My husband has asked me not to take the livery cab from the
Staten Island ferry if I miss the bus. Last Wednesday, one of the
drivers, Kwame Appeigyei, was shot in the back of his head -
allegedly by a transient in a robbery attempt. Appeigyei was a
Ghanaian immigrant who came here with his family from London to
pursue the American dream. He was a decent man, a deacon in his
church. His daughter is in my daughter's sixth-grade class and is
one of the hardest working students.
There are many African immigrants in Staten Island. They come
from countries such as Nigeria, Liberia, Ghana, Senegal, and
Sierra Leone. Many drive livery cabs and dollar vans, picking up
shoppers at the supermarket. They work very long hours and live
in the most dangerous neighborhoods until they can buy houses in
safe ones. Many, like Appeigyei, make tremendous sacrifices to
send their children to parochial schools, even though they are
not Catholic.
Nearly every grocery and discount store in my neighborhood is
owned and operated by immigrants from all over the world. I look
around the Staten Island ferry on my trip to Manhattan and most
days can count individuals from a dozen countries. I wonder if
there will come a day when immigration authorities will file
through the boat asking to see our "papers." Judging
from the level of anger against illegal immigrants, such a Third
Reich-like environment is not so far-fetched.
When I write an opinion about immigration, I inevitably get
hostile e-mails from conservatives who have become as vitriolic
as the pro-choice critics pounding me about an abortion column.
My favorite Internet forum isLucianne.com. I read it faithfully
every day. However, the recent negative and downright nasty
comments I read there - bashing President Bush for saying that
"massive deportation of the people here is not going to
work" - were rather unsettling.
Many conservatives reject Mr. Bush's contention that these
immigrants take jobs that Americans won't. The truth is that
these illegals work for substandard wages and without benefits -
and many Americans refuse to do the same. Consider, then, the
possibility that many businesses cannot afford to pay higher
wages and benefits, leaving the option of going out of business
or passing the costs on to the consumer. Are we ready to pay $10
for that 99-cent burger? How about $5 an orange? If every
business conformed to the mandates of our immigration laws, the
cost of everything from hotel rooms to groceries would soar so
high that $3 gas would seem like a bargain.
Consider also the fact that, under federal law, crossing the
border illegally is a misdemeanor. If we're going to harp on the
"illegal" aspect, then let's stop pretending we're all
so law-abiding. Just about everybody cheats a bit on his or her
taxes. That's criminal as well - it landed Al Capone in the
slammer. We also all know somebody who works off the books,
right? That's illegal, too.
Here's another thing no one's mentioned: Social Security has been
collecting taxes from the $520 billion in wages paid to
individuals with fake numbers. These individuals can't collect,
so isn't this a huge freebie for the government? Incidentally,
I'd like to know how we've figured out how many illegal
immigrants are here if they're undocumented. Is it 12 million or
20 million?
The word "amnesty" seems to provoke the most ire, but
we sure are grateful if the government offers it for back taxes,
as does the library for lost books. How about amnesty for draft
dodgers during the Vietnam War? Our president did not invent this
crisis, but at least he's trying to do something about a problem
that's been festering for decades. President Carter accepted
Cuba's criminal element in the Mariel boatlift in 1980 and never
got as much heat as Mr. Bush has received.
This is where I stand on immigration: America is a great country,
but it's not a cafeteria. If we don't want people snacking off
it, then we need to set firm guidelines and enforce them.
Trespassers sneaking across the border should not be entitled to
any benefits.
I can certainly understand why some Americans are upset with
Hispanics flooding the Southwestern and Western states and
straining their social services, but the states must accept the
blame for allowing this to happen. They need to abandon their
infatuation with multiculturalism and political correctness and
insist on an immigration process that demands assimilation.
We live in the only country in the world that people are
literally dying to get into.
Above all, let us stop for a moment and count our blessings.