To ordinary Americans, the definition of “immigration” is very specific: You come here with absolutely nothing except a burning desire to be an American. You start off at some miserable, low-paying job that at least puts a roof over your family’s head and food on the table. You put your kids in school, tell them how lucky they are to be here – and make darn sure they do well even if that means hiring a tutor and taking a second, or third, job to pay for it. You learn English, even if you’ve got to take classes at night when you’re dead tired. You play by the rules—which means you pay your taxes, get a driver’s license and insure your car so that if yours hits mine, I can recover the cost of the damages. And you file for citizenship the first day you’re eligible.
Do all this and you become an American like all the rest of us. Your kids will lose their accents, move into the mainstream, and retain little of their heritage except a few words of your
language and – if you’re lucky—an irresistible urge to visit you now and then for some of mom’s old-country cooking.
This is how the Italians made it, the Germans made it, the Dutch made it, the Poles made it, the Jews made it, and
more recently how the Cubans and the Vietnamese made it. The process isn’t easy – but it works and that’s the way ordinary Americans want to keep it.
Mr. Meyer goes on to say that the people that ordinary Americans have a problem with are those that don't want to do the above. They want to live and work here, but they have no interest in learning the language, forcing us to provide schooling and health care to "all these foreigners among us who aren’t behaving like immigrants."
I don't have a problem with people coming here legally. And I know I'm not alone in that sentiment. But there comes a point that we can't continue down this road, or certain areas of the country will become, by all intents and purposes, a Latin American country.
The protests in all areas of the country really bug me too. They are asking for freedom. What do you call protesting in the streets of America without any fear of arrest or deportation? I think that's pretty free. Also, if they had been waving US flags, I would have felt a little more sympathetic. However, they were waving Mexican flags. They don't want to become Americans. They want us good taxpaying people to take care of them and provide jobs for them. But heaven forbid that they should do things the legal way.
Anyway, I may not express my opinions as well as others (Meyer, Limbaugh, Rich Lowry), so you should read those instead. However, I felt compelled to post something about this since it is such a huge issue right now. Do what you can to get educated about this, and vote for the person that you think will do the right thing.
