Yesterday the Senate voted to allow guest workers provided that they register, pay a small fee, pay their taxes, remain gainfully employed and get in line to become full citizens. A few prominent Republicans (Arlen Specter, inventor of the Magic Bullet Killed JFK theory, among them) broke ranks and lobbied for this bill.

The debate on C-SPAN got pretty heated this morning with Latino immigrants giving their American Dream speeches and crusty old white dudes giving their “these douches are taking up valuable space in our hospitals and schools” diatribes.

These arguments are nothing new. Post-Reconstruction northerners said the same thing about migrating black folk. And the second generation sons of Revolutionary colonists said the same thing about the Irish who were picked to do work deemed too valuable for slaves to perform.

It was Xenophobia then and its Xenophobia now.

But that’s all theory because there is a greater issue at stake here. We have a government that has refused, for quite some time, to defend the borders of our country. And in my mind, the porous state of the American border and the laughable immigration tracking and enforcement was and is a far greater threat than Saddam or Al Qaeda ever was. In fact, it was the medium by which the latter was able to penetrate and attack us.

I believe that diversity is what made America strong and what will drive us into the future. However, there are two caveats to note about this guest worker bill. It must be coupled with a serious enforcement of the borders as well as a new paradigm of American culture, one written in the hearts of every citizen instead of in the pages of the New York Times or the podium of the White House lectern, both of which are serve as the foci of the liar’s circle in my opinion.

The true America, like Rome, is a dream whispered in the hearts of the people and that dream is dying a slow, suffocating, and pathetic death while we assure each other with our fat bellies and amused to death minds that everything is quite alright.

Open your hearts. Open your minds. And clear the debating stage of the dolts and halfwits who have convinced you that monosyllabic sound bytes are the sure path to wisdom.

There is a greater goal to be obtained than a bottom line in the black.

LINKS:
Senate Votes to Pass the Guest Worker Bill
Tony Pierce’s Take

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