We all know that illegal immigrants from Latin America wear burritos on their feet. Whereas legal immigrants from the same region wear enchiladas. Footwear isn't, like, a cultural thing, or an economic thing - it's an issue of legality. The governor of Arizona (I think it was her) advised her police force to look out for “illegals” on this very premise! And everyone knows that she knows what the hell she's talking about.
As for smugglers, well they tend to masquerade as illegal immigrants in that they also wear burritos on their feet. Hey, they're both doing something illegal right? One's trying to make a better future for themselves and for their families, and, you know, the other is pumping millions of dollars of illegal narcotics into our country, corrupting our youth and worsening an already bad poverty line. Totally the same thing, guys.
I really do feel bad for the deputy. Not so much because he got shot - I mean, the wound wasn't fatal and in fact, he's supposedly going back to work today - but because he's being used as a mascot for the anti-immigration law and it's supporters. He was shot by smugglers ... dangerous thugs carrying riffles. How many illegal immigrants actually cross the border with riffles? I'm pretty sure they can barely afford the guide, the gas money, and the bribes - and then there's a thing called eating; something a lot of them don't do back home because they're too frickin' poor. None of them have riffles - I mean come on.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for going through the proper channels, but have you ever tried to immigrate into the United States? It's not that easy and it takes a long time - way longer than those people have before they run out of food or get killed in a shoot-out between the drug cartels and the police in Mexico City.
Besides, you know what the real solution to illegal immigration is? It blows me away, because it's so solvable compared to most of our problems. The real solution is to force companies like Wal-Mart to institute equal pay. They're in the middle of a class-action law suit that alleges that they pay men more than they pay women. That's probably true. You know what else is true? That they like paying people as little as possible. Illegal immigrants will work for practically nothing. They're happy with anything (well, as happy as one can be being destitute and in danger of jail, deportation or race-based violence). If Wal-Mart was forced to pay all their employees decent, even wages - men and women, citizens and non-citizens - the incentive for hiring illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens would stop. With that, the incentive for immigrating illegally would stop and - gasp - our society would work a lot better.
That's some market-based, supply and demand shit going on right there, and I'm democratic! How can republicans that constantly cry out: "the market is the least biased judge" and "it'll work itself out" not understand that Americans lose jobs to immigrants because American companies would rather hire them. The immigrants aren't to blame for Midwest towns closing down when companies out-source or move closer to the border to hire immigrants - the companies are!
Wake up. There should be laws against Wal-Mart being a moral cesspool, not against immigrants trying to feed their families.
As one last note, the craziest thing about this whole scenario for me is that I'm using an AP article that appears on the Fox News web site as the primary basis for this comic and blog entry. I feel like normally that'd be a bad idea, considering they aren't opposed to flat-out lying, but on the other hand, because this story seems to fit right into their hands, I feel like if they are lying about it, the truth would actually support my side even better.
It's ridiculous that their attempts at casting immigrants in a negative light here actually helped generate both my comic and this rant - but, then again, as Eminem says: "I'm glad 'cause they feed me the fuel that I need for the fire." Their bullshit works so well for me in this instance, that even if it was revealed later that they were making shit up, I'd still be right. Christ, when does that ever happen?
They refer to the suspects in the article both as immigrants and as smugglers. I'd argue that you really couldn’t be both. If you're an immigrant, you're here to stay. That's immigration. If you're a smuggler, you're running back and forth between two geographic locals, illegally importing goods and bringing money back to make more goods. That's smuggling.
Applause for all the groups in Arizona and across the country that are protesting this law. It's horse-feathers.
Sources:
Associated Press. "17 Suspected Illegal Immigrants Caught in Search for Ariz. Deputy's Attackers." Fox News web site. May 01, 2010.
Marshall Mathers. "What I Am." The Marchall Mathers LP. May 13, 2000.
hah. did you get this idea from manuel's "immigration 2010"? haha.
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