IT’S MORE THAN TACOS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/12/06)

It’s more than tacos, this immigration thing. It’s cultural more than economic although the economic issue seems paramount. The immigration of the Chinese in the 19th century and the Irish during the Potato Famine generally brought in people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Of course, one of the biggest immigrations in our history was the slave trade for southern plantations. The western railroads wanted Chinese workers on the cheap. The New England mills wanted impoverished Irish labor. The Southerners wanted no-wage labor. So what’s new? Bush’s corporate buddies want cheap labor. The Republicans, corporate toadies that they are, have done nothing about immigration from Mexico. In a day when we fear terrorists infiltrating our borders, the Mexican border remains porous because corporations want cheap labor.

The Mexican immigrants work hard for a pittance, but they bring something unseen with them. They bring a culture of subordinated women and an oligarchical society in which a few own and run everything with everyone else at the bottom, the purpose of the Bush Administration’s assault on the middle-class. No wonder the Bush Administration has failed to stop illegal immigration.

Perhaps, they’re in for a surprise. A former client married a Thai woman, anticipating servility and subordination. American women were too assertive for him. After about three months, his bride put assertive American women to shame, neatly putting him under her thumb. A child of the 70's, he said, "Maybe, I should’ve married one of them damned bra-burners."

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006