Nuestro Himno

Nuestro Himno, the Spanish version of our National Anthem, has drawn a great deal of ire from citizens. Mexicans waving their homeland flag at Monday?s nationwide protest has drawn an equal amount of ire. Mexicans wanting amnesty or citizenship have our lawmakers in turmoil. What to do?

When I was a kid back in the fifties, I had many friends, who were of the Italian persuasion. I would be invited my friends? home for lunch after a hard morning of play. Lo and behold, my friends? parents would speak Italian to one another. I lived in Pennsylvania for several years in the seventies and eighties. Many Germans populated the town I lived in and when I would go to the store for a gallon of milk, lo and behold many of the customers spoke German to one another. Did I feel enraged because they spoke German? No.

However, those Germans and Italians did not want to make their own version of the National Anthem. Nor did they wave their old homeland flags around the town in defiance of the land in which they lived.

When I went into the military at a very young age, the draft was still in place, many Pan Americans wore the same uniform. They carried the same rifle, the same canteen, and backpack as everyone else. They fought in the same war and for the same cause as every soldier, Irish, German, Italian, or Martian. At night when they were resting from a hard day on the battlefield, they would gather with their friends and speak their native tongue. Was that wrong?

Estimates place the number of illegal or undocumented immigrants in this country at between 11 and 14 million. The numbers do not matter. What matters is that our elected officials figure out a solution and do so with a bipartisan viewpoint. As mentioned in one of my previous articles, industries are not going to rock the boat of Capitalism. It is about supply and demand. Industries need cheap labor and undocumented workers offer cheap labor.

Were the slaves from Africa cheap labor? They picked cotton at the tune of one or two meals a day, no money. Were they legal immigrants? Were they documented? Our African-American immigrants/slaves were documented with bullwhip marks on their backs. The KKK gave them a cold welcome to Freedom. Were the Chinese legal immigrants when they labored under slave-like conditions to build our railroads?

Perhaps these questions ought to be on our minds before we throw stones at our friends sneaking through our southern borders. Many of our ?legal? citizens are here today because their parents were forced onto a slave ship and lived on gruel for months. They my friends did not want to be here.

It gives cause for thought.