Immigration

I am a proud son of Mexican immigrants. Like most of us, my roots take me to another land far away from where I am now. I live in Boston but I am originally from Chicago, where my parents met. Chicago is a very ethnically diverse city that includes some very vibrant Mexican communities. My parents lived on the Southwest side in a neighborhood called "Little Village". Even though I only lived in the neighborhood until I was nine years old, I have so many amazing memories of 26th street which ran right through the heart of it. I remember the sounds, smells and sights vividly.

After a brief two-year stint in the suburbs, we redefined "white flight" and moved away from our lovely white neighbors, back to the city and into the Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen. While Little Village felt like a well rooted middle class neighborhood, Pilsen felt like a Mexican neighborhood that was still evolving. I remember when we first moved in, there was still a pretty heavy Eastern European contingency from the previous wave of immigration that called Pilsen their home and in fact gave it its name (It was named after Plzeň in the Czech Republic).

Pilsen was a neighborhood in flux, from my first floor window on the corner of 18th and Ashland, I saw a quite a bit growing up. Prostitution, drugs, and alcoholism were all pretty common. I remember one day seeing someone run right past me with a handful of chains from the local jewelry store. He ran right past me! To this day, I imagine myself tackling him to the ground although, in reality, he probably would run right through my 90 pound frame. Despite the criminal element of the 80's and 90's, to this day, Pilsen is the neighborhood I most identify with growing up and the one that shaped me into who I am today.

Very few things upset me as much as the heartless and ruthless attacks on immigrants by many in our society. Growing up in Pilsen, I was surrounded by an amazing immigrant community. Many who worked their butts off everyday, went to church every Sunday and still had time to take care of their families. Hard work, Religion and family values...nothing sounds more American to me than that yet some people out there decide to focus their bigotry and hate by generalizing some to make a case about the many.

Yes, it is true, there are immigrants out there who take advantage of the system They try to get some extra care or money and are taking advantage of our tax dollars. However, I can assure that there are just as many Americans out there (if not more) that are doing the same. So, dear anti-immigrant protester or politician...is the problem really that someone is bucking the system or that someone of a different color is bucking the system. In my opinion, if the problem is actually individuals that are cheating the system, then go after everyone, not just those that look different or speak a different language or else you're just being a fear-driven bigot.

I grew up around immigrants and I personally know many. Chances are I probably know some illegal ones. Am I going to turn them in? No. Sorry. I know that this makes me a shitty civilian but it makes me a better person. I just don't think that it's my place to enforce a federal law nor do I want to be an asshole. A majority of the time, these immigrants are living life more by the book than any of us and probably working twice as hard and getting paid way less. They can teach most of us a thing or two about what it means to be American.

However, when it comes to public policy that can repair our broken country, I don't mind sharing my two cents. If we want to fix the immigration issue, we have to fix it at it's root. There are companies out there that are hiring illegally. Let's go after them, fine them and make them pay for the extra burden they're putting on our society. And not just the companies, let's go after all of the rich people who depend on our immigrant labor to landscape their lawns and take care of their kids. Let's take care of the issue at that level and then put a plan together on how to hire immigrants on a temporary citizenship basis so that they can work and our society doesn't completely collapse when suddenly everyone has to work harder and for cheaper to make up for the lost labor.

Yes, going after every company is not completely feasible either but there has to be a middle ground. A middle ground where our country can protect itself from the unwanted but also protect those that want to be contributing members of our society. After all, that is what's made our country so amazing. Not a xenophobic outlook on everyone else but an accepting perspective that tries to find the strength of having so many different cultures and peoples working and advancing together.