Health Care Was Just a Warm Up - Here Comes Immigration!
Posted: Thursday, September 17, 2009
by e
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
Picture this: You live on a rural Texas ranch. In the middle of the night, there is a knock on the door. You open it. Standing before you is a young woman in tears, an unconscious baby in her arms. "Help me. My baby is Dying."
"Are you legal?" You ask.
I for one could not imagine a human being so callous that they would ask such a question in that situation. And if a person was that unfeeling, I could justifiably say that they will have untold sorrow, possibly in this lifetime, and surely in countless lifetimes to follow where they will have to experience, for themselves, the young woman's suffering and anxiety in order to wake up. But then again during the Health Care debate, I was frankly surprised by the attitude of many Americans who do not believe in helping those less fortunate and only worry about keeping their own wealth. Yet most are Christian and Jesus was reportedly poor, devoting his life to helping the sick and unfortunate. I guess I just don't get it.
Somewhere between concept and reality lies that margin of ignorance which separates human beings. Illegal aliens are not ants, they are people, and the vast majority are no different from you and I, trying to do better for themselves and their families. The arguments for and against illegals are all conceptual. The woman standing at your door is reality.
Our borders cannot be sealed as easily as I seal my kitchen - as a matter of fact, it's doubtful if they can ever be sealed. Plus, Mexico's corrupt government cannot take care of it's people. So here we sit, an incredible opportunity for poor Mexicans right across the river with open borders. What would you do if your kids were hungry, if there was little justice in your country and much violence, and if there was no future there? And right across the desert, a short walk away, was justice, food, health care and a good future? Can you really blame people from wanting to come here? What would you do - follow some laws and let your kids starve? I think not. We can't even put up with minor difficulties in this country without loud protests!
We have only ourselves to blame for initially encouraging illegals to come here and work for cheap labor with no benefits, just so we could make more money off of them and increase our profit margins. Again, big business, big money caused a huge problems that no one could see coming, similar to the economic situation we are in now.
You can close the barn door after the horses are gone, but the horses are still gone. You might try and seal the borders, but they will remain porous, and illegals will flood in as long as there is opportunity for them. Our success may very well bring about our downfall where porous borders and diverse interests crash our democracy.
Regardless, you just can't treat these people as criminals, just as you can't treat people who smoke grass as criminals. These actions, sneaking into the U.S. or privately smoking Marijuana do not come from an evil place. Paying low wages and mistreating workers do.
I recently lived in Florida where it was common practice for contractors and landscape companies to hire all illegal aliens, and the cops looked the other way. Low pay, long hours without overtime, no respect, no safety equipment, no job security, no benefits, all the evils of management before labor unions. If I were going to make sure that I don't have a problem with illegals, I would look no further than big and small businesses that takes advantage of the illegals every day in every state.
But how do you solve the overall problem? I believe that there are two radical ways that we can attempt to solve it, and which will be the two polarizations in the upcoming debate.
And one humane, sensible way.
The first radical, right-wing solution would be to close all emergency rooms to those who don't have either insurance or up-front money. Let them die in the streets! Who cares? And stop, at random, anyone the police chooses to in order to check id's; at work, in your car, on the street. If you're Hispanic, you get stopped, and if you have a bogus id, you are imprisoned until you can get deportation money together. If you can‘t, you do five years in a federal penitentiary, and then the government deports you. Machine guns would be stationed at the borders, a million man army, too, and dogs, mean ones, would chase down illegals coming across the desert. Drug dealers would be shot on the spot without trials. If you give birth to kids in this country and you are illegal, your kids will be illegal as well and will be deported as soon as they are caught, with or without the parents. No illegals will have access to legal help, schools, or any government program. Basically, illegal aliens would become sub-humans.
The radical, left-wing solution would be to have completely open borders, letting everyone come in from anywhere in the world. Welcome! We would be the health care and opportunity panacea of the world! All would be eligible, as soon as they arrived, for all benefits as if they were citizens, including health care, schools, driver's licenses and all social programs such as unemployment insurance, social security, medicaid and medicare. No enforcement of visas, no checking papers. All would have every legal right that American born citizens have, and there would be peace and harmony throughout the land!
