Fremont: Where bigotry can be your next door neighbor

Survive in America? Thats the question. Fremont wants them out. But why should they go? Because we cant move past our bigotry and misconceptions? Becuase they aren't Americans? Check this: Guatamalan Carlos Garcias holds the flag in a show of his affection for his adpotive country.

All the tension of the national immigration debate descended on Fremont, NE, yesterday as the town met in its series of three town councils to discuss whether or not the city should enact a ban on renting to and hiring illegal immigrants. I read the headline and just about shit my pants. I mean, I am slowly becoming accustomed to the inexperienced world view that most outside the limits of Lincoln and Omaha seem to cling to with all their force, but honestly: the middle ages are over and Fremont isn't that far outside the limits of what seem to be human decency.

Rundown: a ban was proposed that would severely punish anyone who harbored, hired, or gave housing to illegal aliens. A town split in two. Thankfully, human goodness won out in a debate that I am sure was highly based on misconceptions, with the mayor the city breaking the head-locked 4 to 4 city councilmen in opposition to the ban. The ban would have yanked city licensing and grants to any business that did not participate in an electronic verification of employees immigration status, and fined any landlord that housed illegal immigrants would be fined, as well as initiating a program that would require all renters, regardless of race, to buy a permit of occupancy that would verify their legal eligibility to be in the country.

People from the city lined up and took their turns at the microphone, going back and forth. It is reported that those in support of the ban (of whom it is reported wore t-shirts that said "where's the fence" and toted signs that read "Secure our borders") cited crime, disease and abuse of public assistance as reasons to push the ban through. I was surprised that loss of jobs wasn't on their list because that misconception is about as tenable as their evidence that illegal immigration spreads disease. WTF? Is this the middle ages? We have to be careful not to mix with those mexicans becuase they carry some kind of disease (on an ironic note, read the latest studies that are proving the numbers of Native Americans throughout the continent who surely saw our "great" ancestors as illegal immigrants were much larger than originally thought, and the disease that came from Europe was more anialating than first thought)? Why don't we just build a quarentine on the border and move in our bovine disease inspection headquarters so we can at least detect what diseases they have even when they are trying to get into this "blessed country" illegally. Sound ridiculous? Because it is. But still, people buy into these arguments that reduce humans (and ironically those who are trying to make a "better life" for themselves, a very "american" tenant.) to animals.

Somewhere we got lost in our own insecurities and the need to place blame on something that immigrants become nothing more than intruders who need to go and who threaten our conceptions. Somewhere we turned into bigots.

Clearing the air, please realize that most illegal immigrants work in job that Americans wont take becuase of our sense of WASP entitlement, and that 70% of the agriculutral industry depends on immigrants, and for salaries usually signifcantly less than those that would be paid to Americans. So be careful, Fremont, when you say you want an "illegal-immigrant-free community", because it might mean that you have look at the garden in your own fenced in back yard and secure your own produce to put dinner on the table. It would definatly mean that you would not have the rich cultural and intellectual experience of having others with worldly perspectives in your community, which is even more valuable in a place where most people don't have the means to get that experience themselves.

And maybe there wouldn't be such a high crime rate among immigrants if they were given the chance to become registered, and not just put on the backlog of papers and immigration appointments that is a long as heaven is grand, if there were assimilation programs where they could get plugged into culturally appropriate communities, if they were given some kind of chance and not to relegated to some ghetto where drugs and a life of crime is the only opportunity that awaits them (or heres an idea, if the government would invest in sustainable programs directed towards eliminating the ghettos all together). But that is too much to ask: include them? We want them out of our community, so instead of making it easier for them to become successful and fulfill the dreams for which they most likely came to this country, well, we are going to make it impossible for them to focus on anything other than surviving under the radar.

But above all these misconceptions, what makes me mad is the knee jerk reaction that is so dominant with this fucking government. Our borders need to be secure, WHAM! build a damn wall. Confirm everyone's perception of our bigotry. We need to make sure our national security is in order, WHAM! blow up half the Middle East. Make our absolute intolerance ring throughout the world. We need to make sure Americans can continue to live in their greedy, insatiable live-beyond-your-means lifestyles WHAM! cut interests rates every five months WHAM! make economic stimulis checks WHAM! pass emergency bills to bail out Americans who got in to far in over their heads. Continue to deny that we are a huge repression. We need to become more energy independent WHAM! drill in Alaska. Keep filling up folks, its still there. Continue with your life as normal, without restrictions or stings of regret. And unfortunately, these come from the top and when the people see government and the ignorance it employs to fix its own problems in a way that is only good for itself and for a short time, they too think it is okay to wish immigrants away, and to ask wheres the fence and to beleive that some stupid wall is the key to our security. These knee jerks don't allow for the dialouge that is needed to get anywhere with this complicated issues. In the reign of and absolutist government, its us against them, and the people see that and live that out to the letter: I am sure that some of you have just written this off as some liberal ranting, just what the government does. Its bad, its not for us, therefore it is wrong.

There was a group at Fremont that I think got it right. They passed out flyers that said "Build Fremont's future together". On the nose. Unfortunately, to work together we might need understand what it means to share a lawn with your neighbor, to live without a fence and not just always react knee jerkingly to be secure in our intolerance and our bigotry.I don't think many of us are ready for that, as my dear fellow Nebraskans so eloquently demonstrated.