Rambling...

The blindness of some people regarding the unfairness of our immigration system astonishes me, particularly when their sense of citizenship entitlement comes up. This is one of those curious traits shared by both sides and all those in-between in the political spectrum. What I mean is, most second, third, and so on generation Americans, right and left, are united in the fallacious idea that they're American citizens because they earned it somehow. Yes, being born here, they are Americans; but thinking you're here more rightly than others by virtue of birth is the equivalent of thinking that you're entitled to an inheritance from your parents for any other reason other than that they wish you to have it. Yes, it's a gift. Yes, it belongs to you. But the idea that you earned and have a superior right to it simply because of who you are is ludicrous.

Like many people, I became an American the easy way--I was born here. I didn't have to scrape and save to pay for ship's passage like my grandparents, and hope that, unlike my great aunt (I think it was my great aunt), I'd make it to Boston or New York harbor alive and intact, not at the bottom of the Atlantic. I didn't have to swim a river at midnight, or get stuffed into a truck with two dozen other people until the air went bad and we were standing in our own filth. I didn't have to join the army. I didn't have to marry an American. My American father and my American mother conceived me and nine months later, out came American me, all red, white, and blue.

I mention this because there's a casual racism and nativism among the set who talk about others "earning" the right to be Americans. Whenever I mention that I welcome immigrants with open arms because I'm grateful my grandparents had an opportunity to come here, my fellow born-Americans say, "Well, your grandparents earned it. They did it the right way." Maybe so, but I'm a little fuzzy on what the "right way" is.

I think part of it involves the preference that bitter trials were involved in becoming a citizen. Experiencing malnutrition and disease in the old country, saving your pennies to buy passage on a leaky ship, getting here and cleaning out toilet bowls to make money, and praying you don't die of black lung or whatever before giving your kids a chance to do well in this country. A real American success story, yes? Suffering pays your passage seems to be the thought.

But then there's the uncomfortable consideration that while we all come from immigrants (excepting the native Americans, of course, but that's a whole different kettle of fish), not all of us are from poor immigrant stock as portrayed by Hollywood. My grandfather, Albert Einstein, and Werner Von Braun all came over at some point and became citizens. Guess who had an easier time of it? Now tell me who deserved citizenship more... who "earned" it properly? Careful there, or else you'll turn "Give me your tired, etc." into "Those who have something we want and don't want our enemies to get: this way to the gold-plated limo. Those who guarantee cheap labor and a workforce that won't sass back... well, climb through this 50-mile long sewer pipe brimming with filth and MAYBE we'll consider making you Americans."

The idiocy comes with pretending that a level playing field is an obstacle to progress. Nothing good comes easily, yes, but imagine how much more good can come when we knock down the obstacles that are only there to keep others from succeeding.

I usually put it this way: I enjoy the benefits given to me as a straight white Christian American male so much, I want everyone to experience them, no strings attached. I know that I'm damned lucky, and not because of anything I did.