Going Tines-Up: The Immigrants Among Us

I find it horrifically fascinating that we, The United States of America
— a nation born of immigrants — and yet, when the same immigrants
reach out to our shores and cross our borders searching for a better
life of well-being, we shun them as cravenly as the Original
Native American Founding Fathers shunned us with guns and defense
lines.  Arizona should be ashamed of its Racist immigration policy that
only damages and harms and does nobody any good.

Let’s take a look at the state of the immigrants among us:

As a member of this city’s economic elite, Ms. Kollman-Moore is not unusual among immigrants who live in St. Louis. According to a new analysis of census data, more than half of the working immigrants in this metropolitan area hold higher-paying white-collar jobs — as professionals, technicians or administrators — rather than lower-paying blue-collar and service jobs.

Among American cities, St. Louis is not an exception, the data show. In 14 of the 25 largest metropolitan areas, including Boston, New York and San Francisco, more immigrants are employed in white-collar occupations than in lower-wage work like construction, manufacturing or cleaning.

Is this pseudo-Nazi rally really how we want our immigration policy to be formed in context?

A rally by 40 members of a group calling itself the National Socialist Movement drew hundreds of counter-protesters from throughout the region. In the hours leading up to the rally, where members called for the removal of all nonwhites from America’s southwest, counter-protesters scuffled with people perceived to be sympathizing with the white supremacists’ message.

One man, who sported Nazi tattoos, was severely beaten near City Hall while another man, who carried a confusing sign about religion with a scribbled swastika, was pummeled by a mob of people on Spring Street between 1st and 2nd.

Beaner Hate in Patchogue gets an uneasy, if ethical and just, resolution:

The white teenager accused of killing an Ecuadorean immigrant in a racially motivated attack was convicted on Monday of manslaughter as a hate crime, in a case that put a spotlight on anti-Hispanic violence on Long Island.

The verdict in State Supreme Court came 17 months after the fatal stabbing in 2008 in Patchogue. The teenager, Jeffrey Conroy, was also found guilty of gang assault in the attack on the immigrant, Marcelo Lucero, as well as attempted assault on three other Hispanic men. He was acquitted of the most serious of the 20 charges against him, second-degree murder as a hate crime.

At least President Obama has stepped forward into the hateful fray — something he’s had to do all his life just because of his skin color — and denounced Arizona’s racist “immigration policy” as ridiculous and, basically, illegal and unenforceable:

Obama called the Arizona bill “misguided” and instructed the Justice Department to examine it to see if it’s legal. He also said the federal government must enact immigration reform at the national level – or leave the door open to “irresponsibility by others.”

“That includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona, which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe,” Obama said.

The legislation, sent to the Republican governor by the GOP-led Legislature, makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. It also requires local police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants; allows lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws; and makes it illegal to hire illegal immigrants for day labor or knowingly transport them. …

“It’s going to change our lives,” said Emilio Almodovar, a 13-year-old American citizen from Phoenix. “We can’t walk to school any more. We can’t be in the streets anymore without the pigs thinking we’re illegal immigrants.”

The problem with the new Arizona immigrant policy is that it unfairly places law enforcement into a Bigoted and Racist tines-up position against people — based solely on skin color:

“Do they look illegal?”

An immigration law that relies on the value judgments of skin tone analysis — is a retching betrayal of an ideal that should shake the very timbre of us as good Americans — and we need only to look to our darkened past to realize who the real illegal aliens were long ago when the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock.