Immigration: 30 Days to find out it ain't that simple

It’s way too hot to do anything outside here in Reno, Nevada, having got up to 102 out at the house today. So we sat in AC’d comfort watching one of my favorite series on Discovery/Planet Green - Morgan Spurlock’s “30 Days”.

You might remember Morgan Spurlok of “SuperSize Me” fame.

Anyhow, the idea is to get somebody to walk in another person’s shoes for 30 days. Like be in a wheelchair, or live with gays for 30 days and see if you can think of the issues differently.

Today, we watched as a Minuteman from the border went to live with a family of Mexican illegals for a month- the 2006 episode was about illegal immigration. A rather timely subject. You’d think this might be obvious - a white wasp goes native. You’d be wrong. This story had an interesting - and for me, a personal - twist. The Minuteman in question is a Cuban immigrant. My connection? I grew up in south Florida during the beginning of the Cuban exodus into Florida, and watched it really first hand. I mean, watched them pull in with the boats. Dealt with the Cubans that worked for my family in Miami.

“The premiere episode of the second season of 30 Days, produced by Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame), focuses on the issue of illegal immigration by having Frank George, a member of the Minuteman vigilante group that voluntarily patrols the United States/Mexico border, live with a family of illegals for a period of 30 days in order to understand their situation.

Frank is a pretty strident believer in that all illegal aliens should be sent back to Mexico, no questions asked. He says that the only rights these people have is “the right to be deported.” In other words, he’s not too keen on what these folks have gone through to get here and what they are leaving behind. To be fair, he does have the right to his opinion, which is shared by millions of other people.

The interesting twist in all of this is that Frank is an immigrant himself. He and his family escaped from Cuba back in the late 50s, so if anyone would be sympathetic to the plight of those people who come to this country in search of a better life, it would be him.”

But he’s not too terribly sympathetic. He’s got his.

The show takes some interesting twists and turns, and Frank actually travels to Mexico to visit the family members who remained there, and saw the horrifying conditions that the Gonzalez family escaped from.

Frank isn’t so sure of his position at this point.

Here’s where it all goes off the rails - and I can’t understand why Frank doesn’t get it.

Frank was the beneficiary of the political temper of the times - rabid anti-communist ferver. Hell, we’d have let Lucifer come into the country legally if he’d wanted to “be free of the Castro regime!”

Unfortunately, for the Gonzalez family there is no communist bogey-man for them to flee from anymore, particularly in old Mexico. Just grinding poverty, horrific unequal distribution of wealth and the most violent drug-fueled internecine warring the western world has seen in modern times. You know, the kind of thing we don’t much care to become involved in unless there’s some high tech military systems and some fighter jets to be sold. Like in the Middle East.

I couldn’t believe nobody pointed this out. It’s really that obvious.

If Washington D. C. really wanted to protect the strategic national interests of this country, they’d pull the troops home from that Central Asian piss-hole that we can’t possibly win at, and put them south of the border.

Go into Mexico and fucking clean house.

Then Frank, and all the rest of the Minutemen, plus Sarah Palin, plus the good citizens of Arizona could sleep at night, while the Mexicans go home to re-build what little is left of their country.

Oh, and if the right wants a country without government to weigh them down or hold them back, try that mess south of the border. There isn’t one down there.

-maven