As the financial contagion hits across the United States and the rest of the world, many employers were left without a choice but to terminate thousands of their employees, most of them relying on their salaries to pay for mortgages and other bills in order to cope up with the higher standards of living and to survive the daily rigors of life. And the very people directly affected by the financial crisis are US citizens who have toiled long enough to get what they could from their efforts.
However, it is sad to note that some, if not many, American citizens or naturalized US citizens are indeed feeling the pinch of this global financial crisis that started from the Wall Street. And some of them may have ill-feelings against the millions of illegal immigrants who they believed may have competed with them in the constricting labor market as the reasons why some of them were out of jobs.
Sounds crazy but this is what you hear from those who are desperate enough to stay on their jobs because of their own making. In the first place, why lay the blame on the millions of illegal immigrants whose only purpose in coming to America is to seek opportunities. Although it cannot be denied that some of those who cross the border may have been criminals who try to sneak in and evade the law in some South American countries.
It is understandable that the feeling of animosity against those illegal non-immigrants who are doing odd jobs to survive the dog-eat-dog competition in America is real. As the Department of Labor said today, some 663,000 unemployed individuals have hit the mark, raising the unemployment rate to 8.3 percent, the highest so far recorded. This put many individuals, and their families under so much pressure to live under the present credit crunch and housing foreclosures. Now, the issue on the blame game has been considered uncalled for in the sense that if employers tend to resort to cost-cutting measures to survive, so be it. After all, they are not doing this corporate alternative on their own but because it is the only measure that they think is necessary as a means to save a few more heads.
I don’t think it is incumbent on the part of those who are lucky enough to be called legal immigrants because they underwent through the proper process of waiting and the legal procedures that go with it. If I were to be asked on the matter, I don’t think it ethical to brag about about being legal immigrants, while the rights of other human beings, whose only wish is to share in the glory of the Almighty, should be trampled upon and grossly violated. For as long as they are paying their taxes and had no felonies at all, it is only fitting that these non-immigrants be accorded due respect before the eyes of the Divine Master and the law of the land. And I don’t see any reason why developed countries, where these illegal immigrants thrive, should wield the arrogance of power when the bounty of nature came all from the One Above. As the biblical saying goes: "Men were created equal."
My question now is: Are we ready to do dirty and menial jobs like street cleaning, landscaping, tree cutting and pruning, caregiving, taxi driving, fruit and vegetable-picking and other manual jobs that many of us cannot do? I think I’m not the one who said this before and I’ll say it again that without these illegal immigrants, perhaps, America will stink. I do think that accepting the truth is fair enough even if some of us feel the hatred and ill-feelings within ourselves against those who crossed the borders. Believe it or not, what I’m saying is really happening right now in our midst. Right now, all these millions of disadvantaged people pray is for the Obama administration to heed their call and reconsider their positive wishes for a new life in the United States though the passage of an immigration law that will finally give them a chance to work legally without fear of deportation and eventually contribute immensely to the economy of the United States.
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