Last week work brought me 112 miles south of San Antonio and 16 miles northeast of Cotulla, TX to a remote but expansive ranch. The owner of the ranch had bought it as a get away from the world. A get away it certainly is. It takes a solid thirty minutes just to drive from the main road to his 2500-acre sanctum. Cutting off the main road onto a gravel road, or sometimes a plain worn out trail, we traveled through five other ranches, opening and closing gate after gate. It is the only direct route to the ranch, unless you travel by air. The property is divided and high-fenced and living naturally wild within each fence is some kind of imported animal. Along the excursion we would often see elk, axis deer, zebras, donkeys, oyrx. We would also see the not so imported animals, or the there via migration animals like the white tail deer, all kinds of quail and dove, snakes, coyotes, and aliens.
Well, I guess to better construe the last kind, I should say that they are there via immigration and that they are by far the shyest, most rarely seen, and least wanted of all the foreign and native sights of the land. Paradoxically, however, they are by far the most populous and the most captured of all the other species that roam South Texas.
I don’t intend to make light of this situation, by any means. In fact, I altogether have completely the opposite of intentions. I wish to surface the subject to a generally uncomprehending, apathetic, it’s-not-my-problem America. I should also say that I am not the one who should cast the first stone, either. Living in North Louisiana for the entirety of my politically conscious life, I had confronted the problem with a far off intellectual type self-debate. Weighing the pros and cons of the situation and acquiring my information
by TV news.
The news spoke of an organization called the Minuteman. This is a type of modern day border patrol militia whose sole purpose is to deter the “illegals” from crossing the border. Their job consists of sitting on their ranches, guns and binoculars in hand, and to scope the trees, valleys, and rivers for unwanted trespassers. The political debate is whether or not they should be considered a legal enforcer, even if they are on their own property. They are banded under a slogan that reads, “Americans doing the jobs that congress won’t do” and justify their actions through a quote by Samuel Adams, the famous brewer (just kidding):
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Historically, this is completely taken out of context like a one-sided preacher adulterating some verse just to prove his narrow-minded point. Samuel Adams was in fact speaking of the Tories, or the British loyalists, who kept advertently obstructing the Rebels' path to freedom from England. How do they ignore such liberating quotes such as the one on the Statue of Liberty (with much emphasis on Liberty):
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
More than that, how do they ignore, or rather endure, the inhumanity in the act of causing another person to suffer by turning them away and telling them to "lick the hand that feeds you"? But what they forget, or choose to ignore, is that licking the hand that feeds them is, in turn, licking the same hand that strikes them. I think I too would rather take my chances with the Boarder Patrol and the Minuteman. I guess the answer to the question lies in their inability to understand or look past their own prerogative and the plights inflicted upon them by the immigrants.
I might be overly-simplifying an overly-complex problem, but I perceive the immigrants a lot like pledges that come into my fraternity. They have a innate ability to boost my morale by showing how much they want to be apart. They also make me rethink and question the validity in which the way we govern or are governed.
Another overly-simplistic simile of the overly-complex problem is that illegal immigrants are a lot like competitors, in the business since of the word. In fact, from my current laborious perspective, I hesitate to even call this a simile and would rather prefer to say that they simply are the competitors. They are the labor force competitors, the proletariat competitors, vying for the cheapest labor. They will do serious hard labor for dirt cheap wages for a chance to live an American life. (Side note: I have yet to see a Mexican panhandler begging for money from San Antonio to Houston to Austin, and I have seen a lot).
The main opposition to this problem may come from the principle of the fact that they are breaking the law and are weaseling their way onto government money, spending our hard earned American tax dollars while they don’t contribute a cent. I am not an economic buff and don't pretend to be, but I can counter-argue principle with principle and tell you that it is out of compassion for those who need help where help is wanted that I, for one, do not have any qualms that my just as equally hard earned tax dollars go toward such a worthy cause as helping those who have not the strength to help themselves. In fact, I have much difficulty thinking what I would rather have my tax money go toward. And then there are those who take advantage of the good for which I can not speak for and have nothing respectful to say. Nonetheless, this does not change my position, for they are different kind of weak.
Knowing a person who follows a certain belief or stands for a certain cause, can often times have more effect than the belief or cause alone. Juan was exactly that for me. Before knowing him, I had a hard time choosing my position on the matter. He, however, is someone that I could relate with. He is same age, has the same job, same curiosity about people, and same attitude about life. Juan immigrated to San Antonio when he was 15 years old. He crossed the border with about 20 other Mexicans. The first two times they were caught by the Border Patrol and dumped back over the border. The third time they made it across without being noticed. He said they just kept walking and walking. They walked for 23 days in all. Four of which were spent in an abandoned box car with no food or water. He has lived in San Antonio for seven years now and has an American Citizen wife and daughter. He is an open-minded, gentle person who, through broken English, has told me the story of his crossing. I was also able to openly talk with about the border problem from an American point of view, in which he nodded and (to my surprise) was quite easily persuaded that it was a hard dilemma. The biggest difference between Juan and I is that he was born in a more oppressing country and I can’t justify deploring his "illegal" status on mere birthrights.
As I see it, the Minuteman are about as useful as road-rage. What good does ranting and raving do if succeders are unyeilding. David Duncan once wrote that yearning will pierce the hand and those who are “yearning to breathe free” will never be turned away by restricting laws or incompetent militiamen as long as they are willing to risk death for a chance at a piece of the pie.
