Tulsa Topics

At the top of today's schedule of events at the Fair Immigration Rally was this passage:

Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

The crowd was extremely orderly and well prepared for the rally. Many participants held signs in support of "fair immigration" and there was an abundance of American Flags being waved. The rally started with "The Star Spangled Banner" and then "The Pledge of Allegiance." Cheers rose from the crowd at the completion of both.

Without a doubt, this was a media success for the organizers of the rally. Whether the ultimate victory of "fair immigration" comes to pass, is yet to be determined.

Whether politicians on the federal, state, and local levels are ready to deal with the question of immigration or not, their historical approach of ignoring the problem is coming to an end. Immigration in the United States is quickly becoming a major issue for both opponents and proponents. Hopefully some type of compromise can be hammered out that will be a "win-win" situation for both sides. I'm not holding my breath.

I'm not going to go into all the problems that are associated with "open borders." Those problems have been sliced, diced and hashed in thousands of articles by the MSM, bloggers, and in numerous emails making the circuit. I personally blame the crisis of immigration on our vote-hungry politicians. The lack of action or inaction is unexcusable and should be remembered when election time comes around. This inaction is even more inexcusable after the events of 9/11.

I'm at a "crossroads" of sorts when it comes to immigration. I truly believe that if the United States can't or won't control its borders, then the concept of Homeland Security is a farce. On the other hand is the question of what to do with the undocumented immigrants that are currently residing within our borders. Are they refugees? Are there criminals amongst their rank? Terrorists?

If you answered the above questions with a "YES," I'm pretty confident you'd be right on all counts, but today at the rally I saw firsthand the passion of some really good people. The passion of wanting a better life for themselves and their children. The passion of wanting to take part in the community in which they reside. The passion to actually have a voice for a change. When you see this in person, the human factor of fair immigration begins to tug at your very being. I personally would have a hard time looking into a child's eyes and telling them, "I'm sorry, you have to leave the only home you know."

Opponents of fair immigration are yelling their various war cries in protest of this initiative. The act of getting 3rd, 4th, and even 5th generation Americans riled up is really quite simple. Proclaim to a bunch of "establishment irate" Americans that their quality of life has been declining these last umpteen years because of piss poor decisions by our politicians (Telling the truth doesn't diminish the cause in such cases). Then tell them that one of the reasons their quality of life is in a rut is because all the illegal __________ (insert ethnic group here) are coming to America taking their quality of life away. A perfect example of a "cause and effect" scenario. God forbid we have to place blame on ourselves. It's always much easier to blame someone else.

One group seems to want open borders while the other group wants closed borders. I pray that neither group gets what they want because both scenarios would be disasterous. Like I mentioned earlier, hopefully a compromise can be struck. I personally would like to see some sort of amnesty offered up in return for complete documentation... i.e. simple background check, picture, sign on the dotted line, here's your W-2 and Social Security, don't forget to file by April 15th, and by the way... "Welcome to America." Just make sure you get more in wages if you're living in Tulsa since the water, sewer and storm water rates are going up up UP! Unless your last name is Trevino, you probably don't have to worry about the hike in green fees at area golf courses.

MeeCiteeWurkor was covering the event as well today. For a time we were covering each others backs but as the crowd grew we lost sight of each other. Make sure you check out his coverage of this event by reading his post titled: "The Faces of America’s Immigrants - Legal or Not"

View more pictures at Flickr.