Monday, December 29, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
The Times, They ARE a'Changin' - Please God!
The times, they are a'changin' Please, God, let it be so - we've waited such a long time.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Immigrants Add Value to Economy
We here a lot about how much illegal immigrants are costing our economy. But according to this article by Marisa Treviño, Oct. 17, 2008: Federal Immigration Policy . . . immigrants generate more for the economy than they take away in benefits.
"Nebraska's immigrant population jumped 33 percent from 2000 to 2006. In contrast, the native-born population only grew by less than 2 percent during the same time period.
Looking at 2006 data, the researchers found that immigrant spending in the state resulted in an estimated $1.6 billion output to the Nebraska economy. The spending generated between 11,000 and 12,000 jobs in the state.
Immigrants in Nebraska significantly contribute to the state's labor force with immigrants comprising 80.4 percent in meat processing -- the state's single largest industry and driving force for much of the state's economy.
These are the indisputable facts. What the researchers uncovered about how much immigrants actually take away from state coffers will be the real source of contention and dispute.
According to the report, the immigrant population contributed in 2006 about $154 million in the form of property, income, sales and gas tax revenue. Their costs to the government from food stamps, public assistance, health and educational expenses totaled $144.78 million.
In other words, the researchers found that the state's immigrants pay in about 7 percent more than what they use in government support. Also, if immigrants were removed from the state's labor force in key industries like meat processing or construction, the state's production would lose $13.5 billion.
Nebraska isn't alone. Another study set for release by New York City's Adelphi University Economics Professor Mariano Torras finds that in 2006 immigrants contributed $10.6 billion to the Long Island economy. Immigrants exercised $7.5 billion in buying power, helped create 82,000 new jobs, and even paid $2 billion more in taxes than they received in services. These are only two examples."
The same thing is true in the State of Washington. People shouldn't be misled into thinking that the presence of immigrants in Forks costs Forks people money. Instead, Forks economy is benefited by their presence. Their dollars flow into local businesses. The school funding is supported by their children's presence in our classrooms. Forks economy would collapse if they all went away tomorrow. Be careful what you wish for, folks.
~~marsha
"Nebraska's immigrant population jumped 33 percent from 2000 to 2006. In contrast, the native-born population only grew by less than 2 percent during the same time period.
Looking at 2006 data, the researchers found that immigrant spending in the state resulted in an estimated $1.6 billion output to the Nebraska economy. The spending generated between 11,000 and 12,000 jobs in the state.
Immigrants in Nebraska significantly contribute to the state's labor force with immigrants comprising 80.4 percent in meat processing -- the state's single largest industry and driving force for much of the state's economy.
These are the indisputable facts. What the researchers uncovered about how much immigrants actually take away from state coffers will be the real source of contention and dispute.
According to the report, the immigrant population contributed in 2006 about $154 million in the form of property, income, sales and gas tax revenue. Their costs to the government from food stamps, public assistance, health and educational expenses totaled $144.78 million.
In other words, the researchers found that the state's immigrants pay in about 7 percent more than what they use in government support. Also, if immigrants were removed from the state's labor force in key industries like meat processing or construction, the state's production would lose $13.5 billion.
Nebraska isn't alone. Another study set for release by New York City's Adelphi University Economics Professor Mariano Torras finds that in 2006 immigrants contributed $10.6 billion to the Long Island economy. Immigrants exercised $7.5 billion in buying power, helped create 82,000 new jobs, and even paid $2 billion more in taxes than they received in services. These are only two examples."
The same thing is true in the State of Washington. People shouldn't be misled into thinking that the presence of immigrants in Forks costs Forks people money. Instead, Forks economy is benefited by their presence. Their dollars flow into local businesses. The school funding is supported by their children's presence in our classrooms. Forks economy would collapse if they all went away tomorrow. Be careful what you wish for, folks.
~~marsha
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Barack Obama will be one of the greatest (and most beloved) presidents . . .
Click here to read a beautiful (and very different) political viewpoint concerning Barack Obama by Frank Schaeffer.
Rev. Alan Marshall
Here's a recent post by Rev. Alan Marshall, former Catholic priest (St. Anne's Parish, Forks, WA, Queen of Angels, Port Angeles, WA), now Lutheran pastor, (Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Bremerton, WA) on immigration and the question of "illegal aliens."
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The kind of man Barack is
Click here to read a story that will make you feel better about the election. Pass it on.
