I don’t know.

I mean I do but I don’t.

Let’s be honest, the immigrants in question are pretty unlikely to have blue eyes.

Having said that, the weakest among us are those that have chosen to hate Mexicans. Hate is something you choose.

I was raised not to judge. Nevermind the color of skin; I was taught not to for any reason save for character, integrity, honesty, reliability and a consistency thereof in total. I cannot fault any individual for coming to this country under any circumstances with the honest hope and purpose of feeding family or loved ones. My father would do the same in a heartbeat and I sincerely doubt he is alone with that ethic.

This particular issue hits closer to home than any I can remember as an adult. It’s understatement to say my parents are weary of rampant unchecked migration of illegal immigrants from the south. It is fair to say that I sympathize with them on a number of fronts. My hometown of Carson City, Nevada is plagued by all manner of sheep’s clothing socioeconomic issues manifesting as ugly circumstance. They winter in Yuma, AZ and on the ground conditions there are worse. Crime and violence have exploded not merely due to a clash of cultures.

It’s bizarre. I’ve lived in LA for the last 25 years. I figured the onus to adjust was mine.

I took it upon myself.

This is less simple.

What began as an issue so convenient, has begun to bite asses hard. To ignore it is to pretend that while business is reaped, in a fashion not unlike the engine of the agrarian age, slave labor in Dixie, only profit is sowed. Not so. Then there are the ordinary folks for whom there is no dog in this hunt. Folks who are frightened. Folks who are inclined to resent and even hate as the bombs they did not plan or place, explode around them constantly. On both sides.

Phoenix is the kidnapping capitol of the entire country. Violence spills across our southern border in frightening ways. More people dying everyday than Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is real. It is visceral. It’s next door and coming through the mail slot. Again, avarice has morphed into carnage and fear. It’s exasperating that we cannot seem to learn this singular lesson. It ultimately is, America’s fault. It’s tragic indeed that them who created the problem suffer the consequences so much less than them that didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with it. Ain’t that America?

Yes, it is.

Giant swaths of our infrastructure are reliant on immigrant labor. Honest hardworking human beings trying to feed families. No different from any family in America for their willingness to do anything to survive. I cannot in good conscience begrudge them a damn thing. They are human. They love and need and wake up hungry. They do what they have to do. Happy to work hard for pride and the necessity of providing for their loved ones. Human beings.

We must not lose sight of the fact that they are people. They are we. We are them.

Something’s gotta give. It’s unsustainable.

Is the new Arizona law wrong? Absolutely. Not only is the slope it invites slippery as hell, in that it throws wide the giant doors for abuse and racism, it’s un-enforcible and enjoys little potential for an efficacious conclusion. "Papers please". Note the omission of a question mark you bitches. It’s unconscionable and naive to place the ignoble affliction of judge and jury on the workaday law enforcement officer. As a notion on it’s own, it’s crazy absurd and dangerous. How can the officer know anything about a random man or woman beyond the commission of a crime observed? No officer has time or occasion to walk in the shoes of everyone encountered. A purview beyond any one peace officer.

Peace officer. Think about it.

It makes no sense. How will this be enforced or prosecuted? Were it to prevail, it’ll be backward ass country fuck, Porky’s style justice. And it will because it would. That scares me. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It will in no time at all, assume the most vulgar iteration of whatever the original intent may have been. It will get ugly fast.

The subsequent blowback is likely to be just as unseemly.

Or maybe we’ll get a civil rights movement v2.0.

Talk about passing the buck. The powers that be have no problem with the rest of us being consumed by the maelstrom. They rather want it. They anticipate with delight the worker ants scrambling toward threats once not considerable but now so pervasive. They adore it.

I can almost guarantee that upon reaching it’s obvious conclusion, and despite the Supreme Court’s rather dubious decisions of late, such law will be struck down. I see it as inevitable. It could happen.

What should I do?

Ever seen someone eat a burger while operating a five speed manual transmission? Answer yes even if you can only picture it. What about texting with both opposable thumbs while pissing in a urinal? The answer is yes. Work with me. Something needs to be done.

What really gets my blood up is this ignorance of the obvious. An attempt that does less than nothing to address the cause of the disease, and that makes it dumb. Wrongheaded. There has been a law on the books in Arizona since 2008, it mandates any and all employers to verify the legal eligibility of every employee. Approximately six percent of businesses have complied. Whew. Six percent.

Um, what happened there?

An earnest legislative endeavor to pragmatically confront the root of the problem completely overlooked and ignored. A law. On the books. See what I’m saying? Doesn’t that at least sound like a better start?

Therein lies the rub. It’s American contractors, factory owners, large and small agribusiness owners that are the most egregiously culpable. What they do is exploit slave labor. When the great unwashed screech and stomp about the dearth of an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, they have only cousin white devil to blame.

The highest most robust fences won’t solve it and neither will draconian laws or battalions more border agents. Treating people like shit inevitably leads to more and more shit. It must be exclusively and specifically egalitarian in intent and implementation. Pejorative rhetoric eschewed post haste. Human beings being debated here and like it or not, part of your economy. If they disappeared tomorrow, you’d be in a very bad place.

You would. Don’t shit yourselves. You would.

This is not a racial issue and it cannot be allowed to become one any more than it already, regrettably has. Trust me, it has.

This, another aspect not unlike a cheese grater applied with vigor to my ass. I don’t doubt that what I see here is a concerted effort to foment hatred, suspicion and fear of the brown man. George Carlin said that what we do is bomb brown people. If you’re brown, sooner or later, we’ll get to you. It’s no coincidence that during an eight year run amok by the GOP, nothing, fuck all, was done about immigration. All the sudden their all about it because it will inevitably distract from financial reform for example.

They hope.

Not a single senator with an (R) by his name has thus far even expressed a modicum of willingness to participate in any bipartisan effort to craft or endorse meaningful immigration reform. Instead, as with so many important issues, they choose to "wallow in a mosh pit of demagoguery" -Anthony Weiner. Cowards. Fucktards.

Man I hate these guys.

I will tell you that my loving, compassionate and very liberal parents spend a good amount of their time living along the Arizona/Mexico border as "snowbirds" and they tell me I can’t understand the depth and breadth of the circumstances. I own that I can’t. That they are frustrated speaks volumes to me. It tells me the problem is huge. Still, that they lean in favor of this legislation, if only as a catalyst for the federal government to finally act, breaks my heart a little. My little political heart.

It is not the right thing and it will do more damage than good for all involved.

This issue has been allowed to become overly complex. It is simple. We understand the malaise. Treating a symptom is myopic. It doesn’t and won’t get short term gratification. The disease lies in the avarice of our own. The brown people are pawns whether they pick fruit or sell drugs. Fisher Price boys and girls. If you really want them gone, you’ll pay for it in tomatoes instead of taxes. Grapes and dope. Six of one or a half dozen of the other.

You would miss them, I promise. The deliberate architects of this clusterfuck could give a mad fuck.

Drinks for my friends.
 

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