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Stand up for all immigrants, don't pick and chose what kind
Christopher Skeet
Posted: 3/6/06
I see by this week's flyers that the UIC Socialist Club is holding a public forum to stop the criminalization of undocumented workers (i.e. illegal immigrants). Well, God bless the socialists, and I mean that. If ever there were scholarships awarded for "Irritating Persistence," these guys would sail through our nation's top Ivy League schools without dishing out so much as a penny. But that doesn't mean I wish them harm on their respective spiritual journeys.

But before I'm dragged down some dark alley by a horde of mask-clad activists wielding a XENOPHOBE forehead stamp, let me state that I support full rights for legal immigrants. Almost every one of us is an immigrant or a descendant of one, and I wouldn't deny anybody wishing the same freedoms and opportunities that my own ancestors had. I think immigration should be regulated to a certain degree, so that more states don't go bankrupt like California did, but this should not be taken as anti-immigrant racism.

And therein lies the problem with the current debate on illegal immigration. Since a majority of illegal immigrants are from Mexico, certain political opportunists are trying to frame the debate in terms of desperate, starving Mexican immigrants versus elitist, racist, rich white Americans who hate everything not the color of Butternut bread. I don't think most Americans oppose immigration simply on the basis of the immigrants' race and country of origin.

There is, however, one ethnic group whose immigrant rights are not protected, but rather attacked, by the extreme left. There is a large Cuban population in Florida, comprised mainly of refugees who've fled Fidel Castro's communist regime. Not surprisingly, these Cuban immigrants don't take the same friendly stance towards Castro's utopia as some American college kids do. For this reason, and this reason alone, Cuban immigrants are routinely caricatured, stereotyped, and attacked as "reactionary exiles" in socialist publications with a vicious racism that would make David Duke blush.

The father of a friend of mine came to America from Cuba over 30 years ago. When I say he came over, I don't mean he hopped a fence. I don't mean he stood in line at a U.S. Consulate for a work visa. I mean he got into a boat and rowed 90 miles through shark-infested waters. He's been living in Chicago since then. He's a good man, a hard worker, and he votes Democrat. But he also dislikes Fidel Castro, and for this he's regarded as a subhuman Nazi by the radical left.

There's a simple reason the socialist movement favors Mexican immigration over Cuban immigration, and it has nothing to do with the personal welfare of the immigrants. It has to do with amongst which group they feel they can recruit members. The probability of Cuban immigrants signing up to defend an ideology from which they just fled is virtually nil, so their rights and plights are ignored.

Regrettably, I'm unable to attend Thursday's meeting, so let me make my contribution now. Immigration should be supported on principle, not on the political leanings of the immigrants in question. If you want to help immigrants, why not petition to overturn the 1995 federal law that requires all Cubans found at sea to be immediately returned to Cuba? Cubans are just as human as any other group of immigrants in this country. To support or oppose immigration of ethnic groups based on their possible susceptibility to your personal politics is race baiting in its most shameful form.