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May 28, 2005 I have been reading a great deal lately about illegal aliens. If you tune into CNN’s Lou Dobbs every evening you’re bound to hear the tem “illegal aliens” more than once. Lou is obsessed with them. The thing is, I have been looking into the sky every night and have yet to see an illegal alien. Now, in my little town of Logansport I have spotted some illegal immigrants (at least I think they are), but they don’t look alien to me. None of them have big heads and bulging eyes (usually a sign of Thyroid problems). None of them have the usual plastic-looking skin and three or four bony fingers. The folks I’ve noticed are usually wearing street clothes and using the Mexican language. They don’t look like aliens. I decided as I always do to look the word up in the dictionary: “Not belonging to the same country, land, or government, or to the citizens or subjects thereof; foreign; as, alien subjects, enemies, property, shores.” [1913 Webster] It didn’t help much. Are the illegal immigrants our enemies? What if an eight-feet tall Mexican sneaked into the U.S, would he be an enemy? What if he was a super talented basketball player? Our country didn’t do a bunch of screaming when we imported African people into our country back in the 1800s. No one thought of slaves as illegal immigrants. Hell, we didn’t even pay them anything. We finally had a war caused by the idea of slavery. After the Civil War, we didn’t call Black Americans slaves any longer. We called them maids and butlers, maybe cooks and shoeshine boys. That of course changed in the sixties. Now we call them criminals, secretaries, and managers of fast food joints and of course we stop them at every checkpoint of a manhunt. We laughed at the sitcom “Mork.” He was an alien. No one asked if he was here legally. How about those alien bodies found in Nevada fifty or sixty years ago, did anyone check their I.D.s? And what about the fellow on Stargate that has that funny mark on his forehead, no one ever talks about him being an illegal immigrant (alien).
I guess I’m missing something here. I always do. We liberals are like that sometimes. I don’t want to work for a pig killing meat packing plant, neither do most of my friends, but they’re the first ones to complain about Mexicans taking over the neighborhood. They’re the first ones to wave the American flag. I am so confused now that I’ve written this article. I think I’ll go back to bed and wait for that alien ship tonight.
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