The Myth of Illegal Immigration

Cheery Theme Music

Come one come all to your favorite place in the whole wide world. That's right kiddies its Uncle Bogey Subversive Tree House.

So kiddies come on in to Uncle Bogey's House and lets talk about the favorite myth of the scared middle class white man. What's that Timmy? No this is not the one about the darkies not knowing their place... well OK it sort of is, but these are a different type of darkies and even though no one admits it this particular stripe of bigotry is still considered a virtue by most Americans. What? No Suzy I'm not talking about the G-A-Y's either, but good point.

OK.

Sit down and Uncle Bogey will tell you a story.

Once upon a time... in a magical land called America there were lots of places to live and lots of good jobs to be had and everyone was so so friendly that everyone the whole world over was welcome. In fact there was so much opportunity that African people, the Negroes, volunteered to cram themselves into ships and make a really dangerous ocean crossing just to come here. And do you know what? When they got here. they liked it so much that they volunteered to work for free. So America grew and grew because of an endless supply of cheap labor which allowed us to sell finished textiles the world over for much cheaper than they could be had anywhere else.

Our fore fathers, being the wise and benevolent men they were, recognized that this was so important that when they had won their freedom against bad bad bad england who wanted them to pay taxes (gasp) that they wrote it into our Constitution that the our Negro friends would be allowed to work here for free... forever. And for one hundred years no one complained, except the Indians but they didn't want to share their land with ranchers so the wise and benevolent fore fathers had them shot (applause). The problem was, that after four hundred years some people began to think that it was wrong to allow our Negro friends to continue to work for free so the Northern Americans and the Southern Americans, after a small disagreement, decided that we shouldn't do that anymore.

What Mikey?

Now that the Negroes were free how did we welcome them into regular society?

Well to make them feel special we gave them separate schools and a separate part of town and drinking fountains to use for another one hundred years. How do we welcome them now? Well now we have what is called government assistance which guarantee they will all live together and not bother upper middle class people with their needs.

But Uncle Bogey is getting sidetracked.

After the "Big Talk" between the North and South now corporations who wanted to build to things like railroads and wanted to run their businesses like meat packing plants and textiles, had to find a way to protect their profit margin... I mean if they wanted to keep the cheap prices that they provided these things to their customers with, they needed another group of volunteers to help them.

So they turned to Eastern Europeans and Irishmen (Timmy that is a bad word and will not be repeated again) and Chinese People and Italian People who all wanted to come here to work side by side with their children in the factories and coal mines of America as our economy grew and grew. And these new people instantly and totally assimilated into American culture and we know this because today the places they lived like Chinatown and Hell's Kitchen and Little Italy are famous paces that tourists like to go. In these places the first generation of people off the boats totally accepted American Culture and learned to speak English without an accent and they forgot all about their old culture which can still be experienced even today in New York and San Francisco.

Eventually though some people got together with the communists and outlawed child labor, canyou believe that? And made it illegal for the meat packing, coal mining, ranching, textile industries to work this new cheap labor to death because they had assimilated and spoke English and we didn't think of them as different anymore.

And now corporations had to find new cheap labor, but this time they didn't look across the ocean they looked to our good friend Mexico and invited a whole new generation of volunteers to help come build the American Dream of cheap houses and cheap clothes and cheap services. And do you know what, they didn't even try to become legal so that they could have fair and equal protection under the law. No sir! In fact our good friends the corporations have continued to underpay our Mexican friends and worked them in unsafe conditions so that our finished products won't cost us as much. Isn't that wonderful? (Applause)

But there is a problem.

It seems that now just like before there are few trouble makers who have decided this kind of thing is wrong. That it is wrong to pay someone less that minimum wage for a dangerous job. That it is wrong to make our friends work harder for longer hours with no access to legal channels of complaint concerning employment abuses. That it is wrong to allow corporations to lay off American workers and hire contractors to bid out jobs at wages so low they must hire our Mexican friends. And these bad people are trying to break the American Dream of unbridled success with fat bellies and profits for all.

So what are we going to do about? No Alice we can't kill them... yet.

No instead we're going to empower law enforcement to stop anyone who looks like a Mexican friend and if he can't prove he's an American then we will arrest him and send him back to Mexico. Once we start doing that those few American Dream haters will become so afraid that they will no longer speak up for human rights and human dignity and then our economy will turn around and God will be happy. And isn't that what you want? (Applause)

Roll Credits.

Just in case you missed the point, there has never in history been a single solitary group of immigrants who have come to this country and immediately assimilated. This is a myth. It is a myth propounded by bigots who want cheap products but not the inconvenience of broken English. This myth is told by corporate media which is owned by powerful corporate interests who assure that laws remain as they are so the disfranchisement of a huge under payed under represented group of our population will continue in perpetuity. These corporations know perfectly well that they could legal wages but they also know that Americans would rather have cheap goods than human rights so the next time the poor girl and Fat Ass incorporated gets the triple cheeseburger order wrong, its your fault that she is there so stop yelling at her. And they next time you bitch that someone doesn't speak the language, remember you don't speak Cherokee.

This myth exists to ensure that people will continue to be abused and denied access to the systems of law and justice which should protect all people in our nation. That is what it means to be America.

And to allow this is an offense against man and God.

Make readily available green cards to all who want to work here and take away the tax licenses of any employer or corporation who employs a contractors who employs illegal immigrants and the problem will be solved overnight. Slavery is never ended by punishing the slaves, it is ended by outlawing the practice and punishing the slave owners.

Just thinking.