I got this message from a friend who is adamently against immigration into our country as it is presently being tolerated. She feels that our immigration laws are creating a monster that is growing by leaps and bounds everyday. Read this message, and then post your opinions, please:

Well, I find that whole thing pretty much the equivalent of saying that some how because these people are from "3rd world countries" they are somehow less human than we all mighty Americans. Puke. I may be in the minority here, but I don't care if people come here, legal or illegal. I do NOT approve of employers hiring people at horrible wages and lying about the employees legality, but on the whole, I believe that everyone deserves a chance at a better life and if someone thinks that can be obtained here, then let them come.

As far as the schools that this email goes on and on complaining about, she clearly hasn't been to any other schools with little or no illegal population. ALL schools (except for the very exclusive) have to deal with people that aren't respectful of the system or of what they are receiving. All schools have problems with grafitti and drop outs and "bad students" and on and on. I fear that we have just found a new people to gang up against. We have done the same thing from time eternal. Just in the US we can consider the times that the Irish were the hated immigrants, then the Jews, then blacks, and gays and on and on. Now the bad guy is the brown guy. After that we will decide that Canadians are taking over, then Austrailians, then the English. Its a tactic used by whomever to provide an us-vs-them mentality that lets slide all kinds of autrocious behaviors.

I am fine with providing whomever with free lunches or medical care or earned income tax credits.

And to try and degrade "their" culture because they "allow" un-wed pregnancies and all that shit, whatever. I know PLENTY of un-wed mothers, I am one myself. and I am about as white and american as one can get.

If we didn't allow our corporations to move to mexico and pay people 14 cents and hour, perhaps there would be better employment in those 3rd world countries.

ARG! Sorry, I could go on and on.

Line 'em up and shoot 'em like we did the injuns!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOH

Have you checked to see if this crap is real or one of those fabricated hate e-mail items? I doubt if your friend wrote this -copy and paste, but if s/he did, best warn her about how propaganda works on people.

What a piece of random affected drivel from someones opinions about fellow struggling humans. Pay more for tomatoes? Is that why all the small business' are disappearing to the big box stores? Because we're willing to pay more? Glad at least one person in America is willing to pay more!! Probably likes that gas prices are going up too?? Highly unlikely.

Another allusion to us being a community that will band together during a crisis? Is that working on the political stage where Bush should have been thrown in jail years ago just for stealing elections let alone all the other shit he's done robbing our freedoms from us.

This Immigration thing is a real issue - just keep pushing it and ignoring the realities? Politics of deception. Let Lou Dobbs lead the fools down the trail of tears and not even care. It's just another way of covering the active slave trade in America, and trying to make it legitimate with binding agreements between consenting plantation owners, this time in other countries.

Hope Canada gets a better deal when its our turn to get a binding agreement. It's Bound to happen. This feudal tutelage is getting closer to us all the time. It always starts somewhere and then just snowballs, until we find ourselves subject to the same tutelage they're getting. Oh the happy serf shouldn't know that his life depends on doing what he's told, when that's his only form of freedom.

They come here for a chance at life and we threaten to send them back, blaming them for a problem that goes back centuries. Typical cheap labour conservative logic to bait and switch, but they'll get their way anyway when the NAU takes over. Comes from limiting vision and believing what you're told to believe.

America needs it's slaves and these oppressed people are acting out their resistance to their imprisonment and torture. The children aren't any different. They see the anguish and feel the hopelessness. And if they don't do what we tell them to do, eat what we give them or learn from the schools of hard knocks what their future holds for them, we'll boot their sorry asses out of here and figure a better way to bring slaves into the country so they will do what they're told. Ingrates- won't even eat what we give them?

Did anybody ever ask them what they'd want to eat? Perhaps they didn't like what was presented? Maybe something traditional would be more culturally sensitive? If this is real well, children love to use food as a method of showing control over parents, why not authority figures. Has anyone ever done a study of how an immigrants life would parallel a prison type situation?? Oppressed, underpayed, poorly fed, threatened with deportation at any time- hiding, accepting dirt wage pay, living in overcrowded and confined quarters???????

