Posted on 05/30/2006 3:13:16 PM PDT by SJackson
STEVENS POINT - Sometimes it sure seems like a mean world.
Walking through the streets of this safe, little city in the flyover zone the other day, I noticed a sleek auto with a bumper sticker that read, "Secure our borders." The words were superimposed over the image of an American flag. A gray-haired guy in the car sized me up as he passed, as though I might be a person of interest, pale though my complexion may be.
It's hard to imagine how the guy in the sleek car could be personally threatened by some poor Mexican milking a cow on a Wisconsin dairy farm or cleaning a room in a Chicago hotel, but apparently someone had convinced him that these people eking out a living are major security risks here in Stevens Point.
Personally, I feel a lot more threatened by people in big vehicles who ignore pedestrian rights of way, but that's another story.
As history repeats itself, we once more finger the immigrant, those itinerant souls who are pawns of people higher up on the food chain.
We used to celebrate immigration in grade school civics books, with pictures showing people patiently awaiting entrance to this country, packing their dreams and a suitcase.
That was then, this is now, and now means it's OK to pick on the immigrant pawns on hate radio. Hate is good, according to some in this mean world. It's good according to WIND Radio in Chicago, which boasts on billboards around the city, "WIND News Radio, Liberals Hate It." So now hate is good.
Of course, the fires of anti-immigrant anger are stoked daily by the WINDs of this world. The subjects of this wrath are powerless, so they're easy punching bags. It is hard to imagine that we have somehow come to accept that hate is good, but it appears that way. That's threatening.
I wonder how far the man in the sleek car is from agreeing that all sorts of others different from him should be deported as we secure our borders. Buddhists? Gays? The mentally ill? Liberals?
I wonder what Jesus Salas (now a UW regent), Salvadore Sanchez and others who organized Obreros Unidos here in central Wisconsin in the 1960s are thinking today. These men were migrant farm workers who came to Waushara County and other rural Wisconsin locales to harvest pickles and other crops from verdant fields.
They and their families lived in untenable conditions for years, and finally they had too much of it. They weren't allowed to congregate in those days, except in the Catholic churchyards, where they did their best to organize during Sunday baseball games.
Finally, on an August day in 1966, they marched from Wautoma to Madison. They went to the Capitol to ask for safe working conditions, a minimum wage, accident and hospital insurance, and improved housing which in some cases meant access to a toilet. They earned many improvements, especially in housing, wages and education programs for their children.
Though many of these workers were legal residents in the U.S., they were also cultural outsiders in central Wisconsin. It's still that way in rural Wisconsin today, as a new wave of immigrants finds work on dairy farms and other rural occupations, in addition to doing traditional field work. Especially where the immigrants are new to rural Wisconsin, they are little understood by year-round residents, just as migrant workers were in central Wisconsin 40 years ago. As in the past, the migrants themselves have trouble adjusting to ways of life in Wisconsin.
The distinctions are less abrupt in more culturally diverse urban areas, but one thing is obvious: Fanning the flames of intolerance will burn all of those who get near the fire, whether they live in the city or the country. Secure the borders at your own risk. Live in a manner that sees hate as good, and hate becomes your mantra.
Soon the migrant workers will come back to central Wisconsin for another season. They dress in dark, bright colors for the field work, defying the sun as it burns the countryside. They move more freely today, thanks to the work of those who came before. They live in better conditions, and the schools are prepared to educate their children while they are here.
In return, the workers provide a service of high value to those who grow crops for profit. They also spend their earnings as consumers while living here.
Some visitors have decided to stay over the years, and a little population of Mexican-Americans has developed in and around the fruit and vegetable fields. The local university radio station has a wonderful Tejano music show on Saturday afternoons, and the requests pour in from Bancroft and Plainfield.
With similar rhythms and instruments, Tejano is sometimes as close as anything gets to the polkas that the Polish settlers here in Portage County so love. It's a reminder of how close we all are, no matter what the lovers of hate will say.
Bill Berry of Stevens Point writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times. E-mail: billnick@charter.net Published: May 30, 2006
There are millions of potential immigrants in the refugee camps of Africa and the Middle East who will likely work for less than todays illegals. They'll bring their music, and open ethnic restaurants. It will be fun.
What a ridiculous analogy. This shows the mentality of those on the left. They haven't got a clue, and it frightens me to think that they may soon be holding the keys to Congress and White House again soon.
Those who think Republican's aren't doing enough for them need to think about more than one or two issues and imagine what it will be like to give them total control again.
Oh, yeah, it is all about hate. Can't win an argument? Play the race card, it works everytime!
ping
Neither "illegal" nor "undocumented" were found in this piece.
Wonder why?
Al Gore invented the strawman argument.
'fly-over country'
Code for that part of the country that would be disenfranchised by eliminating the Electoral College system.
"As history repeats itself, we once more finger the immigrant..."
No, the ILLEGAL immigrant, bonehead.
This scribe for The Capital Times, propaganda arm of the commissars who dictate policy in Moscow on Mendota, knows the difference - but it's characteristic of Marxists that they enjoy to shift the terms of discussion and debate as a tactic for scoring points; as if scoring points, rather than law enforcement, were the issue. Any honest approach to the problem of illegal immigration must take account of 1) the fact that every illegal immigrant admitted to the country from Mexico decreases the number who can be admitted from Ireland, Poland, India, Thailand, China Nigeria, Kenya and so on via the legal processes established; and, 2) the fact that a refusal by government authorities to enforce the law as written only serves to increase contempt for the law generally.
But the writer who composed this piece isn't interested in honesty; he's interested only in discrediting the current, Republican, administration. If the Democrats were in power, he'd be "writing out of the other side of his face."
Another lefty who has no loyalty to America.
This is where the guy goes goes wrong. It isn't a matter of being personally threatened but the threat to the nation. Only a very selfish individual will place self above the good of the country.
"...pale though my complexion may be...", indeeed!
These men were migrant farm workers who came to Waushara County and other rural Wisconsin locales to harvest pickles and other crops from verdant fields.
Ah, how well I remember the verdant pickle fields in the early morning sun....
It makes a difference.
It's not rocket science, Billy...
Yup, placate and smooth those modern day equivalents of slaves and indentured servants to our modern plantation owners! Swing Low Sweet Chariot!!!!
We been there and done that, why again???
Because liberalism is a disease.
Another word for "lobotomy"...
Can you actually get paid for writing such derivative drivel??? For this clown law, principle and America's sovereignty don't exist
Yep. Same old tired bolshevic bromides : )
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