Friday, October 3, 2008
What Betty had to say . . .
Betty Soderlind of Forks, Washington, is a long time advocate for the poor in this small logging community. One of the founders of the Clothing Bank, Food Bank, Disaster Relief Committee, she has spent her life doing the "corporal works of mercy."
In a recent letter to the Forks Forum, this is what Betty had to say on the current "round-up" of undocumented workers in this area. (Scroll down - Betty's letter is beneath a couple of others on the Opinion page of the October 1, 2008 issue of the Forum.
And just in case this letter to the editor is no longer available on the Forum website, here's the text:
Defends West End immigrantsHere are links to related stories, all from the Peninsula Daily News.
I want to come to the defense of the illegal aliens in our country. First, why are they here? I have lived many years below the poverty line, from the Great Depression to past middle age, but I have never known hunger nor have I ever seen hunger in the faces of my children. Six of my seven children are college educated, productive and comfortable. The Hispanics coming to our country are hungry, their children are hungry with no hope unless they leave their homeland and cross the border. The quota for legally entering is very low, so the alternative is to come illegally. To become a legal alien is not easy, and in many cases ends up in deportation. Some have employed lawyers to help them and have been successful, some have fallen into the hands of unscrupulous lawyers who have taken their money and disappeared. One family told me of their giving a lawyer $4,000. He disappeared. They are a very good family and would have been good citizens, but were deported. I believe most lawyers are honest but unfortunately there are those who take advantage of the defenseless.
They do pay taxes, many are living in substandard housing and paying $500 to $600 a month. That is ample to pay the property taxes. They pay gas tax, sales tax on everything but food and drugs.
Those of us who are comfortable, let us be a little more compassionate to those who are just trying to survive. Let us not forget that a large section of the Southwest U.S. was taken from Mexico just because we are stronger.
Betty Soderlind - Forks
Living on the Peninsula Illegally
Part 2 of Maria's Story
Victor Velasquez is now a citizen
Border Patrol crackdown on West End pleases some, disturbs some in Forks
Detained teens choose Mexico; others reported arrested
Saturday, September 20, 2008
This land is OUR land!
An old friend of mine responded to the Edgar Ayala story with a very different opinion from the one I sent to the Forks Forum (see below). He felt strongly that he supported legal immigration, but he characterized illegal immigrants as "despicable." And he objected, though very kindly, to my characterizing those who disagreed with me as being nativistic or xenophobic because they disagreed with my stance. He suggested that we could remain friends while agreeing to disagree. And he sent his own letter to the Forum expressing his approval of the checkpoints and arrests.
Here's my response to both his note to me and his letter to the Forum.
Hi, __________ , Let's say there is a difference between an immigrant and an illegal immigrant. But first of all, I would insist that the adjective illegal is inappropriate. The adjective illegal, according to Merriam-Webster, means "not according to or authorized by law," so when applied to a person there is an implication that there is something in that individual's very existence that is unauthorized by law, when it is really merely his status which does not conform to the law. That's why I don't like to hear that term used. I think it smacks of nativism, even if the speaker doesn't intend that. A better one, in my opinion is undocumented. The former is derogatory and inflammatory, and probably shouldn't ever be applied to a human person. A person can be a "criminal," but not an "illegal." So I'm going to say there is a difference between an immigrant who has made it through the system and has the right papers and one who is here in violation of the law, but I refuse to criminalize his presence.
There are many ways one can be in this country and be undocumented. One can come on a temporary visa and overstay it. One can hire a "coyote" and be smuggled in. One can come in the arms of parents who may have come on a visa or who may have waded the Rio Grande. Is the child who grew up in this country - because he or she was brought here as a child - despicable? (Your word from your letter in The Forum Forum.) Let's look at that adjective: Merriam-Webster defines "despicable" as "deserving to be despised: so worthless or obnoxious as to rouse moral indignation."
The young man who was picked up in the checkpoint near Forks and was the subject of the article to which I was responding came here as a child with his parents who probably came as undocumented workers (I don't know whether they came illegally or stayed illegally), but there's no way that I see that he did anything illegal at all. His status was not legal. That does not make him illegal.
That boy (or young man since he had recently turned 18) merely grew up where his family was living - as all of us did. He went to school. He behaved well enough to be considered an honor student. He played sports for our school. He intended to enlist in the Navy. He would have been allowed to, of course. "Illegal" immigrants are often admitted to military service, and then they are often given a preferential road to citizenship. Thousands of them are in the military. Does that make them less despicable?
