How and when did illegal immigration became such a hot topic in this country? I don’t remember anyone even talking about this in the presidential election four years ago. There have long been parts of the nation where it was a big issue, but somehow in the past two years it became this pressing national controversy that masses of people are worried about.
Wikipedia, as usual, provides some enlightenment here.
I guess it doesn’t help that there’s a wide-open Republican primary full of candidates trying to pander to extremists on this issue — people who seem to care less about illegal immigration and more about being overrun by dark-skinned people in general.
As for me, I can’t get myself to worry much about it. I chalk it up to having spent my high school years overseas. Living in Japan for three years permanently changed my perspective on America’s relationship to the rest of the world. I don’t think this country is better than any other country. It’s better in some ways, worse in others. (Many others, yes, but just as we’re not angels, we’re not Satan either.)
More important than our individual national identities are our identities as citizens of the world. Our common humanity is more important than any national allegiance.
There are swaths of ordinary people on this planet who couldn’t care less about the United States. They spend days on end living their lives, going to work and eating and entertaining themselves, hardly thinking about Americans or the United States at all. Fancy that!
And I don’t think there’s a fixed American identity, at least not one that’s going to change just because we let lots of dark-skinned people come over the border. And Dick Cheney and David Addington have fucked up our constitutional system of government more than hordes of immigrants ever could.
It’s not that I don’t think people should come legally instead of illegally. It’s that I just can’t seem to get myself worried about it.
Xenophobia isn’t unique to Americans, by the way, or even to caucasians. For instance, Japan has long dealt with its own ethnic issues.
Someday every human being is going to be the color of coffee ice cream, and then we’ll find other stuff to fight about.