The Polarity Gong is not the Sound to Heed

msjoe21st@aol.com

The Immigration Tabulation: Just a Guest Worker Plan is Exploitative Half Bread

In 1621, the Patuxet Wampanoag had lived in Plymouth before the Pilgrims came. Today, America is one of the greatest and blessed nations on earth because she does not fold for fear but evolves in context and embrace those in the fold. We have all been beneficiaries of this indelible attribute of America's reach.

In a different time for ideological windfall, the currency in the immigration debate is submerged in the rhetorical loop of zero sum mentality. Festering in the party of Lincoln is lost common sense and banished is compassion. All we is an intolerant, shrilling conservatism reeling with faceless statistics designed to reek polarities: Just one option - build a fence and nothing else should be discussed, or else - the country will sooner flood to apocalyptic doomsday. That is not immigration reform; that is the phobic surrealist tinkering with the nation's psyche.

The freak cannot be cloaked in patriotism for patriotism does not dabble in fear; it calls upon those to whom America has given to stand up for America. The brave among the ranks includes the immigrants derided. Alas, peoples of humane dispositions know better that securing the border and earned legality for those already in the country willing to stand up for America is not a mutual exclusive. Both can be accomplished in the great American tradition of compassion and courage.

But the political wind is a bellowing force that sweeps the moral conscience to the curbs. While in the scoop, even good men and women bow to the alter of something else and pray for the polls while preying on fears.

Smarting from abandonment, President Bush is angling to regain the Republican floor and sagging polls. Accordingly, he will tout the guest worker program tonight, a reward to business. Nothing else. Of course, on the face of it, "half bread is better than none" and immigrants in the shadow are supposed to spring to light and grab this manna. That could be your maid, the butler, the construction worker in an honest quest for a dream.

On closer examination, the guest worker in a legal dead-end becomes beholden to a master, whose employment is the only legitimate right for the worker to be in the country, an economic sword of compliance. With half bread, the guest worker cannot complain - low wage, long working hours and an implicit subculture of coerced servitude is born again. Alleluia - sing to economic exploit; forget the verse on compassion conservatism.

After a six-year spree of profit tabulation for the business lobby, the guest worker becomes illegal and ordered out of the country. What was reformed beyond the economic bottom-line? Who is fooling who? Among the ignored inconsideration, does anybody mind about children yanked out of school - or Republicans will embrace accelerated abortion and condoms in schools during those six years?

Is this the party where otherwise God fearing, respectable lawmakers and organizations jumped the hoopla for the immigration of one child called Elian Gonzalez, while the sympathizing with a parade of operatic Miami relatives? Can we keep more families together - who are already in the country willing to work hard and obey the rules? Please? If not, can we stop being hypocrites on family values and just admit it is all about politics?

This cockamamie about amnesty is a ruse because the provision is not a dash - a free pass; it must be earned legality and it does not preclude securing the border. Senator Majority Leader Bill First and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid have assembled a bipartisan 14 member Republican and 12 member Democratic Team to deal with the House. America needs a comprehensive and enforceable policies on Immigration Reform.

The reasonable voice on the sensible center with a bipartisan nerve need not be an endangered specie. America is a great country deserving of praise born of compassion and courage because the brave stands for conscience.

God Bless America.

Previous Page :: :: Main Page