My forebears, John and Elinor Whitney, arrived in this country without documentation in 1635. They had no permission to land in Massachusetts. They held no title to the land near Waterton, Massachusetts, where they settled. They were not particularly welcome. But they settled down, prospered, and many of their descendants have played notable parts in American history. They may well have been seen as despicable by the Native Americans whose land they appropriated. Were they less despicable that the migrant worker who came here because our farmers begged him to, needed him to? Because our country made it possible for him to stay even without the right papers? We haven't just been lax in enforcement. Our agricultural industry, businesses, etc. have actively encouraged the presence of undocumented workers and have benefitted from their presence. And in practical terms, there really are no ways available for Mexicans and other folks from South of the Border to come here legally any more. We have slammed the doors on legal immigration for those people, while still enticing them to come.
The economy of Forks benefits from the undocumented workers in our community. If they were to suddenly all be rounded up and deported, Forks would collapse entirely. Their presence in our schools brings in state funding and keeps the school afloat. Thriftway would take a lethal hit. The gas stations wouldn't be filling up the vans and pick-up trucks that bring in the salal harvests. Those who are working under forged social security cards (I doubt there are a lot of those here) pay into the system, but never reap benefits, so they subsidize my social security checks. They pay taxes, though indirectly. The businesses which employ them under the table would fold. They bring us far more economic benefit than they cost us.
My great-grandparents, and Don's, moved into California shortly after it became a state - in the 1840's. It belonged to Mexico until 1848. Were our "immigrant" forebears who came here in covered wagons or by stagecoach despicable? I suppose to the Mexican government it would have seemed so. And perhaps to the Native American people who lived in California's Sacramento Valley.
Don's great-grandfather, we're told, owned thousands of acres of the upper Sacramento Valley, land that had been part of Mexican land grants. The current population of Colusa County is about the same as before Europeans settled there. Native Americans were 100% of the population then. They are now 2.3% of the population When Don and I grew up there, most of the population was white. Now it's about half Hispanic. Don's share of his great-grandfather's holdings was about 100 acres when his parents died. What gave our family the right to live in and own land in Colusa County more than the great-grandchildren of those who owned it before 1848? Did the white settlers who displaced the Rancheria owners who displaced the Native Americans have more right to be here than the Hispanic people who now make up half the population? Or is it just what people do? They go where the opportunties are.
My grandparents on my mothers' side arrived in California much later than those on my father's side. They came in the Dust Bowl migration. Like hordes of others who had lost their livelihood in Oklahoma and Texas, they had to find a way to survive. They packed up their belongings in a decrepit automobile. They saw flyers advertising jobs in California. My mother says she was told that the trees in California grew fruit salad. They were met at the border by law enforcement authorities. They were allowed (reluctantly) to enter. They lived in a tent in a labor camp in Fresno. They were called Okies. They experienced prejudice and discrimination. They were considered outsiders. They were unwelcome. They were considered despicable by many Californians. My mother never really forgave a sister-in-law who described "Okies" living in the labor camps in the 1930's near Marysville, CA as "filthy, immoral animals."
My mother was 12 when she arrived in California. She spent her life obliterating any trace of southern speech patterns and accents from her vocabulary, and she was fierce in eradicating southern idioms from her children's speech. There was an unofficial "English only - and NOT the Okie version" - law in force in my home and in California generally. When I was growing up in California, I saw the same thing happen in school to my Mexican classmates. I was punished by my mother for calling my bedroom slippers "house-shoes," a term I had heard used by my grandmother. My classmate was punished by the teacher for speaking Spanish. Those experiences are both grounded in xenophobia.
My mother's family made it out of the tent in Fresno and upgraded their wardrobes from the flour-sack clothing they wore as children. My grandparents didn't pick fruit. My grandfather was a carpenter, but my grandmother divorced him and married a postman. She saved her money, bought real-estate, and died rich.
So here we are in Forks. I know we can't go back and unravel the past and make it all fair and "legal." We got what we got because of energy, enterprise, trickery, conquest, luck. But there's no way that I can claim a better right to be here than another immigrant, documented or undocumented. I want the criminals rounded up and dealt with. But I think the draconian measures underway here, where checkpoints spring up between Forks and the turnoff to LaPush, are NOT based on valid concerns for catching criminals and terrorists. They are terrorizing families in Forks. They are racial profiling. They are aggravating law-abiding citizens like myself. Even though I am generally waved through - I don't fit the profile - I can't believe that I could be stopped and asked to produce papers to prove my right to be on Highway 101. That's something from the old movies from the 40's and the 50's where people in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia had to carry papers and produce them for perusal by authorities. That's not the USA I grew up in, nor the one I want to live in now.
