Illegal

I received an email yesterday about signing a petition giving illegal immigrants social security benefits. I have searched the bills and think this must be a hoax. I do not think we will be granting social security to illegals—unless that is, they pay into the system—and I doubt if we let illegal immigrants pay. Most of them keep their payments quiet because they might get deported if they let the government know they are around.

There is also a move not to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants. I read somewhere that Elie Wiesel said that there are no illegal immigrants. No one, he says, is illegal. He concludes that this word was the first step that led to the gas chambers.

I know we have a monstrous problem on our hands. George Bush used to say why complain about them: “They are doing the work here that we won’t do.” I cringe at that statement as if we had some kind of a class system. (We really do we just don’t call it that.) But this old “us” and “them” approach is unhealthy. Lately I have gone out of my way to smile and be friendly especially to those of Hispanic descent. They are living in a foreign land, trying to learn our language better. Many are sending money back home to families that barely have enough to subsist on. Why add to their difficulties?

True, they need to be encouraged to become citizens. They came here, I think like my ancestors from Ireland and England. They wanted a better place and they wanted, as we say in the South “to better themselves.” Even the fundamentalists have a hard time getting around those haunting words of Jesus: “I was a stranger and you took me in.”

When I stood on Ellis Island months ago I was moved by the stories and pictures of all those that came here for a better life. I was also embarrassed by the rejection that so many, many Jews, Italians, Irish, Japanese not to speak of what our black brothers and sisters found here. But in Hollywood in 1922 flyers were passed out that said:

JAPS
You came to care for lawns,
we stood for it
You came to work in truck gardens,
we stood for it
You sent your children to our public schools,
we stood for it
You moved a few families in our midst,
we stood for it
You proposed to build a church in our neighborhood
BUT
WE DIDN’T AND WE WON’T STAND FOR IT
YOU IMPOSE MORE ON US EACH DAY
Until you have gone your limit
WE DON’T WANT YOU WITH US
SO GET BUSY, JAPS, AND
GET OUT OF HOLLYWOOD.

Some days it seems like we have not made much progress. But we have to keep trying to make this word, United a great and true word.