Illegal Immigration: Everyone’s Issue

So my first article for the examiner.com was about undocumented students in Georgia universities.  Illegal immigration and undocumented ‘aliens’ is one of those hot button issues that has been a hot button for most of the course of American history. Historically, white Americans do not like sharing ‘their’ land that they fought the indigenous natives and the hispanic offspring of Iberian colonists and indigenous natives to call our own. Manifest destiny is more American than apple pie and Uncle Sam.  It is a passive and often patronizing form of racism from people who may not believe they hod any racist ideals.

However, it is generally considered good form to respect a nation’s boundaries and internal policies with regard to people who do not live and pay taxes here. It is an imperfect system but it is the system we have at the moment. Yet there is a misconception which abounds with regard to immigration. In general we think Latinos when we think illegal immigrants but there needs to be a distinction made between what is happening on the Mexican-American border and what is happening when say someone from Canada or Poland or China comes here illegally. Those latter folk are truly illegal immigrants, here for whatever reason without documentation.  What is happening on our southern border is much more serious.  Those people are refugees.

We have a Mexican refugee problem. Just because they do not come to our shores half starved on boats (and some of them do indeed arrive that way) in no way makes them less refugees. Life in Mexico for the poor is atrocious and these people are escaping to America much like many East Germans escaped to West Germany. The government of Mexico is not an oppressive state but it is a nation that has serious economic and class issues.

What is needed is a solution that maintains our national integrity AND their dignity as human beings.

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