And now the third solution. Remember when I said that in order to uphold my precepts and not harm living beings, I make sure that my kitchen is sealed so ants don‘t come in, in the first place? Well, what if I didn't have a kitchen to worry about? That would certainly solve the problem!
The third solution is to do nothing.
In truth, nothing can be done. Porous borders and division and dissension is building not only in the U.S., but worldwide. Division in government, hatred amongst divergent political views and parties, it is all spinning out of control to the point that legislation is all but paralyzed. We can see this in our own congress now, and when immigration reform comes up, watch out!
If we do nothing, eventually there will be an erosion of good jobs due to the influx of cheap labor. Void of any kind of regulation that can be politically enacted to prevent this (whatever can be regulated can be circumvented the next day) the tax base will fail due to loss of tax revenues, and since we have run up such a debt with other countries, the dollar will eventually fail, meaning that we cannot borrow any longer, meaning that our standard of living will eventually be watered down and approach that in third world countries. Then no longer will we have to worry about illegals coming in here, but all the rich folks going to Costa Rica with all their money!
Also, at this point, it would not be surprising, due to a paralyzed congress (too many diverse interests pulling against each other) that our democracy fails. After all, our democracy is a very young experiment, only a couple of hundred years compared to thousands of years in China and India and put together rather hurriedly by a bunch a radicals (at the time) after a revolutionary war. Then, however, there were very excellent principles to go by, and it was the people that made it work and continues to make it work, not the paperwork that resulted. At that time the values included freedom, equality, privacy, due process, equity, consent and dissent, toleration, and the common good. But if you look at each one of these values individually, you can see that they no longer have much relevance due to the diversity and cross currents that are fighting each other now.
So, things will go along pretty much as they are with a headwind almost impossible to fight. Attempts will be made, laws will be passed but ignored, and inaction will rule the day just as inaction in the health care debate rules the day now where no significant changes can be made.
The status quo will try to be mantained as everyone attempts to protect his or her money interests until one day there will be no money, and the present resistance to change will continue down a road that is predictable. Without a big CLEAR button, like the revolutionary war, divisiveness will paralyze us from now into the foreseeable future.
As a meditation teacher, I encourage people to sit quietly and watch their minds; to watch the greed, hatred and delusion that is always there, and to do something about these three before they speak, or act. Freedom, equality, privacy, due process, equity, consent and dissent, toleration, and the common good are all wrapped up in what we deem as desirable, and these are good values which promote co-operation and compassion amongst human beings. But nowhere in this world can we ever find perfection. What we can do, however, is something that is very difficult to do, and that is to work on ourselves to perfect, as much as possible, our minds, because mind is the forerunner of all things.
Just a few minutes of meditation a day for each person would make a huge difference in the world, and could be the very thing that saves us. Some might find this amusing, but nothing else seems to be working!
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Top-level comments on this article: (8 total)E., you make some good points here, although I don't agree with all of it. I also find it interesting that you make the following statement:"I for one could not imagine a human being so callous that they would ask such a question in that situation. And if a person was that unfeeling, I could justifiably say that they will have untold sorrow, possibly in this lifetime, and surely in countless lifetimes to follow where they will have to experience, for themselves, the young woman's suffering and anxiety in order to wake up."Okay, but now let's play a word substitution game with this statement. I'm going to remove certain words and substitute them with others as follows:"I for one could not imagine a human being so callous that they would abort an innocent bady. And if a person was that unfeeling, I could justifiably say that they will have untold sorrow, possibly in this lifetime, and surely in countless lifetimes to follow where they will have to experience, for themselves, the child's pain and suffering in order to wake up."With the substituted words, would you still agree with the statement? Why or why not? Hint: If you say no, your explanation is going to be more difficult from a consistency standpoint.
Hi Terry, Sorry, I have to keep you honest here. Thank you for your comment, but you have changed the subject, which is an honest fallacious attempt in debating, I believe this one is called "The Red Herring Fallacy," (and Republicans are really good at it. Are you a Republican?) :) Just kidding.
So you must not want to talk about the subject of my article, which is how do we deal humanely with people who break the law and come onto our country? You and I may agree on many points! You never know. But we should stick to the subject of my article. If you want to argue abortion, write an article!