And I do think that we are seeing lots of very good people being affected by nativistic language and xenophobic rhetoric. Even liberal democrats like yourself. Because I really don't think you would have seen Edgar Ayala or his parents as despicable when you were in the classroom in Forks High School. There were some students you and I might well have liked to have deported to some place other than FHS, and to whom the adjective "despicable" might have applied, but we'd have liked Edgar, I think, and we'd have tried to prepare him to someday take his test for citizenship when he got home from military service.
So I don't want to agree to disagree. I'd rather persuade you that there is merit in my position.
Best regards,
Marsha
Here's my response to both his note to me and his letter to the Forum.
Hi, __________ , Let's say there is a difference between an immigrant and an illegal immigrant. But first of all, I would insist that the adjective illegal is inappropriate. The adjective illegal, according to Merriam-Webster, means "not according to or authorized by law," so when applied to a person there is an implication that there is something in that individual's very existence that is unauthorized by law, when it is really merely his status which does not conform to the law. That's why I don't like to hear that term used. I think it smacks of nativism, even if the speaker doesn't intend that. A better one, in my opinion is undocumented. The former is derogatory and inflammatory, and probably shouldn't ever be applied to a human person. A person can be a "criminal," but not an "illegal." So I'm going to say there is a difference between an immigrant who has made it through the system and has the right papers and one who is here in violation of the law, but I refuse to criminalize his presence.
There are many ways one can be in this country and be undocumented. One can come on a temporary visa and overstay it. One can hire a "coyote" and be smuggled in. One can come in the arms of parents who may have come on a visa or who may have waded the Rio Grande. Is the child who grew up in this country - because he or she was brought here as a child - despicable? (Your word from your letter in The Forum Forum.) Let's look at that adjective: Merriam-Webster defines "despicable" as "deserving to be despised: so worthless or obnoxious as to rouse moral indignation."
The young man who was picked up in the checkpoint near Forks and was the subject of the article to which I was responding came here as a child with his parents who probably came as undocumented workers (I don't know whether they came illegally or stayed illegally), but there's no way that I see that he did anything illegal at all. His status was not legal. That does not make him illegal.
That boy (or young man since he had recently turned 18) merely grew up where his family was living - as all of us did. He went to school. He behaved well enough to be considered an honor student. He played sports for our school. He intended to enlist in the Navy. He would have been allowed to, of course. "Illegal" immigrants are often admitted to military service, and then they are often given a preferential road to citizenship. Thousands of them are in the military. Does that make them less despicable?
My forebears, John and Elinor Whitney, arrived in this country without documentation in 1635. They had no permission to land in Massachusetts. They held no title to the land near Waterton, Massachusetts, where they settled. They were not particularly welcome. But they settled down, prospered, and many of their descendants have played notable parts in American history. They may well have been seen as despicable by the Native Americans whose land they appropriated. Were they less despicable that the migrant worker who came here because our farmers begged him to, needed him to? Because our country made it possible for him to stay even without the right papers? We haven't just been lax in enforcement. Our agricultural industry, businesses, etc. have actively encouraged the presence of undocumented workers and have benefitted from their presence. And in practical terms, there really are no ways available for Mexicans and other folks from South of the Border to come here legally any more. We have slammed the doors on legal immigration for those people, while still enticing them to come.
The economy of Forks benefits from the undocumented workers in our community. If they were to suddenly all be rounded up and deported, Forks would collapse entirely. Their presence in our schools brings in state funding and keeps the school afloat. Thriftway would take a lethal hit. The gas stations wouldn't be filling up the vans and pick-up trucks that bring in the salal harvests. Those who are working under forged social security cards (I doubt there are a lot of those here) pay into the system, but never reap benefits, so they subsidize my social security checks. They pay taxes, though indirectly. The businesses which employ them under the table would fold. They bring us far more economic benefit than they cost us.
My great-grandparents, and Don's, moved into California shortly after it became a state - in the 1840's. It belonged to Mexico until 1848. Were our "immigrant" forebears who came here in covered wagons or by stagecoach despicable? I suppose to the Mexican government it would have seemed so. And perhaps to the Native American people who lived in California's Sacramento Valley.
