Let’s start with a great poem, shall we? Emma Lazarus (1849-1881) wrote it; you’ll recognize the last lines immediately. It’s called “The New Colossus”:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In 1903, this sonnet was engraved in bronze at the base of the statue. What did it do? It put in words what the Statute of Liberty symbolized. Methinks we should erect a like statue with the afore-mentioned inscription on the Mexican border. Open the gates. Give us your poor — even if they have brown skin.
What are we thinking, those Republicans? What is the solution to the immigration “problem”? Scream FELON and try to round up 12 million people, put them in Nazi-like concentration camps and send them home in cattle cars?
Think again. They won’t go home without a fight. Blood will flow in the streets. Did you watch the May Day demonstrations, note the passion, observe the militancy?
After all, California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona used to belong to them. Reconquista. Who are “these illegals”? From my personal experience, Mexicans are some of the nicest, hardest working, most family-oriented people I’ve ever met. (By the way, aliens are from Mars, not Mexico City.) They do the jobs we won’t. They contribute mightily to the economy. They give more than they take.
Build a wall? Yeah, that worked so well in Berlin. No walls planned for Canada. Double-standard racism? Surely not.
Now, The Rapper’s take: Let’s start the process of creating a United States of North America. Heretofore, I have written two columns on this subject. The current immigration debate brings this into focus as clearly as a 36-inch plasma-screen television. With high-def.
In ’96 I wrote: “The answer to America’s immigration problem may be too simple, too futuristic, too radical for popular consumption — but let the debate begin. The answer is in the creation of a United States of North America — my personal interim-to-long-term solution to America’s immigration woes ... Overnight, the ‘illegal Mexican immigration problem’ would vanish like the morning haze on a lake at sunrise. Members of the Mexican underclass would no longer have to risk their lives (to find a better life).”
I expressed my horror at seeing “Beware: Immigrant Crossing” signs dotting San Diego freeways: “(b)ig yellow signs ... with silhouettes of a family of four — a dad, mom, son and daughter, hand-in-hand, in full flight. Just like a damn deer-crossing sign on a Kentucky back road.”
The mechanics of creating a United States of North America are simple enough: Let each Canadian province and each Mexican state have two U.S. of N.A. Senators and the House of Representatives would be apportioned by population. Folks, NAFTA laid the foundation. Some smart commie — Marx, Engels, Lenin … one of ’em — wrote something to the effect that the economic substructure defines the political, social and cultural superstructure.
NAFTA has laid the groundwork for the United States of North America.
Consider: We now have an expanding European Union. This once far-fetched, idealistic flight of fancy is now a concrete reality. So, call me crazy (I have papers to prove it), but not the concept, not the possibility, indeed the necessity of putting our continent under one flag. How can we compete economically with the E.U., Japan, China and India without expanding our political/economic base?
To close, we ARE a nation of immigrants. I have found immigrants to be the strongest, most courageous, most daring, most hopeful and hardest working people in rock ’n’ roll. These are the very people the United States should not be keeping out. But dragging in.
But anyway, I’m Carl Brown, Louisville’s Plain Brown Rapper, and that’s just my own damn opinion. If you don’t like it, emigrate to Mexico.
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