human beings cope with the American system of policy, procedure and protocol ...
and as the father of five adult children whose Hispanic blood is only half contaminated by the purer white stuff ...

I will tell you without hesitation from my own perspective that much of the anti-immigrant ranting about stolen jobs, sucking up government benefits and taking up classroom space is purely, precisely and factually nothing more than manipulative and deliberately deceptive political rhetoric.

It's a rhetorical song sung to a Konservative Koir by folks who pretend to a deep understanding of these issues and piously insist that such issues are not the same things as our 200-year history of assimilation and Ellis Island acceptance of other human beings.

A false notion. This current situation remains no different. My Handcart ancestors came here for reasons of faith and serious economic desperation that drove the response to a summons from a prophet to come to Zion.

The ultimate hypocrisy in all that anti-immigrant jabber is demonstrated most effectively by what I see happen every year in our community which has a seafood industry that only thrives because the Hispanics and Asians will do the hard work the white boys are mostly reluctant to take on - even at the Washington State minimum wage of almost $9 per hour.

Most of those Hispanic workers - particularly those who are illegal and obtain those jobs using fake ID's and SS cards - receive their hard-earned pay with income taxes and all the other bleed offs withheld from their wages every payday.

Most of those Hispanic workers with whom I worked do not file tax returns precisely because their SS # is not real and ... justified or not, they have a serious concern about drawing IRS and ICE attention to themselves.

Down here, immigration raids are deeply serious, deeply dramatic and downright ugly events.

They can be not unlike Sophie's Choice where family members are torn from each other by sunglass-wearing government cowboys most of whom seem to regard themselves like movie heroes (or Jack Bauer) without understanding the gestapo imagery they naively exuded with all that supposed heroic posturing.

The local workers with whom I am acquainted seem to feel that the loss of part of their income to taxes is

(1) a cost of doing business and
(2) a price that must be paid in order to live and work in this country.

Furthermore, the bulk of the families with whom I worked and with whom I still have relationships include members of their households who are legal or were born here along with the illegals who brought them here.

Other than pregnancy medical (which includes some degree of family planning) and limited Children's medical ... no illegals receive benefits.

That means that a family of, say five human beings, living in this country whether they have found employment or not, with a single member (the youngest child who perhaps was born here) eligible for assistance, will be eligible for approximately $200 a month in food stamps (the federal standard).

For every Hispanic hooligan looking to milk the system, bring in drugs from South of the border or whatever - most of whom rarely if at all apply for benefits whether food, medical or cash, I know personally of another 20 families who are just trying to survive like the rest of us.

But here is the point of my long writing ... in all that patriotic, American-exceptionalistic, tea-party and fiscal Konservative blather ... I have yet to see one single bloviator willing to advocate giving back to the workers they themselves define as illegal/ineligible/illegitimate all those withheld taxes .

On the contrary, Kindergarten Konservatives have on-going plans and opinions on how we should be spending that money that they themselves flap their know-it-all jaws but refuse to admit is part of the federal cash-flow and budget.