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Mr. Mazzacca,
I have neither a cause nor a desire to attack you personally, simply to challenge a number of points you made that I believe to be incorrect, hyperbolic, or misinformed. I had no way of knowing the web site admin had added your official title after the fact and was under the impression you were posting your opinion as an elected official. That being said, I have responded in kind:
1. No, an immigrant is someone who migrates from one country to another; usually for permanent residence. There are legal and illegal immigrants. Both groups are nonetheless immigrants. You wish the term had another meaning based on how you feel about the subject, but that does not alter the definition of the term in Webster's. I was merely pointing out that your preference for the term "illegal alien" rather than a number of other widely used terms like "illegal immigrant," "undocumented immigrant," "undocumented worker," etc. was rhetorical and served to show your bias on the matter from the start of your letter.
2. Yes, Latino is in fact a descriptive and broad term, but I have yet to meet a Latino who finds it offensive. The term denotes anyone of Latin American origin -- i.e.; Central or South America, or Caribbean (Spanish-speaking) My wife and her entire extended family are proud to called Latino and the word is synonymous with a number of cultural movements and organizations that have fought for rights and equality throughout recent US history.
3. I reiterate, if you think that the US or any other country has the resources to find, detain, process, and deport EVERY person here illegally then you must be rather misinformed about the numbers involved. There is big difference between physically deporting literally millions of individuals and offering temporary worker status to people who are here to make money for their families and make a better life for themselves. Do you honestly think most people want to be here illegally? Risking life and limb to get smuggled in, constantly looking over a shoulder when trying to get work or educate their children. Relying on poorly funded clinics and ERs for health care or lacking any health care at all? I think most people who come here illegally to try and realize a better life for themselves and their families would welcome a guest worker program and some kind of limited legal status, if only because it would normalize their lives and put them at less risk. When surveyed, most undocumented workers here say that they would return to their countries of origin if they could make a better living there.
4. No, in 2006 there was a proposed amendment to legislation in the Senate that would have prohibited FORMER illegal immigrants who had SINCE BECOME naturalized from collecting Social Security money they had paid into the system during the time that they were working, but still un-naturalized. The effort to defeat this amendment was purposefully misconstrued by some idiotic individuals via the internet as the Senate wanting to "offer Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants." As with most things that offer people a chance to hate another group without having to research anything, that internet meme really caught on. However, nothing of the sort EVER happened, and I was surprised to see you mention Social Security alongside medical care and welfare as things illegal immigrants supposedly get for free. In fact, most social welfare assistance is unavailable to illegal immigrants, unless they literally steal someone?s identity or they have children who are born here that are entitled to public school education or qualify for CHIP, etc..
5. You imply that, because you're ancestors came into the US legally and strived to fit in, that somehow that makes them better than the current population coming into the country. Well, I'll assume that your family immigrated to the US after 1870s when there was a huge influx of Italians into many of America's East cost urban centers. At the time the US had its doors wide open to millions of people from all over Europe who were escaping famine and political persecution. These days it's a LOT harder to get into the US legally, so equating the two, and implying that one is somehow superior, is comparing apples and oranges (thus my reference to my ancestors). People are still coming here to make a better life for themselves, as no doubt our families did, but they face a vastly different reality because of how things have changed in the US. In addition to what is an unfair comparison, you feel it necessary to point out how your family, like ALL immigrants back then were hard workers ("no free lunch".) The direct implication is that somehow everyone coming to this country today are lazy or freeloaders. As I write this, I am sitting and looking out the window at a construction crew of mostly Mexicans and Brazilians who are framing out 6 new homes across the street for me. They work from 7 in the morning until 8 at night stopping for a 30 minute lunch. They work all day on Saturday and, if I had to guess, they probably spend their Sundays sleeping. I know I would. So, I?m confused. Are they not working hard enough?
My point is, your comments are offensive to people who are here to better themselves but don't have the advantage of having come when the doors were wide open to anyone who could book passage on a steam ship. In addition, it's offensive to imply they are not as hard working as your family was, when clearly there are hundreds of thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal, who spend their days doing back-breaking work, and no longer even have the promise of climbing up the ladder of society the way our families were able to because of increasing inequities in wealth and opportunity in our society.
Here's a little blurb on Italian immigration from an educational website:
"Most of these immigrants were from rural communities with very little education. From 1890 to 1900, 655,888 arrived in the United States, of whom two-thirds were men. A survey carried out that most planned to return once they had built up some capital.
Most Italians found unskilled work in America's cities. There were large colonies in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit. From 1900 to 1910 over 2,100,00 arrived. Of these, around 40 per cent eventually returned to Italy.
Willing to work long hours on low wages, the Italians now began to rival the Irish for much of the unskilled work available in industrial areas. This sometimes led to hostilities breaking out between the two groups of workers. The Italians were also recruited into the garment industry and by the outbreak of the First World War had replaced the Jews as the main group in the sweated trades."
Sound familiar? You could replace the word "Italian" with "Mexican" and very little would be different except for the dates and locations.
posted by Ted Warren on 05/17/10 at 2:52 PM
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