Metta............e
E., your point is well taken about changing the subject. Okay, I'll address the subject you brought up. I believe in the humane treatment of all, even illegal aliens. Anyone with a medical emergency must be treated, regardless of their ability to pay or immigration status. It is immoral to turn away anyone in that situation.However, illegal immigrants should not be provided with free or subsidized routine health care. They should get that from the country where they belong. And we should give them free (and mandatory) transportation to their countries of origin. They do not belong here and should not be allowed to stay. Several months ago, I posted an article on SearchWarp on the subject of why illegal immigration is wrong. Check it out when you get a chance.Hi Terry, I agree with you! In order to have a functional government, laws must be passed and then enforced equally, otherwise the country will become other than what it was intended to be. Our country was formed under great ideals, and secure borders, like-minded goals, and the rule of law is what kept our country strong for a long time. But we can't have it both ways; we can't take advantage of illegals by using them as slave labor without benefits, which businesses both small and large love, (just look around) and at the same time complain about giving decent human social care for them and their children. Just as in the health care debate where eventually (and probably very soon) the health care companies will price themselves into oblivion, (which is already happening as more and more companies either cut back on coverage or pass more expenses on to their employees, who can't afford it, or raise deductibles to ridiculous amounts) the immigration problem, where we encourage illegals to come in for cheap labor while the same time voicing displeasure at providing them with any kind of benefits, won't change because the system is working perfectly for dishonest business now. Not to worry about unemployment insurance, health insurance, workman's comp., high wages, overtime, job security, etc., and etc., all the things that we didn't have to worry about when we had slaves in the south, and this new slave labor will eventually break the country, just as runaway greed will break the health care business. Business, both large and small only has their eyes on the immediate future, the next three months or so, and therefore cannot foresee their demise, which is obvious to anyone with insight. Anyone providing health care for profit and answering to Wall Street will fail, and anyone relying on slave labor will fail as well. It’s just a matter of time. In the meantime however, there will be much dissension as these companies go down kicking and screaming. Our country is really at risk because of this "near-goal and money" oriented short sightedness regardless of honesty or decency. Honesty and decency is the basis of our constitution, not crooked profits. Profit, based on hard work, integrity, and decency is what made our country strong. Profit, based on Wall Street expectations, which lead to pressure, which leads to profit at any cost, then dishonesty and especially greed, is what will be our country’s downfall. I hope that our politicians have the insight and courage to do what is good for our country long term regardless of how the dishonest and mercenary money interests squeal.
hi e,it's nice to see you back. welcome.i have no answers, and many questions.but i enjoyed your article, and it was very well written,my best,sue
Hello Sue, It is a difficult subject that will require a lot of openmindedness and wisdom. My guess is that congress will take small incremental steps and pass some laws that we can't enforce because of lack of manpower and the overwhelming numbers involved. But we shall see.
Good to hear from you! ..............e
Very interesting article. Nothing will be done because apparently there is no urgent need to get anything done. This isn't so much a partisan issue as one of size: the problem is just too big for the limited attention and resources of the government. To answer the question you posed at the beginning of your article, I think most of us would help and not worry about the immigration status of the child (or mother).Americans are quick to help, and the last thing we should worry about is the legal status of anyone in need. We might not like the open borders we have, yet Washington cannot have it both ways: you can't keep the borders pourous and then deny those who come in any help. The fact Washington does try to have it both ways is exactly why we are where we are today.
Excellent comment Michael, thank you!
Best....e
A very interesting article, to be sure.I'm not insensitive to the plight of these folks, I just think that we need to take care of our veterans before we worry about someone who sneaks into the country.FYI- the mother in your example would more likely present herself to a Border Patrol agent. It happens everyday.Thanks Ken, you are right, we have to be sensitive to everyone. Only love (understanding) overcomes hatred, hatred never overcomes hatred.
Best...........e
Thanks for the article...sad to say, but many people do not see it the way you do. They are selfish and only think about themselves and maybe their families. But what people don't remember is that our ancestors were once immigrants as well.Again Thans for that Article EHi Diana, Lincoln was right about slavery, and I would venture to say that all Americans now agree. But insensitive and unenlightened minds are just that - insensitive and unenlightened, thus we had the Civil War. Hard to believe how ignorant people can be, And we will look back at all the injustices that are now being fought over, and wonder how some people never could quite get it. I can only imagine that they have recently come from the animal world into this human rebirth.
Best..........e
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