Immigrants, The Reason My Head Hurts

Ack! Ack! Ack! I started off the new year making a mistake. It isn’t that it has really any serious consequences, just I’m guilty so I have to purge my sin.

My state has a measure system where individual citizens can put measures on the ballot by collecting enough signatures. Volunteers with clipboards often try to collect signatures at the transit stations, so I get approached to sign petitions about once a week. In general, if I have time and if the measure isn’t offensive to me, I’ll sign them because I like to promote citizen action, I know what they are doing is hard work, and their measures usually generate a lot of much needed discussion.

So Avery and I were at a transit center after just having gone to the dentist. I was experimenting with having Avery walk instead of use the stroller, so I was having to keep a close eye on him, as well as watch for the train. I was approached by a petition worker, and she wanted me to sign a measure that (I thought) had to do with having people vote for parties instead of individual candidates. I knew that would never pass, but it was interesting to me because this is what they do in many other countries (such as Canada) and the idea is that you are voting for platforms and ideas and not on individuals, thus keeping a lot of the petty negative attacks out of the elections. It doesn’t totally work, of course, as everyone knows who leads the party. One can find that Stephen Harper is both loved and loathes (I tend to fall on the loathe side of that one) and the response to the Death of Jack Layton last summer bordered on hero worship. However, I do think it is an interesting way to keep the focus of elections on policy instead of who blew who and who left their wives for younger models and how fat the first lady is (NOT!) etc.

So, I”m signing the petition and I’m watching my kid and I said, oh, yeah…like they do in Canada. And she goes, well, Canada is more grounded than us, they don’t let immigrants in.

(Did you just hear the breaks go off in my head. I was literally, “Wh..Wha..Whaaaat?” I mean, Canada is 50% immigrants. They have a very liberal immigration and refuge policy. And what do IMMIGRANTS have to do with it anyway?)

And then, after I stuttered for a moment having already signed the damned petition and handed it back again, she went off on this bigoted tirade about immigrants and drug dealers and sex workers that JUST WOULDN’T STOP!

Ok, so get this logic flow: She tells me she has MS, and she can’t keep a job and she can’t get on disability. And that, apparently, is the fault of immigrants. And then she tells me that she has been sexually assaulted, and that hundreds of women are in jail for assault because they defended themselves against rapists but the rapists got off and they got put in jail for defending themselves, and somehow, this is the fault of immigrants.

And at this point, I just wanted to get the hell away from her, because telling her I was on disability and married to an immigrant didn’t seem wise and I was too busy trying to keep and eye on my kid to come up with anything educated to say. Thank God my seven year olds were not there, because then I would have HAD to say something. Avery was oblivious, of course.

But lady? If you removed every single immigrant from the US you would still have the exact same problems. You are not able to keep a job and cannot get on disability because you are a member of an oppressed group that is systemically discriminated against, just like many of the immigrants you hate so much. And the problems with rapists not being prosecuted and women not being believed are because of rape culture and the patriarchy. Many more citizens who rape get away with it than immigrants who rape. And it is wrong on both accounts, but if anything, immigrants are MORE likely to be prosecuted than citizens.

Maybe the rest of you already think this is obvious, but I just had a small revelation. Are these people who think in these totally illogical leaps like this just UNABLE to process that their own country could treat them like this so they have to blame it on something “foreign”? I do NOT get the hatred of immigrants. As a person who has had to deal with immigration issues for years, here is how I think it should go down: A person who wants to move to a new country should provide a detailed background check. If there is nothing serious on the check, they should be allowed to move and be eligible for (with the same responsibilities as well) whatever residents are eligible for and be able to move to a fairly quick path to citizenship. The world would be a much more egalitarian place if this were possible. (And yes, the US would likely lose some power and wealth, but gain an appreciation for diversity.) Locking people in or out of anything for the purely arbitrary reason of where they were born is just stupid.

Anyway, I shudder that I supported this stupid woman’s petition and was not able to get myself together to respond coherently to her. By the way, it turns out, her petition was the opposite of what I thought it was. It was a measure to allow individuals who are affiliated with no party to run for office. To which I say, that is stupid. Although I support the idea of more than two parties as a way to enhance the political process, if you can’t get a platform together and a party to support it (and this includes founding your own party) then you probably shouldn’t be running for office anyway.

Gah!

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