Question #4

One of the greatest issues in Virginia at the moment would have to be immigration. Now I'm not going to bore you with the, "but were all immigrants ourselves so we don't have the right to blah blah blah" because it's all been said before, it has never changed the mind of anyone (or at least anyone that I have met), and honestly those were different times, our economies bad now and relying on what we've always done isn't what's gonna help us out here. What I really want to bore you with is the fact that immigrants really are the backbone of all the jobs other people don't want to do and in reality these immigrants are suffering most from taking on these jobs. The national poverty rate in America is about 10 to 15 percent while the national poverty rate for Latinos alone is 25 percent. Does anyone seriously think these people want to clean up after you? I honestly think that the immigration issue is being used as a scapegoat to hide the fact that competition between the U.S. and foreign countries who can pay their workers next to nothing for their labor is what's really behind the unemployment issue. Just look at Alabama, once they put stricter immigration laws in the immigrants moved out and when that happened no one came in to pick up the slack. The truth is these immigrants are just trying to survive and we shouldn't punish them for that, this is America isn't it don't we take pride in our ancestors for doing that exact same thing for hundreds of years? What’s so different about these people? That they speak Spanish? Now I hate to contradict what I said at the beginning of this rant but I have to now because it's on my mind. Someone once told me I should never look down on the immigrants of today because my ancestors were in their position once and I should never accept the idea of what happened to them was right. I myself am part Irish, like most people in the U.S., and the Irish, as we all know, were treated with the same hate as the Latinos are being treated with now. What gives us the right to say which immigrants do or don't get the esteemed privilege to clean our toilets? Nothing. If anything we should be even friendly to those who come into our country seeking a better life, because after all, they’re not here of their own will, they’re here because they need a job to survive. I mean do you really think all these Latinos came over to America just to steal our worst jobs and be called beaners all the time?

As always,
Theurer