specialagency.net

A nation of immigrants.

As I've said many times before, the problem with leaving the radio on while I work is that occasionally it makes me angry. (The problem with leaving the radio off, on the other hand, is that I get restless when it's too quiet and I can't get any work done.)

Today the problem was a News Hour essay by Richard Rodriguez. The text isn't online yet, so I'm forced to reconstruct from memory, but I'm pretty sure that the phrase "Mexicans are our conscience" was involved somewhere.

The larger point, which is probably one worth making, is that there's something very complicated and a little messed up about this country's relationship to undocumented Mexican immigrants. That's fine. I could have done without the kind of floofy-patronizing-liberal statements about Mexicans and my conscience, but whatever. I'm not sure what a better way of getting at the point would have been.

What really got me, though, was the big finish, a series of dramatic statements about how the situation of undocumented Mexican workers should lead all of us to question the motivations of our own immigrant ancestors, who (as I believe he put it) may have been more interested in manufacturing jobs than in the Federalist Papers. Maybe, he says, maybe, and I know it's shocking to consider, but maybe past generations of immigrants also were looking for work. Just like the current ones!

So my question is, is this a case where I'm really out of touch with what most people think on this issue, or is this a case where an NPR/PBS commentator states something really obvious as though it were shocking because he or she can't imagine that the audience isn't stupid? Because they do that too sometimes.

I mean, I know that I've studied American history in a little more depth than your average American, but that's not where I get this particular knowledge from. I get this knowledge from my family. We've got all of the stories about why Great-Grandma Anna or Grandma and Grandpa Carini came to the United States, and not a one of them has to do with political freedoms or lofty ideals. They were poor in their home countries, and they thought they might not be poor in America. It's always seemed pretty straightforward to me.