273…Mexican Stuff
Early in our relationship Leigh and I would both insist that the Mexican food the other liked was not “real” Mexican food. The Mexican food that she liked had a lot more sauce, a lot more beef, and was a lot more fried. The stuff that I liked was all very very fresh, lots of fish tacos, salsas made an hour before you ate it, and guacamole made right in front of you. It turns out we were both right, we just knew different regional cuisines. The food I had grown up with was Baja style (Focus on fresh ingredients) and Leigh had grown up with Sonoran style (Focus on beef dishes).
I now love both types of Mexican food, and respect the history and stories behind each. My father in law gave me a cookbook-cum-history book about the cuisine of Southern Arizona. In my head I am figuring out ways to combine the two styles to make some really great Mexican food. And mixing and matching ideas is what the DACA debate needs.
I think that given the fact that we’ve had negative net migration (more immigrants leaving the country than coming) for the past several years, border security is not a terribly pressing concern.
I also think that our treatment of people who are brought into the country as children is pretty terrible. Growing up in LA I knew a lot of kids who were brought into the country without much say about it. It’s quite literally making the son paying for the sins of the father. If you want to make the argument about crime, these people aren’t the criminals. They’re the victims. I think that we should do something to stabilize the status of these people.
I am fine with giving something to the issue of border security if it means that we can get some sort of legalized status for people brought here as children.
And there are a raft full of bipartisan bills that deftly weave these two goals together. My personal favorite is John McCain and Christopher Coons bipartisan bill. It makes more sense than most of the others I’ve seen, and it has a closely correlated counterpart in the House meaning that sending the bills to committee won’t be a non-starter.
There’s only a single reason that this bill (or another similar one) might not become law in time to prevent shoving nearly 1 million dreamers back in the shadows.
Racism.
Yes, I said it, and not in a hyperbolic way.
The President, Stephen Miller, John Kelly, and most of the House Freedom Caucus — the people preventing this bill from becoming law — are racists. We know that they are racist, because they aren’t proposing solutions to illegal immigration. They want to change the way legal immigration works. And their goal is to keep the country majority white for a little while longer. Five years longer to be exact. Not that they care about the exact amount of time. Just as long as it’s a little longer.
Look, if this was about illegal immigration, we wouldn’t be talking about a stupid, ineffective border wall. We’d be talking about figuring out ways to track people who come into the country through an airport on a visa, since that’s the way the vast majority of illegal immigrants arrive. More than two thirds in fact.
No, the changes to legal immigration are about keeping out brown and black people. The wall is the sign they want to hang out that says “Whites Only”.
On Vanderpump Rules this week Stassi Schroeder said that the meanest thing you can call someone is racist. Which is obviously an ignorant as fuck thing to say. Like, just off the top of my head, a racist slur seems like a worse thing to be called than racist. Anyway, I bring this up, because I’m sure that Stassi doesn’t think she’s racist. I’m sure that she doesn’t hate people just for the color of their skin. But that doesn’t mean that her statements are not racist.
Similarly I am sure that there are a lot of people who support President Trump et al who would not consider themselves racist. I mean, obviously President “Many Fine People” has overtly racist supporters. But a lot of the people who are so hard line on immigration just see it as a matter of “the law is the law.” But you are slipping into the same trap Stassi did. Your support for the President’s views on immigration are being used solely to prevent people of color from coming here. Your actions help and encourage racism, even if that’s not your intention.
If you think that “Racist” is one of the worst things that you can be called, don’t put yourself in a position to be called racist.
