Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Dora's Negative Influence


Georgia will only watch two shows on TV, Pardon The Interruption (bless her) and Dora, and PTI she gives up on shortly after it starts. While I’m pleased she isn’t yet the TV addict her parents are, I sometimes wish it was a different program that caught her attention.

I know it means well, but I can’t help but feel like Dora is a subtle way of nationalizing illegal immigrants, sort of like when you have to choose English at the ATM. Seems innocent enough, but the fact that it’s there sheds some light on the annoying and infuriating reasons for its existence.

I don’t want them to be accommodated, I want them to LEAVE! I don’t subscribe to this “we’re all immigrants” philosophy and, crazy as it sounds, I worry that we’re at the beginning stages of letting our culture and quality of life get away from us. We’re basically handing it over. Eventually, they aren’t all going to be custodians and landscapers and burger flippers, they’re going to be in positions of power. That’s already starting to happen, and that’s great and better than the alternative, but pretty soon Americans will be the minorities in this country and by the time we see it, it’ll be too late.

Because money is what motivates this issue, it could also easily be the solution. If the government were to heavily fine employers who give undocumented workers jobs, they would stop. Once it became more expensive to keep them than to let them go, they would be gone. But, this doesn’t happen because, I believe, there is collusion going on behind the scenes. Politicians know it annoys most of us, but they’re totally influenced by money and lobbyists and big business so they can give us the lip service without actually being proactive about solving the problem because not solving it is in their (and their investors) best interest.

Now, I have no problem with legal immigrants. Just follow the rules, is all we ask. Consider, however, what the Mexican financial infrastructure would be like if all these industrious, hard working Nationals stayed put and built up their own country. They wouldn’t need to come here for a “better life”.

And I get that they do the jobs Americans won't do, at least not for better pay. I've resigned myself to that fact. But, one reason for that may be the stigma attached to such jobs. They now seem beneath most of us. That shouldn't be the case, but it is. Plus, don't we have enough workers in this country for our needs by now? With the housing market in the toilet, couldn't all those guys who were building houses and yards, now go do something else? What if they worked for Waste Management by separating our recyclables from the rest of our garbage, since most of us are too lazy to do it. That would be a noble endeavour at least. Actually, I've never understood why that isn't already a marketable skill.
I'm looking forward to voting for Mr. Obama (hopefully) in November, but this is one topic where he and I differ. In fact, we differ enough to almost make me want to vote for Hilary, but not quite. I'm not there... yet. Unfortunately, she has that unattractive quality that Al Gore had that caused me to vote for W that election. Of course, I've been regretting that move ever since.

So, in honor of Cinco de Mayo, I say Cinco de MY ASS!

3 comments:

Farrah said...

I think SOMEONE should be sorting our recyclables. Cause I know I'm not.

RR said...

A little perspective from Norman Mailer here (you might find interesting):

"Let me put it this way: I don’t see immigration as a pressing problem other than that it gets some white people so furious that they can’t think about more important things. They feel America is being lost. All right, but America is being lost and has been lost in ways that have nothing to do with races or excessive immigration. America, for one example, is being lost is through television. Because in advertising, mendacity and manipulation are raised to the level of internal values for the advertisers. Interruption is seen as a necessary concomitant to marketing. It used to be that a 7- or 8-year-old could read consecutively for an hour or two. But they don’t do that much any more. The habit has been lost. Every seven to 10 minutes a child is interrupted by a commercial on TV. Kids get used to the idea that their interest is there to be broken into.

"Our first problem is not immigration but the American corporation. That is the force which has succeeded in taking America away from us. It has triumphed in making the world an uglier place to live in since the Second World War. I would cite 50-story high-rise architecture as inspired in form as a Kleenex box, shopping malls encircled by low-level condominiums, superhighways that homogenize our landscapes, and plastic, ubiquitous plastic, there to numb an infant’s tactile senses. It is the front-runner in the competition to see what can make the world more disagreeable. To the degree we have exported this crud all over the globe, we wield already a punitive species of world hegemony. If I find myself viscerally opposed to the notion of an American Empire, it is because of the all-pervasive aesthetic empti-ness of the most powerful American corporations. There are no cathedrals left for the poor—only sixteen-story urban renewal housing projects that sit on the soul like jail..."

http://www.amconmag.com/2002/2002_12_02/mailer.html

Jon Lamoreaux said...

Man, Mailer nailed it. I guess I didn't stress it enough, but it is the corporations that perpetuate, not just the immigrant problem, but all the ones he mentioned and more. If I were smart and articulate enough, I would write something urgent on that too. Maybe later.