When I posted this earlier, I forgot the (slightly important-sorry) detail that this photo was taken during the "Day Without an Immigrant" Rally of May 1, 2006. It was so amazing to see thousands of people of all different races, colors, ages, shapes, sizes, etc. coming together in support of each other. This country has been built on that kind of ethnic variety. It's sad to see that so many have forgotten that. Once emotion and racist hatred get in the way, it's hard to get someone to see that the problem is not the immigrant himself, but rather the system which should have been changed long ago. The point of the rally in this photo, and the other rallies of the same day, was for people to see what this country would be like if all of the immigrants were sent home. The idea was along the lines of the movie "A Day Without a Mexican". If you haven't seen it, it's very thought-provoking. I think that people who blindly jump on the bandwagon of "Close our borders! Deport all illegals!" need to seriously think through what that would mean. Are they really willing to do the jobs that would be left open? Or are they willing to pay the higher prices that would result from paying someone enough to get them to do the job? I highly doubt it. I'm sad, and somewhat ashamed, to say that there is an anti-immigration rally today in Omaha, across the street from the Mexican Consulate. This is a huge issue lately, not only in Omaha, but in the whole country. This is part of what I studied in college, and it infuriates me to see so many opinions thrown around that are not based on facts. I have read some of what this group that organized the rally is putting out there, and it's frustrating to see people jumping on the bandwagon of something that they don't understand. They hear media-skewed facts and adopt them as their battle cry, even though many have done no research themselves. I have conversations with people all of the time, who quote the titles seen in the news as their own opinion, yet the are surprised when they are presented with facts.
This is obviously an emotional issue for me. I am going down by the rally today to take pictures and to see what is going on.
What do you all think of the immigration issue?
4 comments:
The American economy would collapse without immigration. These good ol' boys and gals aren't goign to suddenly become the domestic help, garderners and agricultural labourers. And America was built in immigration. They should all go and look at Ellis Island and then visit the tenement museum in NYC.
Good post - congratulations!
The fear of foreigners is endemic across the world. It is frightening how mis-information is propagated as fact.
Now I remeber yesterday i started to write you, but then someone called at the phone and I had to go and now I'm here again :)
In Spain immigration is very high now, there are lots of people from North Africa and South America who came here to make their lifes. Sometimes there are problems because there's alack of integration, and there''s spanish people who don't accept them as citizens.... i don't know what the solution may be, but I'm sure it would be neccesary that both, immigrants and inhabitans, cooperate to make this work...
dsole - you are so right. it will a take a lot of cooperation. that is the difficult part. like you said in your comment on the next post, i think people are threatened by what they don't understand. This is a huge stumbling block to the necessary cooperation.
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