The over the hill gang!

Tuesday night’s dual Republican responses to the fifty one year old hip black presidents very well conducted and received State of the Union address seemed so very out of touch with what the average American has on their mind! First we had the young appearing junior senator from Florida’s officially sanctioned response which may not have included a desperate looking grab for a bottle of water in the Spanish version that was designed to try to counter the fact that the Republican nominee in 2012 only got twenty seven percent of the Latino vote. Then we had the Tea Party’s sanctioned response by the junior senator from Kentucky who bashed everyone who is not a tea party member for being in a collaboration to bankrupt the nation over the last few years.

Lest anyone further wonder, there is diversity inside the Republican party. You have the young white/brown guy representing the Republicans against big government and the young white guy representing the quasi Republicans against big government and even bigger deficits. One of the white guys was a little browner than the other one was, however, they both acted very white, thank you very much! And their thinking was even whiter still!

In point of fact, if the issue of immigration was settled to the Latino community’s satisfaction, there are some commonalities between the Republican party and that community. Latino’s are very conservative in many ways. They are Catholic and they are not immune to hard physical work. Some of the risks that so many of them have taken to simply arrive in America place them among some of the biggest risk takers that there are in this world. Traveling by night across difficult conditions in which there is great risk from things like nocturnal rattle snakes and other assorted beasties to arrive at an often fenced off area, or, traveling in large groups in the back of unairconditioed trucks following a simple dream of working as an undocumented immigrant always in danger of being deported is not for the faint of heart. And, following the Catholic tradition of raising an often large family born either inside of the United States or brought here at a very young age and knowing nothing else but the constant threat of being deported either with or without your children is a constant strain on a family group. No one likes to be threatened and Latinos are particularly that way!

There must be some sort of primeval force that compels these people to give up a life in poverty to come to a place like the United States where hopes are counterbalanced constantly by the fears that we have just mentioned above. A life in the shadows gives a love of freedom and economic advancement a whole new meaning for those who have never experienced it before.

The dreams of the dreamers, the young ones who are here illegally but have been here for so long, are especially poignant as they think constantly of the things that most Americans take for granted in an often shameful way. These young Latinos who were not born here but have lived here most of their lives and who have known nothing else must have been greatly buoyed when the hip black president gave them an executive action that prevents them from being deported as long as the hip black president remains in office. What must they have thought when they heard the former governor of Massachusetts tell them and the world that if he were elected president that he would cancel that order immediately and replace it with something more permanent that he would not give specifics of what that might be. We do know that he mentioned self deportation quite often as if those snake infested prior travails meant nothing in the larger scheme of things.

Yes, the Latino community does have some commonalities with the Republican party in some very basic ways. But, ever since the neoconservatives have come to prominence in the United States, their constant harping about the immigration problem has driven a wedge between them and the Republicans that may take a generation or more to wash away. And that is true if the immigration problem is handled properly. Asking middle aged or older Latinos who have been in the United States for twenty years or longer to pay back to the government all of the taxes that they have not paid before and then go to the back of the line to await the possibility of a chance at citizenship is the Latino version of what they did to black people by making them sit in the back of the bus. When one looks at this situation one has to ask if this nation will ever repay its enormous debt while it asks Latinos to repay their supposed debts while we might ask them to assume their share of ours!

In 1986, Ronald Reagan and his party along with the Democrats gave an almost general amnesty to a generation of Latinos as a way to try to solve the immigration question plaguing them at the time. In the Republican version of life, this brought on an even larger group of troublemakers who now confront them with an even larger supposed problem that the Republicans think that the democrats wish to solve with another amnesty that will bring on even more illegal’s that will compound the problem even further. Perhaps there might be some truth to some of that but it might be best remembered that before American manifest destiny kicked in in the nineteenth century, much of the land that these people are currently unwelcome upon used to belong to their ancestors. And it might be just as well remembered that in the first century, the Roman province of Gaul--currently Spain--was far more civilized than the areas that so many of these lily white Republican neocons emanated from! Latino forebearers came from Spain before Jamestown was ever thought about!

The Republicans, in their heart of hearts, want nothing to do with any of it! If it were not for the inconvenience of elections, the Republicans would try to deport them all this very day! At their heart, Latinos are romantics, and they know so very well what is in the heart and soul of those around and who oppose them for whatever reason that they do so.

So, the Republican party can continue to present its bifurcated view of the world for as long as it wants. It will not, in our view, change anything for a generation of people who take the jobs that so many Americans feel are beneath them and work for a wage that is so often below the current minimum wage, much less what the hip black president wants it to be at nine dollars an hour. In Mexico and in much of central America, nine dollars an hour would make one a very prosperous person. Many Latinos send money home from the small wages that they receive under constant threat of deportation by so many of the employers who inform them that if they complain, they are out of here. And, if the average American or the average Republican thinks that there are two worlds or two points of view, when they look at illegal immigrants who just want to work and be left alone, there is definitely a third and it is akin to the third world that so many do not understand at all!

It was recently said that an American visiting China marveled to his host about the over one billion potential workers that Chinese industry has! The Chinese host looked at the American and said that America has seven billion potential workers to draw from if only this nation could get its immigration policies straight! A half a generation ago, the social historian Ben Wattenberg called the United States, the first universal nation. Everyone but the Indians came here from somewhere else! It is sad to see that those who are but immigrants themselves would treat a kind and generally gentle people like the Latinos as they are being treated today! Of course, we are reminded of what they did to the Indians!

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe