... evading boarder patrol agents ...
Is this a special cadre akin to sorority "house mothers," dorm monitors that enforce parietal hours or schlubs manning the front desk at a rooming house?
When it comes to "illegals" I'm sure that I have at least one in my Irish family. An uncle of my grandmother, with a price on his head for his IRA activities, sailed from Ireland to Canada, altered (by one vowel) the spelling of his last name to enter the U.S. and settled in NYC. My grandmother listed him as a family member to "grease" her immigration. She changed the spelling of her name on forms to match the one he had adopted.
Granted it was a different era. At the time American industrialists, manufacturers and farmers were eager for low paid labor willing to work long, grueling hours to escape their lives of desperation, be it political, religious or economic. It mattered little if they were Micks, Spics, Bohunks, Chinks, Wops, etc.* It was in the best interest of the capitalists to allow
that free flow of bodies.
Keep in mind that the bulk of the American Southwest (Northern California, too) was Mexican territory before being wrested away forcibly. Florida was "Spanish." New Orleans to Minnesota was "French." The thirteen original colonies "were" British, Dutch, Norse, Italian or whatever. Layered on top of that is the bald faced fact that there were residents displaced and removed over time. The native "reservations" are legally separate nations. Are they treated as such?
Do you resent that African slaves and their progeny were (FINALLY) granted full person-hood and citizenship in the course of the Civil War, without classes, paper work and interminable bureaucratic delays?
Politics and economics aside, the key is COMPASSION and RESPECT. This is a social issue. Let's maintain a a humane attitude and approach.
