I came here when I was about 6 years old and still have memories of where I lived in Costa Rica.  I have gone back a half dozen times to visit my family down there and am still, at least partly, a "Tico."   I harbor no shame in this fact.  My foreign perspective allows me to appreciate, on many levels, the wonders of this country that elude many who were born here.

I am an immigrant. I mention this fact to properly frame the following comments:

As an immigrants, my mother, brother, sister and I all felt the sting of anti-immigrant sentiments.  As a kid I was constantly beat up...and I mean constantly...because of where I was born, my skin color and/or my accent. There were groups of guys in my lower middle class south Irving neighborhood that made it a point to seek me (and at times my brother, but I was the oldest which meant I was the one most in demand to be used as a punching bag) out and "inform" me of their superiority. Heck, I once had a girlfriend in early high school who's father, an adult mind you, did everything he could to get her to break up with me because of my "dirty skin." Even to this day, my mother, because she retains a pretty heavy accent, runs into racists comments.  My sister, because of her lighter skin, escaped much, but not all, of these growing pains.  She did, however, wonder aloud why she never received the cultural shocks that my brother and I got.

There are most certainly worse stories out there, however my point is that I do know of the lumps and bruises required when starting over in a new country. To be sure, the shadows that help hide racist and xenophobic tendancies have cast their darkness over me and my family's live on several occasions.

We did come here, however, legally. We are all legal citizens. My mother, especially, waited for years, jumped through all of the necessary bureaucratic hoops, and took the tests necessary to become an American.  Not a Costa Rican-American, but an American.

You will hardly find another person as irritated with the pro-illegal immigrantion protests (and let's call them what they are "pro-illegal" - ie. in support of breaking the established laws) than my mother, unless, of course, you talk to me. We are both irritated with the "white guilt" that seems to pervade this society. As hard as it is to believe, many people feel bad that America is number one. Many of you feel bad that you were, to paraphrase Al Gore concerning the prospects of being born to a rich family (America in this case), "lottery winners."

Don't feel this way, please.  We, none of us, should feel any more guilty about being born to a certain family or nation than we should feel guilty being born to a certain time.  Do the best you can with what you have...good or bad.  That is not, of course, a clarion call to abuse, neglect, or otherwise hurt immigrants.  It is only a call for clear thinking in this matter.  Those immigrant that come here through the proper channels should be celebrated for we all were once in their shoes.  It is the American way.  Do not, however, ignore law after law because of a need to make ammends for winning your "lottery."

As Socrates showed in "The Crito", to ignore one law is tantamount to ignoring them all.  He believed this even though it helped to bring about his death.  To bring it closer to home, Lincoln mentions in his Lyceum Address that he disagrees not with the abolishionist ideals, but with their call to break laws.  Again, the falling (read "breaking") of one law can only be taken as a pretext to the falling of them all.

Watch your televisions and you cannot help but see people who are not citizens of this country protesting a government that is not theirs being supported and, indeed, incited by these guilt-ridden American citizens. All this engergy expended in the name of "fixing" things.

How about this...why don't these illegal immigrants stay in their  own country and protest their own government? Let's do a cost-benefit analysis of where best to expend this energy: stay in your country and help yourselves and those weaker among you OR move to this country and only help yourselves. Back at home, the older, sick and younger suffer. There are entire towns in these central american countries (mostly Mexico, that I know of) that are devoid of working age males because they are all in the US.

By allowing these illegals into this country and offering them amnesty we have essentially guaranteed that no pressure will be placed on their home countries/government that they flee from. In fact, Mexico's  number 1 source of income is the money that illegals send back home (20 billion dollars a year) and ..2 is the oil industry. THE OIL INDUSTRY IS number 2!!!!

There are the various talking points, of course: illegals artificially depress wages, 29 percent of all men in prison are illegal immigrants, illegals don't have insurance for their cars (as I have known because of two separate wrecks), etc...

This is not racism or xenophobia that I speak of here. It is national sovereignty.

The illegal immigrant protest our government to influence the our laws. They cannot influence our government from within (in theory) because they do not have the right to vote nor should they.  This is not their government. They are simply guests that we have allowed to stay in our country. Now that we want to slow the flood coming across the border, they and their political supporters (read: demagogues) make claims to "rights" (there will be another post on this word "rights" in the ever so near future).

There are claims made that illegals have helped our economy; and they have. Their lower wages helps keep prices low in some sectors of the economy. But we are not simply taking from them without giving anything, this is not a parasitic relationship with the big bad US sucking the lifeblood out of the illegal immigrants. As mentioned before, money from the US is the #1 source of income for Mexico.  Let's also not forget that we do not force them to come to this country. The risks they take are ultimately of their own free will.

There are, however, two big forces at work here: (1) the pushing action of a poor Mexicn economy and (2) the pulling force of higher wages in the US.

To repeat, if they were to stay in their own country and protest their own governments something could be done about the economic and social issues in their own countries.  It would not be easy and surely tears and blood would be involved. A price would have to be paid, just as Americans and citizens of any other established country have cried and bled to better their respective homes.

As long as businesses keep offering (illegally) low wages and as long as we do not enforce the laws that are already on the books nothing will improve. A flood of illegals will wash over the border the second it is announced that amnesty will be given to any illegal immigrant in this country. In future years, those here illegally will see that we've offered amnesty once and if protests and demagogury commences, it will surely happen again.

Just as I began this particular blog, sob stories abound of the bravery of those that cross the border in the name of higher wages, those that send money back to their families, and those that simply seek the free atmosphere of America. Those stories are powerful indeed.

If you'll recall a previous post on the tripartate soul that Plato formulated, the aforementioned stories speak to our spirited or 2nd layer of our soul. The stories are meant to over take our "heart" so that our heart will then ovetake our mind or "reason". Once the mind has been infiltrated by the heart, reason and rationality leave the captain's chair. The irrationality of the heart then commands the apetites as well as the mind. I should hardly mention that this is a dangerous situation.

In the same way, stories of struggle and heroism command the imagination. The heart shows a "What if it were me?" scenario that the mind buys into. People then start to believe the world is one way without fully investigating whether it really is or not. Most of these illegal immigrants are brave, to be sure, but they are also illegal. Let us not forget the facts.

We need to enforce the laws without being pulled into a dreamland commanded by the heart. If it is in the best interest of this country to do away with our present laws then it must be the citizens and their representatives who should make that decision. The decision should as rational as possible. It should be a well thought out decision made, first and foremost, to ensure the health of American citizens and other people second.  If we can't take care of ourselves, how in the world will we take care of any immigrants what so ever?

*I'm waiting now for my first obligatory "you're a traitor to your own kind" remark..Also, I know that these comments will hardly clear anything up.  It is more a framework for a better conversation than a be all end all solution to the issue at hand.