The biggest irony, of course, about the issue of “illegal” immigrants, at least as far as it pertains to people coming from Central and South America is that they are the original inhabitants of this hemisphere.
Think of it this way: what if, while you were away at college, someone had broken into your house, killed your parents and set up a home of their own. Then when you came home from school, they refused to let you in to your own house.
You’d go seeking for help from law enforcement only to find out that all the new cops in town are cronies of the people that murdered your parents.
Arizona governor Jan Brewer passed a law on Friday that, according to the New York Daily News, “requires local police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants” as well as allowing lawsuits against agencies that attempt to block the new law and criminalizing the hiring and transport of illegal immigrants for day labor.
President Obama has already criticized the new law as a potential threat to civil rights.
Now, as with everything else that happens in this country, it’s seemingly impossible for Black people to sit on the sidelines in the immigration debate.
Our angrier brothers and sisters might immediately start screaming at the hypocrisy of Americans of European descent calling anybody “illegal”, while more practical minds might immediately wonder what, if anything, is the impact of all this on us.
One report recently published in The Root suggests that “illegal” immigrants do hurt Black people because they, as the stereotype suggests, take away jobs that might have otherwise gone to us.
Personally, I see the pitting of Blacks against the mostly Latino “illegals” as a diversion.
Just another way of getting us to fight over the crumbs on the floor while the cake still sits on the table.