Don's great-grandfather, we're told, owned thousands of acres of the upper Sacramento Valley, land that had been part of Mexican land grants. The current population of Colusa County is about the same as before Europeans settled there. Native Americans were 100% of the population then. They are now 2.3% of the population When Don and I grew up there, most of the population was white. Now it's about half Hispanic. Don's share of his great-grandfather's holdings was about 100 acres when his parents died. What gave our family the right to live in and own land in Colusa County more than the great-grandchildren of those who owned it before 1848? Did the white settlers who displaced the Rancheria owners who displaced the Native Americans have more right to be here than the Hispanic people who now make up half the population? Or is it just what people do? They go where the opportunties are.
My grandparents on my mothers' side arrived in California much later than those on my father's side. They came in the Dust Bowl migration. Like hordes of others who had lost their livelihood in Oklahoma and Texas, they had to find a way to survive. They packed up their belongings in a decrepit automobile. They saw flyers advertising jobs in California. My mother says she was told that the trees in California grew fruit salad. They were met at the border by law enforcement authorities. They were allowed (reluctantly) to enter. They lived in a tent in a labor camp in Fresno. They were called Okies. They experienced prejudice and discrimination. They were considered outsiders. They were unwelcome. They were considered despicable by many Californians. My mother never really forgave a sister-in-law who described "Okies" living in the labor camps in the 1930's near Marysville, CA as "filthy, immoral animals."
My mother was 12 when she arrived in California. She spent her life obliterating any trace of southern speech patterns and accents from her vocabulary, and she was fierce in eradicating southern idioms from her children's speech. There was an unofficial "English only - and NOT the Okie version" - law in force in my home and in California generally. When I was growing up in California, I saw the same thing happen in school to my Mexican classmates. I was punished by my mother for calling my bedroom slippers "house-shoes," a term I had heard used by my grandmother. My classmate was punished by the teacher for speaking Spanish. Those experiences are both grounded in xenophobia.
My mother's family made it out of the tent in Fresno and upgraded their wardrobes from the flour-sack clothing they wore as children. My grandparents didn't pick fruit. My grandfather was a carpenter, but my grandmother divorced him and married a postman. She saved her money, bought real-estate, and died rich.
So here we are in Forks. I know we can't go back and unravel the past and make it all fair and "legal." We got what we got because of energy, enterprise, trickery, conquest, luck. But there's no way that I can claim a better right to be here than another immigrant, documented or undocumented. I want the criminals rounded up and dealt with. But I think the draconian measures underway here, where checkpoints spring up between Forks and the turnoff to LaPush, are NOT based on valid concerns for catching criminals and terrorists. They are terrorizing families in Forks. They are racial profiling. They are aggravating law-abiding citizens like myself. Even though I am generally waved through - I don't fit the profile - I can't believe that I could be stopped and asked to produce papers to prove my right to be on Highway 101. That's something from the old movies from the 40's and the 50's where people in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia had to carry papers and produce them for perusal by authorities. That's not the USA I grew up in, nor the one I want to live in now.
And I do think that we are seeing lots of very good people being affected by nativistic language and xenophobic rhetoric. Even liberal democrats like yourself. Because I really don't think you would have seen Edgar Ayala or his parents as despicable when you were in the classroom in Forks High School. There were some students you and I might well have liked to have deported to some place other than FHS, and to whom the adjective "despicable" might have applied, but we'd have liked Edgar, I think, and we'd have tried to prepare him to someday take his test for citizenship when he got home from military service.
So I don't want to agree to disagree. I'd rather persuade you that there is merit in my position.
Best regards,
Marsha
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Nativism at my doorstep
This article in the Forks Forum prompted my response below:
Editor of the Forum:
When I was in the 8th grade in 1950-51, we had a big fat blue history book; the rule was that we had to pass the 8th Grade Constitution and U.S. History test or we wouldn't be allowed to graduate and go to high school.
I remember one vocabulary lesson where we had to learn the meaning of some very big words, and we had to understand what they meant in the context of American history.
Xenophobia was a word that came from the Greek and meant a "fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown, especially of strangers or foreign people.
Nativism had to do with fear that your culture would be adversely affected by immigrants.
"Know-nothings" were people who belonged to a political party in the U.S. in the 1850's who were afraid that Catholic immigrants from Europe would overwhelm the U.S. and be controlled by the Pope.
