Mucho Gusto, Amigo!

Sometimes Karma takes a while to come around but sure as tent poles to tepees, it does. Whether it's a part of the grand design or just the way things happen, as they say, what goes around comes around. And so now all us Anglos are beginning to understand how the former inhabitants of this continent felt as the watched the guys from across the seas invading their borders. And we didn't speak their language and we dressed funny and we did the work, plowing and such that most of the men didn't want to do. And on top of all that we ate funny food, escargot and quiche and asparagus. Well, maybe not, but it wasn't maize, squirrel and wild turkey. And criminals, what a fantastic place, these colonies, to dump the sixteenth and seventeenth century miscredants. So now it seems Montizuma is having his revenge in a very disturbing way and we, in the good old U. S of A. , are getting smacked up side the head with our own device.

For whatever reason my ancestors arrived on these shores before the Rebellion or Revolution (depending on how revolutionary ones thought process may be). So I don't have tales of Ellis Island or striving to attain citizenship in this great nation. Our family does have stories of indenture, hardship to survive the harsh pioneer life, work from sunrise to sunset and then into the night, and developing this country into what it is. My wife's family, of the middle passage, slavery, finally freedom and then the reality of Jim Crow. But the point is, for the most part, we all came from somewhere else and it was tough getting here and surviving here. And the vast majority of us were in one form or another illegals.

We now raise a stink about the security of our borders. But really, how secure have those frontiers ever been? There's a history of undocumented immigration from the Chinese in California to the Cubans in Florida. What amazes me about this present invasion is the lengths gone to to arrive at the American dream. Stuffed in trucks and vans the come. Running and swimming and risking life in a harsh desert environment they come. And somehow they and this vast melting pot has survived and thanks to many of these same immigrants, prospered.

I must admit I feel somewhat intimidated at seeing signs in Spanish I don't understand. But that's my problem for not paying more attention in high school Spanish class. No thanks to all the cute girls who had a yen to learn the language and were probably dreaming of acquiring a Latin lover at some point in their adolescent lives. What's more, I see an increasing number of Latin faces replacing black faces on the crime reports. And some of the banks up here in the mountains now have large banners (in Spanish, of course) advertising their willingness to transfer funds to Mexico. But lets face it folks, a whole lot of capitalist business people have been enjoying the fruits of migrant crop workers for years. And about that lettuce, grape, orange, strawberry or some other yummy we savored picked by some guy who shouldn't be in this country?

I really don't need to catalog the argument for or against our present predicament. Are many of these people here illegally and should they be held responsible for their illegal act? Yes, but how? How do we even identify the millions of individuals? How do we prevent more of the same? It would seem much easier to sneak across the border and fade into the scenery than to go through the bureaucrat mumbo jumbo. What started as a trickle has become a deluge and it's to late to put the finger in the dam.

And the crazy thing is as more and more U.S. citizens and jobs move to Latin America, more and more citizens of Latin America move here. One of the reasons; many nations no longer have a national identity but have become political systems. But that's another post.