the cost of illegal immigration

revisionist history: here is an e-mail I was forwarded:


Subject: FW: Social Security
Re: Social Security
This could be an all to familiar story for a lot of us soon.> My mom was a homemaker and dad worked all his life and paid into SS, Dad has passed away and now my mom can barely make ends meet.> While the possible "illegal" alien in front of her at the grocery >store buys> the name brands, my mom goes for the generic brands, and day old >breads. She doesn't have out of state calling on her phone, because she can't >afford> it and shops at the thrift shops and dollar stores while the "illegal" aliens go to Macy's, Gap, J.C. Penny, Banana Republic, etc. She considers having a pizza delivered once a week "eating out". She grew up during the depression, watched her husband go overseas to fight in WW II a year after their marriage, and then they went on to raise, feed and clothe 5children, scrounging to pay tuition for parochial schools.
I'm sorry, but I can't see how the Senate can justify this slap in the face to born and bred or naturalized U.S. citizens. It is already impossible to live on Social Security alone. If they give benefits to "illegal" aliens who have never contributed, where does that leave all of us that have paid into Social Security all our working lives? The Senate voted this week to allow "illegal" alien's access to Social Security benefits. Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires citizenship and payment into Social Security to be eligible to receive any social services. If you do not wish to sign the petition yourself, please forward on to anyone you think might be interested.
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Now below you can read what I originally wrote.

Here is a line from an e-mail someone forwarded me:

"While the possible "illegal" alien in front of her at the grocery store buys the name brands..."

It is framed within a complaint about the expansion of Social Security benefits to illegal immigrants. Now, first and foremost...yes, I am pretty much against most if not all expansions of SS stuff. I am also against criminal behavior being rewarded.

But even more than that I am against what it is doing to our society. Look at the phrasing again...not "illegal" but "possible". Resentment is bred not for what a person has done but for what they might have done. For all the author knows, that individual purchasing "name brands" as opposed to the generics his heroic WWII/Depression era widowed mother "must" purchase actually is a 3rd generation highly successful entrepreneur...or is a legal immigrant living in overcrowded quarters to allow them to purchase better brands of food, clothing, automobiles, et al, because those things have a higher value to them than expanded living space.

Let's bring it even closer to home. I can say from experience and knowledge that my brother in law is a legal immigrant who busts his tail to provide for his families...both his immediate family of wife and child and also his extended family....siblings, parents, relatives in Mexico. He works long hours, scrimps and saves and is able to purchase his favored GAP clothing. Should someone in line behind him at the store resent this legal immigrant purchasing name brands? No more and no less than they would resent standing behind me, another person who works their tail off to earn money if I happen to be purchasing say...Nike shoes, one of the few name brand products I actually purchase. Both Gabe and I are here legally, we both work, we both choose when, how, where, and on what to spend our money. Yet he is subject to scrutiny, suspicion, and resentment because someone who doesn't know him thinks he MIGHT be illegal? Probably the largest difference between my (admittedly emotional) example and that of the e-mail is simple; mine is a real, functioning, true-life example, theirs is an abstract hypothetical. Yet theirs will have more impact because it is attached to more emotions...the patriotism of the WWII effort, the sacrifices of those soldiers, the economic status of the elderly and widowed, the cracks in the Medi-systems, and anger over the alleged injustices surrounding (lets be honest about which immigration we are talking about) Mexican immigrations. Seriously, you can easily replace the word "illegal" with Mexican immigration and I am willing to bet a lot of people would never notice the difference. It is the ugly truth in our national discourse.

The stupidity of the arguments over immigration I thought had reached its lowest ebb with the proposal to build a fence along the US/Mexican border. But I was wrong. It reaches low tide when the heroes of a previous generation are used to provide emotional impact in a "guilty until proven innocent" scenario to get signatures. Both sides pull this garbage and it disgusts me. It disgusts me for the dirty tactics...and for how otherwise reasonable, intelligent people get sucked in as the undeniable emotional impact of things such as the widow of a WWII hero barely on subsitence living is compared with the illegal (because seriously, how many people notice the word "possibly" in the quote when it is part of a paragraph) immigrant living in splendor.

Now read the original e-mail and see if you feel about it the same way you did the first time you read it.


Subject: FW: Social Security

> Re: Social Security>> This could be an all to familiar story for a lot of us soon.> My mom was a homemaker and dad worked all his life and paid into SS, Dad has passed away and now my mom can barely make ends meet.> While the possible "illegal" alien in front of her at the grocery >store buys> the name brands, my mom goes for the generic brands, and day old >breads. She doesn't have out of state calling on her phone, because she can't >afford> it and shops at the thrift shops and dollar stores while the "illegal" aliens go to Macy's, Gap, J.C. Penny, Banana Republic, etc. She considers having a pizza delivered once a week "eating out". She grew up during the depression, watched her husband go overseas to fight in WW II a year after their marriage, and then they went on to raise, feed and clothe 5children, scrounging to pay tuition for parochial schools.
I'm sorry, but I can't see how the Senate can justify this slap in the face to born and bred or naturalized U.S. citizens. It is already impossible to live on Social Security alone. If they give benefits to "illegal" aliens who have never contributed, where does that leave all of us that have paid into Social Security all our working lives? The Senate voted this week to allow "illegal" alien's access to Social Security benefits. Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires citizenship and payment into Social Security to be eligible to receive any social services. If you do not wish to sign the petition yourself, please forward on to anyone you think might be interested.