In transit to Griboedov's

Monday as most of you are aware was the rallying day across the country on behalf of the illegal immigrant population. Monday was also one of the major rallies here in Albuquerque. The hispanic population rallied in the downtown area right next to the hotel. I was sleeping during the rally but it clogged traffic and held up people’s days for a full morning and afternoon. I knew it was coming because of the Senate’s decisions the previous week. I saw the news about it before I began walking down to the hotel.

I have a vested interest in this entire situation as a person living in and raised in New Mexico, one of the states with the largest percentages of hispanics. I guess this issue has surrounded me for many years and I was definitely unaware of it as I grew up. If I were to go back to UNM for anthropology I would probably want to focus upon the border issue. Presently I am wrapped up in many feelings about this issue.

The first feeling I have toward those who gathered in civic plaza on Monday is a sense of solidarity. I respect the men, women and children who gathered there. High school students skipped class and faced suspension in order to be there. Those who were illegal and in the crowd were facing arrest. Yet the crowd was not entirely comprised of illegal immigrants. There were legal citizens there as well. I find that brave. I am glad that they stood there in support of those receiving little.

A coworker that I was talking to saw the protest as achieving very little. In his eyes it expressed that we live in a weak society where a protest can block some traffic. Even if it did “accomplish” very little in the eyes of political policy, I hope that it helped create a solidified understanding that Washington does not have all the answers for the hispanic community. I know that other rallies like this have created dramatic shifts in voter populations. California experienced such a thing a few years ago. The hispanics rallied, started voter registration campaigns and managed to swing the state from republican majority to democrat majority. I would be glad to see a similar event.

I also see a great amount of injustice heaped onto illegal immigrants. Yes, they have broken our laws. Yet there is an equal if not greater amount of blame that I want to heap onto the employers who gave them jobs. They are an equal player in this matter. I hear a great amount of backlash against the immigrants (a different coworker referred to them as, “those damn wetbacks” to my face). Meanwhile I want to scream at the sweatshop owners in El Paso, or the farm bosses, or the construction companies. They are not working to fix the problem. if they were hiring legitimate citizens their operating costs would rise.

Finally, I am really sad that the government is considering such harsh actions toward those living in this country who have been here for quite some time. Our government is not as retrospective as I would like them to be. They haven’t admitted that our contemporary situation is a direct result of lax approaches twenty years ago. Where was all this enforcement at the beginning? It seems rather silly to create hundreds of thousands of felons all at once when they haven’t been for two decades.