Written testimony of U.S. Coast Guard
for a December 09 House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee
on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation hearing titled “Coast Guard
Mission Execution: How is the Coast Guard Meeting Its Mission Goals?”
U.S
Coast Guard Vice Commandant, Vice Admiral John Currier addresses the
Coast Guard’s mission performance and continued efforts to best serve
the American people today and into the future.
Is it time to close the gates and circle the wagons?
James Ottavio Castagnera: This Is Not Your Grandpa’s America, So Get Over It
This may sound a little nasty… but the dumbest reason
I’ve heard for legalizing the 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S. is
“My grandparents got to come here. These people deserve the same
chance.” I’ve heard that a lot lately. So let’s follow the logic of this
notion and see where it leads us.
My Italian grandparents came
here just about a century ago. My grandmother gave birth to 16 kids.
Gee, wouldn’t it be great if every illegal-alien family currently in the
U.S. had 16 kids? Since the Supreme Court already ruled 20 years ago
that the children of illegals are entitled to a K-12 public education,
our school districts would experience a spectacular increase in
classroom diversity. Since we lack a national “English-only” law, the
classroom teachers would no-doubt embrace the challenge of mainstreaming
these kids under the “No Child Left Behind” Act. My senior-citizen
neighbors --- many of whom already are struggling to pay their school
taxes --- will undoubtedly grin and bear the added burden.
Once
all these kids are educated and grown, half could stay at home to help
their parents on the family farm while the other half could pack up
their Conestoga wagons and head west to… whoops, I just remembered: The
U.S. Interior Department declared the American frontier officially
closed in 1896.
Just four years later in 1900 the U.S. Census
counted 76,212,168 inhabitants in the U.S.A. In 2000 the Bureau counted
281,421,906 souls in America. That’s about 3.7 times as many people as a
century earlier. This single fact might make a difference in some
folks’ thinking.
Professor Marshall McLuhan, the Sixties media
guru best remembered for “the media is the message,” also said that we
lived (mentally) in “Bonanza-land.” Readers with a touch of gray at
their temples will remember the popular weekly Western “Bonanza.”
Younger eyes can take a gander at the retro-website http://bonanza1.com.
They’re all there: Ben, big daddy and “the soul of Ponderosa,” the
family’s mega-ranch; Adam, the wise-beyond-his-years eldest brother;
Little Joe, the hot youngest brother, played by teen idol Michael
Landon; and, Hoss, the lovable, lumbering family idiot, reminiscent of
Lenny in “Of Mice and Men.”
My favorite from among the quotes
posted on the “Bonanza” site is this Ben Cartwright profundity: "Well
maybe I've never been to Heaven, and maybe I'm never going to get the
chance, but Heaven is going to have to go some to beat the thousand
square miles of the Ponderosa."
According to McLuhan (a
Canadian), we Americans were driving down the road of life, looking into
our rearview mirrors, where we saw the four Cartwright men riding
side-by-side straight out of our TV screens. If the prophet of
pop-culture could come back to 21 st century America, his opinion
probably wouldn’t change. Just look at what we’re driving these days:
Ford Mustangs, Jeep Cherokees, Dodge Dakotas, Honda Ridgelines (Motor
Trend’s 2006 truck of the year, by the way), Hyundai Santa Fe’s and
Tucsons.
The trouble is that, when we take our eyes away from
that rearview mirror and stare out the front windshield, most of us
never see the Ponderosa unrolling in front of us. More likely, we’re
looking at the latest housing development, cheek-to-jowl with the newest
strip mall, both of which we have plenty of time to ponder, because
they’ve entailed the installation of yet another set of traffic lights.
Or we may be gazing at yet another inner-city neighborhood, rundown and
cluttered with trash.
Warm-hearted souls, who favor an open-door
policy, ought to ask which Americans benefit and who loses, when our
borders are left wide open and laws against hiring illegals go
essentially un-enforced. Businesses wishing to keep their labor cost low
are the big winners. Despite all the folklore that illegal aliens take
jobs no American citizens want, our poorest citizens --- who, under
current welfare rules, must enter the workforce --- suffer from illegal
competition.
Bill Fletcher, former education director of the
AFL-CIO and currently president of TransAfrica Forum, a Washington,
D.C.-based nonprofit, in 2004 told the Pacific News Service, “It's like
an urban legend, which sees competition taking place everywhere. If
African Americans were moving from lower to higher level jobs, there
would be no reason for fear. But that's not the case." Black workers are
not the only ones trapped in temporary, low-paying, no-benefit jobs, he
added.
No, folks, this is not Bonanza-land. This isn’t your grandpa’s America. Get your eyes off that rearview mirror. Get over it.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment