You know, unless your patio or deck is, say, 10 feet from the Mexico-United States border and the immigrants trying to get across are causing you to spill your afternoon cocktail, I just don’t see what the big deal is about them coming on over. Sure, I’m slow, and no, I don’t keep up with all the hand-wringing about these “illegal aliens” coming into the country and the fear that they are going to destroy American society as we know it, but I do wish that the folks in Washington would hurry up and pass something one way or another so they can finally shut up about it and move on to something that actually matters to the everyday citizen — like imposing colossal fines on the oil companies every time gas goes up another dime and their profits increase by 100 or so billion dollars an hour. I mean, really. Think about it. When was the last time your life was changed in any way by some Mexicans coming to the United States? Did it cause your car not to start? Did it make your utilities quit working? Did it dry up all the grass in your yard? Did it make your children get sick and cause you not to have proper and adequate health insurance to enable you to get them to the doctor? Did it make you have to wait in line longer at Starbucks? Did it make you get stuck in traffic while taking your kids to lacrosse practice? Did it make your SUV with the “I Support the Troops” bumper sticker harder to park at the mall? Did it keep you from watching the news so you can keep up with riveting issues like the recent interview in People magazine in which Paris Hilton’s mother was asked about her daughter’s mental state while in jail for endangering the lives of other people on the road, to which she replied, “Paris is fine, but she’s sick of orange,” referring, of course, to the jail garb she’s had to wear for a couple of weeks? When you woke up this morning, were you petrified that a Mexican immigrant might carjack you on the way to work? Was that the first thought that ran through your head? I kind of doubt any of these things happen on a daily basis, or any basis, for that matter, to anyone reading this paper. So what’s the big deal? I know some people just don’t want nobody comin’ to Amurka who ain’t Amurkan, and some don’t want to pass a bill that would let the immigrants who came here illegally off the hook and give them what many refer to as amnesty because it doesn’t seem fair to those who came here legally. But why should anyone who wants to come to the United States have to worry about a bunch of legal details? It’s not like they’re going to mess it up any more than it already is. In fact, if you look around at some of the neighborhoods that are now heavily populated by immigrants, they are much better than they were before. Take that area around Cleveland and Jefferson that is now a melting pot of people from all over the world. If you had walked around over there at 3 a.m. back in the late 1970s like I did, you’d be jumping up and down to see what it’s like now, with all of the sweet Buddhists living there with their temple and the cool Asian grocery stores and restaurants and a general feeling in the air that there is much more to Memphis than the Bellevue International Airport crowd. Personally, I think we should worry more about the Canadian border. You know what troublemakers those Canadians are, with their Mounties and all. Why, they even let those damn draft-dodgers from the United States into their country when we were trying to save the world from mass destruction during the Vietnam War. Shame on them! I don’t want ’em here! They’re liable to bring some of that funny bacon with them and upset the entire balance of nature by screwing with the way we eat breakfast. Let’s see, who else … We certainly don’t want the French. They all hate us. We don’t want the Irish because they’ll just be coming here to smoke in our bars since they can’t smoke in their own. We have to keep out the Spanish since about 90 percent of the people in United States think that when you tell them you’re going to a tapas restaurant you’re headed off for a lap dance. Hell, we might as well just seal things off all the way around. We certainly don’t want any illegal immigrants getting in Paris Hilton’s way when she gets out of jail this week and races to the store to get a new outfit that’s not orange.
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