As long as this country is the sought-after land of milk and honey for our sisters and brothers from the south seeking opportunity, as long as there is immigration, illegal and legal, this will be an issue that incites us to strongly, even angrily, disagree. Immigration will continue to be one of the many wedges that divides us, ideologically, politically, socially, even financially.
From now until November, it will be a topic that will inflame our friends, neighbors and family members, it will create division in public discourse, among idle conversation and at the dinner table.
It affects the human psyche on too many levels for this to not be the case. Immigration issues touch us in that place in our heads where we think about our financial security, the crime some immigrants bring to this country, the loss of jobs to some Americans, the very nature of illegal immigration being a violation against our country’s laws.
Then again, we find this issue tugging at our heart strings, as we all realize we started out as immigrants, members of a foreign blood line looking to that land of milk and honey, looking for that opportunity. Some of us have forgotten our familial roots as immigrants, as we are many generations removed. Some of us are first-generation immigrants, products of legal and illegal methods to get here.
When matters of the heart and head clash, it’s difficult for calmer heads to prevail.
Solutions to illegal immigration won’t be to the satisfaction of all anytime in the near future, because we do not share the same views on a problem that exists on multiple levels. For example, when reform does happen in this country, one ideological perspective will certainly be happy with one aspect, while that same perspective might be completely opposed to another part of the same reform.
It will be the complexities of this issue, as they deal with concrete policy and human emotion, that will be most difficult to overcome.
We were reminded of just how deep this division, and ambiguity, is when our staff covered two related but unrelated immigration protests Thursday. Those illegal immigrants deported by U.S. authorities rallied in Mexicali to protest a U.S. policy of night deportation, in which authorities return the immigrants to Mexico at night. Protesters claim the drop-offs leave them open to assaults and robbery by criminal street gangs and corrupt law enforcement.
At the same time, there was the march on Terrace Park Cemetery, where unknown and indigent immigrants who have died in the desert, the canals or by some other means are buried.
Both situations are a reminder that even when laws of this country are violated, basic human decency dictates the toll should not be death, and maybe it shouldn’t even be putting immigrants in a harmful situation upon their return to Mexico. We would never suggest that U.S. policy causes death, though some have and do. We merely see an issue that is so emotionally and ideologically complex, that when the warhawk in us, or anyone, comes out, the dove is never far behind. It exists on equal and confusing plains.
From now until November, it will be a topic that will inflame our friends, neighbors and family members, it will create division in public discourse, among idle conversation and at the dinner table.
It affects the human psyche on too many levels for this to not be the case. Immigration issues touch us in that place in our heads where we think about our financial security, the crime some immigrants bring to this country, the loss of jobs to some Americans, the very nature of illegal immigration being a violation against our country’s laws.
Then again, we find this issue tugging at our heart strings, as we all realize we started out as immigrants, members of a foreign blood line looking to that land of milk and honey, looking for that opportunity. Some of us have forgotten our familial roots as immigrants, as we are many generations removed. Some of us are first-generation immigrants, products of legal and illegal methods to get here.
When matters of the heart and head clash, it’s difficult for calmer heads to prevail.
Solutions to illegal immigration won’t be to the satisfaction of all anytime in the near future, because we do not share the same views on a problem that exists on multiple levels. For example, when reform does happen in this country, one ideological perspective will certainly be happy with one aspect, while that same perspective might be completely opposed to another part of the same reform.
It will be the complexities of this issue, as they deal with concrete policy and human emotion, that will be most difficult to overcome.
We were reminded of just how deep this division, and ambiguity, is when our staff covered two related but unrelated immigration protests Thursday. Those illegal immigrants deported by U.S. authorities rallied in Mexicali to protest a U.S. policy of night deportation, in which authorities return the immigrants to Mexico at night. Protesters claim the drop-offs leave them open to assaults and robbery by criminal street gangs and corrupt law enforcement.
At the same time, there was the march on Terrace Park Cemetery, where unknown and indigent immigrants who have died in the desert, the canals or by some other means are buried.
Both situations are a reminder that even when laws of this country are violated, basic human decency dictates the toll should not be death, and maybe it shouldn’t even be putting immigrants in a harmful situation upon their return to Mexico. We would never suggest that U.S. policy causes death, though some have and do. We merely see an issue that is so emotionally and ideologically complex, that when the warhawk in us, or anyone, comes out, the dove is never far behind. It exists on equal and confusing plains.
