A Modesto Proposal: Thoughts on the May 1 Boycott
Leaning on Historical Example
By Mark S. Burgess
Posted on Apr 19 2006
Last updated May 08 2006
FOR PREVENTING THE IMMIGRANTS OF POOR PEOPLE FROM MEXICO FROM BEING A BURDEN TO OUR COUNTRY, AND FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL TO THE PUBLIC AND THEMSELVES
It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with immigrants, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every truck leaving a Home Depot for a job. These people, instead of being able to work as honest citizens, employ all manner of means to leave their native country to sell themselves in the United States.
I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of poor souls, is in the present deplorable state of catch and release, death marches through the desert and tax payer burden a very great grievance for all parties; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these people sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the illegal immigrant; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of immigrants hampered by contact with their fellows and relatives for the difficulties much encountered at the border.
As to my own part, having turned my thoughts upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors whilst contemplating the impending May 1 boycott aimed at American business, I have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation. It is true, that amnesty for the great unwashed currently hard at work contributing to this our economy would benefit the country and the individuals and families thereof. Yet, this combined with a stronger border impassable to all without legal standing remains, even at the furthest cost, a near impossible undertaking. Therefore, the temporary relief of enfranchising the new taxpayers would merely and just as temporarily spread the burden to them as well of new entrants into that sorry state of illegal status.
Further discovery on the topic, reveals complicating considerations of how immigrants into Mexico are treated as felons, just the content of the pending legislation driving the May 1 event for a similar classification in this Country. Of similar source of consternation for the serious examiner is the “Nothing Gringo” slogan for the boycott to extend its wave of the spurning of American product even within Mexico. Students carrying Mexican flags, Mexican citizens spurning American products along with workers sympathetic to immigrants seems a focus directly largely in the wrong direction.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by review of the history of California, that prior to statehood in 1850 and the invasion by American forces in 1846, these territories under the purview of Mexican authority exhibited the same restrictive class system which so much has disabled the middle class in Mexico, engendering a large population in poverty with deathly serious motivation to surmount whatever obstacles might be erected to prevent their entry into the United States.
Mexico ranks 36th among nations in competitiveness, with rich sources of Petroleum, silver, copper, gold, lead, zinc, natural gas, timber and climates that support farming and tourism as well as anywhere in the world. All this confounds the observer struggling to understand the source of the pressure driving regular Mexican citizens to risk life and limb to cross the border and makes plain that sufficient internal resources exist within Mexico that, with the application of the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness found in the American way as governed by the Constitution the opportunities for creating a content and successful middle class in the environs of the northern most of Baja to southern most Chiapas would remove and relieve that pressure just as the run of the railway from the East Coast of the US to Modesto, California relieved so many of the burdens of travel which too resulted in death and hardship for those crossing the continent.
Therefore, providing for the impossibility of a perfect border, providing for the desire of reasonable people to prevent suffering and death wherever possible, providing for the wish to burden no one unfairly, it seems an obvious remedy avails itself. Had the armies who reached San Diego in December 1846, not prevailed, the US Congress today might very likely be contemplating lawmaking to cause the erection of a much longer and even more difficult border separating Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana from Mexico.
I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that the United States invade Mexico for permanent occupation.
(With sincere apologies to Jonathan Swift, 1729)
Mark Burgess is a founding board member and current board VP of the Media Arts Center San Diego, producers of the Latino Film Festival, a board director of the Old Town Chamber of Commerce and CEO of sandiego.com, Inc.
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