Who of us could live like that and NOT resist--- not lose it????

Are Americans Living in a Bubble that makes them totally oblivious to ALL the suffering in the world around them, outside of their family circle???

If she is writing that or forwarding that on she doesn't need to be in charge of the ESOL department in her school. That is what I am getting my graduate degree in and if she has only half a brain she knows most of that is untrue. Free breakfast in Ohio is a bowl of cereal or a pop-tart and juice/milk.

NONE of my ELL kids are overweight. NOT a single one. They are living in horrible conditions (15 people to a house or apartment). If they are illegal, they are always on their guard. Often they are afraid to attend any functions. Often the parents cannot speak English, so the kids are the translators. The kids miss a lot of school because they have to be the translator for their parents at the grocery, doctor, lawyer, etc.

None of my ELL kids have a cell phone. That is a laugh! Have you EVER heard anyone in education say their budget was substantial???????? That HAS to be a lie.

This letter is a promotion of hate like so many others.

Any educator with any compassion at all for kids would not want ANYONE to live the way some of these kids are forced to live, legal or illegal .

Thanks, all...I kind of figured the responses would be just what they have been. It's neat to have some interesting comebacks when I'm sent things like this. While my friend has some strange ideas about what constitutes charity in this country, she is a very wealthy individual and...well, enough said.

At my school, the free lunch kids got the same breakfast as those who paid. They got the same lunch as those who paid. Additonally, there are many kids overweight, and many of them are from rich homes.

If you all think this thread should be deleted within the next few days, I'll do it...OR we can put it in the Steel Cage...Again, thanks for your input, and for any others that may follow.

I don't think it should be deleted, nor (at this point) moved to the Steel Cage. Its a discussion that needs to be had.

Thanks for posting it, Catherine.

There are a lot of overweight kids at my school too. Just not the ESOL kids. Most of them are very thin. Many rich kids are as well as the poor. They all get the same breakfast and lunch as those who buy. It just isn't very healthy. Our district "out-sorced" the food program to save money. We have the company that was mentioned in the movie Super-Size Me. The one that was a "not so healthy" school lunch program.

Everyone gets the same food here too. And a ton of kids are overweight at the school. The lunches are gross (in my opinion) and H brings his lunch to school and eats breakfast at home (always).

PE consists of cup stacking and crap like that. (Yes, I know it helps with hand-eye coordination, but it's not PE)....

Catherine, what you have is a piece of hate email. The person who sent it should not be in contact with people in need in any way. She has no compassion, and nothing to offer to people with whom she can not identify.

I would say, why is she your friend, but I too have friends who are hostile to people who they do not consider their 'equals'. I get those hate mails, and ALWAYS answer them.

What ever happened to:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

If this person really cares about her taxes, shouldn't she be looking into our military industrial complex? Or does bombing poor people appeal to her? Does she have any idea how much U.S. revenue goes into our war machine? Shouldn't she be concerned about that?

I have a 'friend' who also is very jealous of people in prison, people on welfare, handicapped people. Anyone she looks at appears to her to have life better than she does. To me, that is such a waste--that a person can't enjoy what they have because they always think people who have less actually have life better.

If you were a religious person I would say, pray for your friend--that she could realize how much she has and not burden herself with worrying about poor people having life too easy. But actually nothing seems to work with people like these. They are determined to feel picked on.

I still get letters like you posted--and I still answer them. What can a person do beyond that?

I've got a lot of friends who I don't spend a lot of time with, dori...and this person happens to be one of them. She's adamently against the Bush regime, yet she's very religious and wealthy. Most of the time when we're together for whatever reason, we don't talk about the immigration issue. We just bash Bush!

I can't say in all honesty that I totally disagree with this person regarding immigrants. I don't have a problem with their presence in our country, but I believe they should be here LEGALLY. I believe they should make a concerted effort to learn our language and I believe they should try to adjust more to the culture rather than expecting us to adjust to theirs. As to cheap labor, it's my opinion that those who employ immigrants should be held responsible for making sure they are here legally and to pay them the lawful minimum wage with raises adjusted for their quality of performance...rather like it is for American workers.

