If You're Going To Talk Immigration, Legal And Illegal, Get Your Facts Straight!

One of my best friends for over 25 years, is in this country illegally. He came over on a visa and over stayed. He is white, and from Europe. Many people here that are "illegal" as they say, as many as 50%, came here legally and became illegal by over staying their visa.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 40 to 50 percent of all people residing illegally in the U.S. actually entered the country legally, according to a report cited in congressional testimony by John Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. For example, they came as tourists or on a temporary visa, and then overstayed their visit.

A 2005 report published by the Migration Policy Institute estimated that 30 to 40 percent of people with visas stay longer than they are permitted.

That's my first point. My second point is that white people who live here illegally would not be singled out in Arizona and asked for "their papers" pursuant to SB1070. So, the concept that there would be no racial profiling in Arizona is just absurd. The bill targets brown people, whether overtly or covertly. My friend would not be one who would be asked for papers if stopped for a tail light not working. Someone from Canada here illegally would not be asked for their papers should they get stopped for any reason.

It's not that the right wing nut jobs can't tolerate illegal immigrants, it's that they can't tolerate those of a different color. White illegals don't seem to come up much in the conversation. Or Asian. According to Wikipedia:

Since the liberalization of immigration policy in 1965, the number of first- generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007.

A record 1,046,539 persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008. The leading countries of birth of the new citizens were Mexico, India and the Philippines.

[snip]

American immigration history can be viewed in four epochs: the colonial period, the mid-nineteenth century, the turn of the twentieth, and post-1965. Each epoch brought distinct national groups - and races and ethnicities - to the United States. During the 17th century, approximately 175,000 Englishmen migrated to Colonial America. Over half of all European immigrants to Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries arrived as indentured servants. The mid-nineteenth century saw mainly an influx from northern Europe; the early twentieth-century mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe; post-1965 mostly from Latin America and Asia.

The WWII generation that hit their 40's in the 1960's, and many who are still alive and in congress (some of those suckers are 70 to 80 and over, damn it) are pretty much the group most likely to hate the damn Mexican illegal immigrant. They didn't care about the white people that came to this country, legal or illegal, from Europe, though. What is it with white people, anyway? Are you, en masse, like "Samantha" and just want to "wink" away all the dark skinned people in this country?