Pathetic Immigrants

We had over 200,000 demonstrators march in Phoenix today for immigrants' rights. It was completely peaceful and laid-back as this city always is, except for a few redneck counter-protestors who have nothing, but by God want to make sure that some Mexican doesn't come in and steal the job that the counter-protestors would never take in a million years.

I was struck by two things: first, the passion with which the marchers turned out by the thousands after living for years in the shadows, afraid to make a fuss because of the fear of being sent back.

Second, and more important, the earnestness with which people demonstrated for basic American and human rights. All they want, quite frankly, is the right to work...not the right to get welfare, not the right to have someone else pay for their care and feeding...but the right to work. They want their kids to be educated, and they want to be able to walk down the street in freedom, unafraid that they'll be rounded up and deported. It really strikes me as somewhat pathetic but extraordinarily touching...these people believe in the American dream far more intensely than the rest of us. I sometimes feel like shaking them and saying, "this country isn't that great! we're not that pure!" It reminded me of the civil rights marches of the 1960s, when black Americans finally began demanding such simple things as the right to vote, the right to a job, the right to buy a house without some racist trying to keep them out. But then it hit me: these folks, both the blacks of the 1960s and the hispanics today, still truly believe, and I feel some shame that I, who have so much and whose family has been here for 350 years, don't have the faith in this country...in this way of life...as these people who have nothing and who have risked everything to come here. I just wish the rednecks who have accomplished nothing, own nothing, contribute nothing, would get off their backs and stand out of their way. I'll take these folks on my team any day of the week.