I too, believe they should be here legally....but on the other hand, if I had a chance to get my kids into another country like America where they have the chance to have a decent life, and my country would try and stop me, or want me to pay an amount I could not pay because I could not find work....I would enter another country anyway I could. Legal or illigal. If I couldn't feed my kids because my government made it impossible to do so.....I would do whatever I had to do. Period.

They do try to learn the language. English is the hardest language to learn, epecially if you are an adult. We have so many idioms, slang, words with duel meanings, somethimes they feel hopeless. It has taken me years to try to become fluent in Spanish. My brain just doesn't get it. Spanish is one of the EASIEST languages to learn! Plus, the rest of the world learns two languages. In our country a second language is an "option". Shouldn't be. It should be a requirement! If we want to keep up with other countries we must do what they do. Being bilingual is a start.

I couldn't agree with you more, Sadie. Taking care of my baby is the most important thing and I'll pretty much do anything-legal or otherwise-to make sure he's alright.

And I'll agree with Catherine on the language thing, it is necessary to get along here, especially considering that so few Americans do speak another language. As far as assimilating, I don't think its necessary. I like people being different. And god knows, we are not a culture that is all that great in our excess in the first place. I know that if I moved to France, I would still be an American, even if I enjoyed the country and spoke the language, because its part of who I am to be an american. (No matter how much more embarrassing that becomes each day)

I do think we are all agreeing here. I don't have a disagreement with any of the posts.

I do believe we should be fluent in more than one language. I too have tried to learn Spanish and I get no where. Canada has to have everything in English and French, most countries learn more than one language. I have no idea why we in America consider another language an 'option' either.

As for why we have so many people coming here, we have destroyed their jobs--where are they supposed to go? We do have to stick our finger in every pie, we disrupt nations that are doing fine and blame the people who have been hurt when they try to earn a living by coming here.

Unless you are a full blooded native of the country we invaded--America, you and I and every person here is or is related to an immigrant. They all struggled to feed their families, they all became part of this experiment called the United States.

The people coming here now would love to be legal, it is our businessmen that bring them here and our government that won't allow them to be considered legal.

In my book, illegal people are those who take advantage of others--those businessmen and our government. A family sturggling to have food and shelter are very legal--what could be more legal?

Maybe if we stopped destabilizing other countries we wouldn't have such a problem...and neither would those immigrants.

What do you all think of this video? It's mainly about the effect immigrants have on the population growth of our country...I don't know anything about the author, but the statistics shown are very interesting, and certainly something to consider when the whole immigration debate is going on. The Immigration Bill is going to be voted on again, probably within the next few days and these kinds of discussions are very important, regardless of what our personal opinions are about legal and illegal immigration:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... susa&hl=en

tough, tough, and again i say, tough issue for me to look at.

for starters 1 problem i have is the undeniable fact that unless you are a direct decendent of one of the many north american indian tribes who were here when european expolorers began to show up and stake claims, then not too many of us can make an arguement as to why present day imigrants can't cross over our borders.

now from the security standpoint we do have a responsibilty to ensure that some sort of screening process be ensured to attempt to prevent known criminals from entering that will increase our already overworked criminal/justice system.

the ones who are generally law abiding citizens in thier own country, to me at least, i feel shouls be given the opportunity to enter as lomg as they are willing to go through the legal process to conform to u.s. laws and regulations.

do have a problem though with the lack of labor law enforcement on corporations/employers/republicans who favor illegal imigrants solely for the express purpose of cheap labor. this is where they take unfair advantage of immigrants through tactics of fear and intimidation. they realize that if those immigrants were here legally as u.s. citizens they would then be automatically entitled to the full protection/due process of law which corporate/facist/repug entities realize many times stand in the way of thier ultimate pursuit of greed/power.

like i said tough issue and for me it's one that has to be looked at from many different perspectives/angles in both moral and legal viens of thought.