Children were expected to memorize things in those days: the Gettysburg Address, the Preamble to the Constitution, the words of the National Anthem, and the words engraved upon the Statue of Liberty:
We 8th graders had grown up during WWII. We knew well the ideals which our fathers and uncles and fought for. We 8th graders were proud to know that our country was far beyond the ignorance of the xenophobic, nativistic Know-Nothing people who were ignorant and prejudiced, and who didn't believe in what the constitution said. We knew that America stood for something better than that.
(We didn't know yet that there was a long way to go. In our early adulthood we lived through the Civil Rights Movement. We saw our peers take great risks to make sure that America would become what we had been told in 8th grade it already was.)
Now I am old, and I see a resurgence of navitism and xenophobia. Do we really need to protect ourselves by rounding up young men like Edgar Ayala and expel them from our country: I don't know Edgar. I hear he was an honor student at FHS where I taught for 27 years, a member of the FHS wrestling team, a potential recruit to the U.S. Navy? Sounds to me like just the kind of person we'd want to keep here.
What are we becoming? Does anyone still study the constitution and care about protecting what it stands for? My ancestors arrived in 1635. They didn't have permission to enter this country. They didn't have title to the land they settled on. They didn't have a passport or a visa. They did what people do. They migrated to where they thought life would be better for them and their children. We have no "right" to this land. We live here with others who got here in a variety of ways. We better just get along with each other, show respect, and accommodate to others who join us. I knew in the 8th grade "Know-nothings" were small-minded, selfish, and contemptible. They still are, and it makes me sad and sick to hear them spew their un-American venom on cable TV and radio talk-shows.
Please don't protect me by betraying the ideals on which this country is founded. Don't protect me by deporting Edgar Ayala and people like him! Let's not let the "Know-Nothings" take over our country – they were an embarrassment in 1850. They should know better by now.
Marsha West
Editor of the Forum:
When I was in the 8th grade in 1950-51, we had a big fat blue history book; the rule was that we had to pass the 8th Grade Constitution and U.S. History test or we wouldn't be allowed to graduate and go to high school.
I remember one vocabulary lesson where we had to learn the meaning of some very big words, and we had to understand what they meant in the context of American history.
Xenophobia was a word that came from the Greek and meant a "fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown, especially of strangers or foreign people.
Nativism had to do with fear that your culture would be adversely affected by immigrants.
"Know-nothings" were people who belonged to a political party in the U.S. in the 1850's who were afraid that Catholic immigrants from Europe would overwhelm the U.S. and be controlled by the Pope.
Children were expected to memorize things in those days: the Gettysburg Address, the Preamble to the Constitution, the words of the National Anthem, and the words engraved upon the Statue of Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
We 8th graders had grown up during WWII. We knew well the ideals which our fathers and uncles and fought for. We 8th graders were proud to know that our country was far beyond the ignorance of the xenophobic, nativistic Know-Nothing people who were ignorant and prejudiced, and who didn't believe in what the constitution said. We knew that America stood for something better than that.
(We didn't know yet that there was a long way to go. In our early adulthood we lived through the Civil Rights Movement. We saw our peers take great risks to make sure that America would become what we had been told in 8th grade it already was.)
Now I am old, and I see a resurgence of navitism and xenophobia. Do we really need to protect ourselves by rounding up young men like Edgar Ayala and expel them from our country: I don't know Edgar. I hear he was an honor student at FHS where I taught for 27 years, a member of the FHS wrestling team, a potential recruit to the U.S. Navy? Sounds to me like just the kind of person we'd want to keep here.
What are we becoming? Does anyone still study the constitution and care about protecting what it stands for? My ancestors arrived in 1635. They didn't have permission to enter this country. They didn't have title to the land they settled on. They didn't have a passport or a visa. They did what people do. They migrated to where they thought life would be better for them and their children. We have no "right" to this land. We live here with others who got here in a variety of ways. We better just get along with each other, show respect, and accommodate to others who join us. I knew in the 8th grade "Know-nothings" were small-minded, selfish, and contemptible. They still are, and it makes me sad and sick to hear them spew their un-American venom on cable TV and radio talk-shows.
Please don't protect me by betraying the ideals on which this country is founded. Don't protect me by deporting Edgar Ayala and people like him! Let's not let the "Know-Nothings" take over our country – they were an embarrassment in 1850. They should know better by now.
Marsha West
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