Thread: A Kinder, Gentler Crisis: An Op-Ed from Californians for Pop

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=73145

A Kinder, Gentler Crisis: An Op-Ed from Californians for Population Stabilization

9/25/2006 6:25:00 PM


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To: State Desk, Opinion Editor

Contact: Diana Hull of Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), 805-564-6626

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Sept. 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following is an op-ed by Mark Cromer, a journalist in Los Angeles and a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization:

A Kinder, Gentler Crisis

By Mark Cromer

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's plea for Californians to seriously lower the verbal octane that is fueling the debate over illegal immigration is a belated acknowledgment that the Golden State is bitterly polarized over the issue.

Schwarzenegger's call for good people to politely disagree nervously echoes Rodney King's famed utterance amid the chaos of the Los Angeles riots: 'Can't we all just get along?'

The answer, I am sad to say, is: not right now.

As Americans continue to foot multi-billion dollar bills each year for the healthcare, education, incarceration and a host of social services used by illegal immigrants, the problem isn't a matter of tweaking the script.

The crisis is not a matter of politically correct semantics, but rather the growing impact of an illegal immigrant population that has been estimated to now possibly number as many as 25 million men, women and children.

This is no time for empty pleasantries.

Yet Schwarzenegger is asking illegal immigrants and their supporters to change their message and wrap themselves in the stars and stripes. "Carry your home country in your heart," Schwarzenegger says. "But carry the American flag in our streets."

They've already got the memo, governor.

Illegal immigrants and their supporters learned that public relations tactic way back in March, almost immediately after millions of them filled the streets in cities across the nation amid a sea of Mexican flags and the roar of Spanish language chants.

Scaring the hell out of many more people than they won over, organizers quickly heeded the advice from benefactors like the National Chamber of Commerce and ditched the Mexican tri-colors for the more reassuring red, white and blue.

But their core message that's just underneath that faux embrace of American symbols is still very clear to anyone looking past the costumes and props.

I recently spent an afternoon with several hundred illegal immigrants and their supporters who gathered in a dusty field just north of downtown Los Angeles's skyscrapers.

Schwarzenegger would have been delighted to see how ubiquitous the American flag was at the event. Old Glory was indeed everywhere. But I wonder what the governor would have said about the rhetoric coming from the stage, where activists exhorted the crowd (mostly in Spanish) in front of a banner that demanded 'Legalization Now!'

The paradox was striking.

There was little suggestion from the speakers that America is a largely benevolent nation with a fair (if sometimes flawed) system of justice and government representation. A grand experiment that for all of its failings has survived to allow its people to prosper and live free.

No, America was flatly described as a cancerous confederation of racist colonizers who have built an empire of white privilege on the backs of enslaved immigrants.

"It is because of the undocumented that the (white) people who are retiring today are able to retire. Because of the work, the sweat, the exploitation of the undocumented worker," shouted Emma Lozano, an activist from Chicago. "They are getting their hearing aides, their crutches and their pacemakers because of our work."

Lozano went on to say that the United States has oppressed immigrants for 100 years, a timeline she quickly upgraded to 150 years, before finally settling on 400 years of oppression. Basically we've been a nation of bigots since Jamestown opened for business.

It was a message that was repeated on stage by rappers and folk artists and enthusiastically received throughout the crowd.

I wonder how Schwarzenegger would respond to the surreal irony of watching hundreds of people who have no legal right to be in this nation rallying unchallenged in broad daylight, loudly denigrating America as a racist police state—all while demanding immediate citizenship?

Does the governor, or the President Bush for that matter, honestly believe that encouraging millions of illegal immigrants to wave our flag and learn English actually makes a difference when so many of them boil with an ethnocentric hatred for the majority of Americans?

Does waving the flag a citizen make?

Cheap stagecraft and props are no substitute for the critical debate that the nation now faces over its cultural identity, shrinking resources and soaring population numbers.

Schwarzenegger seems to suggest that the absolute vitriol that is peddled by these activists is somehow more palatable if served at room temperature, that we might somehow accept that America is a rotten, racist empire as long as it is proffered with a smile, a wink and a flag-waving request for an all-access pass.

The more genteel, civil discourse that the governor is calling for is a fine, high-minded ideal that perhaps tracks well in his internal polling.

But as I left the rally, I kept thinking about the old adage 'How do you shake hands with someone who is making a fist?'

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Mark Cromer is a journalist in Los Angeles and is a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS), http://www.capsweb.org. He can be reached at Mrcromer@aol.com or info@capsweb.org.

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As Americans continue to foot multi-billion dollar bills each year for the healthcare, education, incarceration and a host of social services used by illegal immigrants, the problem isn't a matter of tweaking the script.

Aside from the sheer audacity of the lawbreaking invaders who view our laws as totally NOT apllicable to them, I think the reason so many Americans are indignant about the masses of illegals is because they treat the U.S. as their personal ATM, education and healthcare provider, while sending tens of billions of dollars back to their home countries, most notably Mexico.

If they can afford to pay smugglers thousands of dollars to get them here illegally, and can afford to pay for fake/forged/stolen work documents, and send home money to boot, why can't they pay for their own health insurance and medical bills, like all of us have to? Why can't they pay for the costs of their massive litters of anchor babies? Why can't they just obey the laws and not overcrowd our jails and prisons?

The answer, because we have made it so easy for them not to. They can waltz in here and immediately apply for benefits that lifelong citizens cannot get, they can walk into hospital ER's with bursting bellies and get free delivery services. They view our possessions as theirs for the taking, and if they get caught, they whip out a fake ID, hiding their true identities, making it impossible for cops to know the true nature of their extensive rap sheets. They get a first time offense slap on the wrist and are out on the streets to do it all over again, and again and again and again, until they finally kill some innocent person(s) and the police finally realize they have career criminal scum on their hands. And we get to pay for all of it, their trials, their defense attorneys, their incarceration, everything. How lucky for us.

I'm afraid once our so-called leaders wake up to the fact that we can't survive as a nation with all this invading human refuse, they will simply have enough U.S. born offspring to make deportation useless anyway. My fear is whether the traitorous scum politicians already know this, so that's why they act the way they do.