Mike Tobias
The Port Arthur News
July 12, 2008 04:12 pm
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If you had told me a few years ago I’d be the proud owner of a blackberry, with a retail value of just under $300, I might have asked you why on Earth would I have walked into such an expensive fruit market in the first place.
Well, despite my constant lingering around the edge of popular culture, I now have one of those neat little, full keyboard BlackBerry cellphones. Yup, I got it the other day when I renewed my cell phone plan. Now I have the capability to text faster, take better pictures, download music, get e-mail from my Yahoo! account, and make movies.
Oh yeah, and it works as a phone, too.
I have yet to get into a routine with it, though. But I am finding that I have to turn the ringer off at night, because it makes a cute little beeping-blip everytime I get a text message, or an e-mail. And these days, with SPAMMERS’ lack of ability to get a real job, the bleeping-blip can happen in the middle of the night.
Because I now shut my ringer off, I woke up the other morning to find that I had missed two calls from my little brother, Alex. Followed by a few text messages, and a few videos. It turns out, where he was working he was having a bit of a setback as the Coast Guard, Immigration Customs Enforcement and Port Arthur Police came through for a routine check for illegal immigrants.
We’d always heard about such raids; growing up as a Mexican-American, when news of them came up, we were always aware. Yet, growing up in Michigan, these things may have always seemed, I’m sorry to say, too distant to really worry about.
The events of Wednesday morning are a testament to the state of a fledgling economy in our country and how it’s also affecting others. Others, meaning the country directly south of us. The country Texas was formerly a part of.
In the grand scheme of things, 172 years is really a drop in the bucket. But that’s how long it’s taken for the dynamics to completely reverse as far as regional culture goes. This area was Mexico; it’s people were Mexican. It was liberated by groups consisting of Texans, and American Frontiersmen who wanted the ability to live their lives free of an oppresive government.
And now, it’s citizens of Mexico finding themselves on the other side of the door of opportunity, slammed shut in their face.
I’m honestly torn by the whole situation. Torn, because I know there is no quick fix or a simple solution for this problem.
On one hand, you have workers willing to work and work hard jobs, very hard, because they’re willing to do it for their family’s survival.
On the other hand, you have a country (ours), that’s fallen on hard times and has its own citizens now realizing that you can’t just skate by without working hard. Now, as a last resort, our own citizens are now seeking these jobs once only sought after by these illegal workers.
Across the country, we have people calling for the flood gates of immigration to be shut, period. Well that’s easy for them to all say, they’re already here. I’m sorry, but you can’t just change the dynamic of a country that was founded as a becon of freedom for those who wanted to live their lives in pursuit of it.
If the country had a closed door policy concerning immigration to begin with, we’d all be eating clam chowder after a Sunday service at the First Puritan Church of Northeast Mexico.
I, myself, am a very proud product of migrant workers. I am first generation Mexican-American, born in Michigan from parents who came directly from Mexico. I am the first generation of my family that was not subjected to growing up working in a field somewhere. If not for my grandparents’ willingness go back and forth across the border to work as hard as they could to make a better living for their children, I would not be here right now.
We can’t just shut the border, but at the same time we need to find a way to make a peaceable solution for everyone involved. And it will be a difficult task with the security issues presently surrounding us.
But we better come up with something, because I don’t like clam chowder.
Mike Tobias is a writer and photographer for The Port Arthur News.
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