Well, today ancient Rome has to take a back seat.
Mama is singing with pride around our house after having read that Mr. Obama is going to revise the immigration laws for our country to allow families to stay together and to issue work permits for those who have hidden from authorities but worked illegally anyway to support themselves and their families.
What was our country initially, after all, but a haven for persecuted and hopeful human beings who wanted to better their lives? America grew strong and profitable from the work of productive immigrants. Somewhere along the way, we were ALL immigrants or descended from immigrants—something to remember when our fear of ‘others’ makes us blind.
But mama says he will have to fight the likes of Ted Cruz from Texas (isn’t ‘Cruz’ an hispanic name? Hmm…), John A. Boehner (wonder what the ‘A’ stands for?), Mike Lee of Utah and Senator Jeff Sessions of that rich and magnanimous state—Alabama, where “nineteen percent of adults in Alabama live below the poverty line and 28 per cent of children live below that same line. But as high as those numbers are, they are a distant dream in some counties of Alabama where the poverty rate is almost double that percentage.”
Mr. Obama has had to skirt the Repubican bumps along his road to climate change reforms, immigration law reform, education improvements, improved medical care and so many more social programs that help ALL Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, that it is no wonder he has decided to use his presidential power to protect people such as the so-called Dreamers (those who came to America as children) from deportation. Doesn’t the name “Dreamers” say it all?
And mama asks, “When immigrants strive to have a better life in America, to escape terrible treatment in their own countries, to believe that the American dream was a reality and can still be, we need to listen and act. When many Americans, out of work, will not take the menial jobs of dishwasher, hotel maid, janitor, park cleaner or busboy and instead teach their children that these are lowly jobs that no one should have to do, how can we fault those who are giving their all to have a job of any kind? Mama says that too many kids think they are going to have a Mercedes and a house and servants and money, yet have NO idea that those things are achieved through WORK, hard work. Immigrants do not rob the American people of jobs. Immigrants are often simply more willing to take jobs that many American will not!
Even I, a lowly kitty, know that the wealthy are a minority in our country, as everywhere. Even the very well-off are a minority. And that cannot be changed until America opens its arms to those who want to work, to strive, to achieve despite all odds. If every “menial” job holder was suddenly sent back to his/her own country, our own country would fall apart overnight.
And just for the record, mama says, convicted criminals, those who pose security risks and recent border crossers will not be allowed in the US under Mr. Obama’s new law.
Mr. Lee, who feels the President should go through Congress in order to change the legal system, perhaps should take another look at the hurdles a Republican-heavy Congress sets up at every proposed advancement for the American people. But Mr. Obama is an athlete and always has been. Republican obstacles are just a few more problems in a day’s work
Mama says that Mr Obama just may be another Aries Merritt!
