I often joke with my friends that I was Mexican in my last life;  probably a Mexican revolutionary or something?  I love Mexican food.  I love Mexican people.  They are simple, hard working, honest and family oriented (some are quick to comment on gangs, illegal immigrants, and welfare, but read more and see the big picture).

I recently had an interesting experience.  I have an office in Thousand Oaks and with the unique nature of what I do, I have a lot of patients from further north near Santa Barbara.  It wasn’t smart to have 10 or 15 patients commute to see me, so I see patients a half day a week in Oxnard.  Oxnard is in Ventura County.  It is an hour outside of what you can consider Los Angeles.  It is mostly farm land, although in the last few years, urban sprawl and big box development (Wal-Mart, Costco, Best Buy) has defaced this pristine region.  Driving to Oxnard, you pass many farms.  Most of provide a lot of the produce here in Los Angeles.  I used to work in a gas station off of Rice Avenue and the 101 freeway, and I remember the farmer who worked the plot of land next to the station would always bring me fresh cilantro in bundles.  He was a little old Mexican man, and he was always smiling. 

Many years later, as I commute to the Oxnard office, I see the migrant workers hunched over in the hot sun, working the land.  Picking strawberries, tomatoes, and other goodies.  One day, while waiting at the light off the exit, with the farm and the workers in plain view, I saw a man standing on the corner with a sign reading “will work for food”.  I couldn’t help but engage.  I pulled up to him and asked this guy (who looked able bodied and strong) “look behind you… there is a farm with work available, why don’t you get a job?”  He looked at me, with a dead stare and clearly replied “I’m not Mexican!”  His tone was not that he wouldn’t get hired because he wasn’t Mexican, his tone was of disgust, as if he was better than picking fruit in the sun for money.

Our society’s position on illegal immigration is baffling.  I am an immigrant.  My family and I came here legally.  My dad worked diligently to keep us legal.  He paid a lot of money to lawyers and into the system, only to find that after 12 years of staying legal, the government had a new way to become a permanent citizen... that was to be illegal?  At that time, the Amnesty laws had been enacted which allowed illegal workers that were here during a certain window of time to be grandfathered into permanent residency.  It was real slap in the face to the effort and money my parents spent on trying to stay legal.  Regardless, over time, we became proud citizens of this country.  But today, our immigration policies are a web of confusion and misinformation.  The public doesn’t really know what happens since none of them has had to stand in line at the immigration office in downtown LA for 5 hours, only to get to a counter where the person who works there can barely speak proper english themselves, and is treating you like cattle at a slaughterhouse.  Mind you, that most of the people who are in line, are legal residents, in the system to be processed into permanent residency or citizenship.  Which means that we are tax paying individuals; which means that the person behind the counter is employed (partly) by us.

But forget about this, I always take tangents.  Let’s talk about Mexicans and immigration.  These people are our neighbors.  And since we as Americans, have lost the ideal of the importance of loving thy neighbor, we treat Mexicans as a nuisance.  Just look at the words “illegal alien”.  When I was called an alien for the first time in the immigration office, I thought that they had never heard of an Iranian.  I was shocked.  Alien?  I was human?  But these are only words right?  Sticks and stones are what matters!

The fact is that we do not appreciate the importance of Mexicans.  These people fill in the holes where no other American wants to work.  Mexicans bus tables (most waiters are Americans, most bus staff are Mexican), they do lawn work, they are cooks, they work in janitorial positions, they work in farms, they clean houses, they move your furniture, they build your furniture, and on and on and on.  This is because one thing these people have is a solid work ethic.  They earn their money.  They come here for a better future, just as the immigrants of the past did.  Remember the pilgrims?  Plymouth rock?  The Irish, the French, the Germans, the Italians?  Ellis Island?  The fact is that being American is not defined by “a kind of person”, it is a way of life.  America is the torch that has led hope for millions of people since 1776.  Our neighbors do the things our own people won’t.  For much less money.  With far less benefits.  The irony that these are the people that are doing the work that defined the core of American values… farming, yet we discriminate against them amazes me.

I understand the tax issues that surround illegal workers.  I agree with these points.  That is why, as a logical individual understanding the tax code and how it works is important.  Soon I will post an article on Fair Tax written by my good friend Vladimir, which will open most of your eyes on how upside down our taxation is.  So the tax argument is valid, but not only because the tax code is wrong, and it doesn’t justify this rift of “Mexican Abuse”.

I had a discussion one day in surgery with one of the surgical staff.  It was about English and Spanish teaching in schools.  She was upset (being Latino) that there was a proposition to end teaching bilingually in schools.  I argued that I thought this was very good for immigrants and their children.  Why not?  Isn’t time that we leveled the paying field and educated immigrants so that their linguistic abilities matched those of the upper, and middle class.  If you learn in a system where you are kept behind, you will never be able to compete.  But if everyone learns English (the language of America) then you will grow to be linguistically equal, and can compete in areas like law, medicine, science, education etc.  But this has a twist…  I then argued that it is only proper, that like many other countries who deliver an educated and advanced youth to their societies, we educate ALL of our youth in Spanish. 

None of this elective language BS.  I mean, in 9th grade, every single student, no matter what your ethnic background, has to take Spanish.  Because this is the language of our neighbors, and we respect and care about our neighbors.  Look at European countries where it is not uncommon to find kids speak 3 languages fluently by the time they graduate middle school.  This would level the playing field for migrant cultures and embrace where they come from.  It would also make our own children smarter since their brains would have to learn 2 languages (smarter kids… what a shocker!)

It’s time we respected our neighbors and gave them some credit for the labor and effort they put into the very back bone of America.  Without them, America would be a limp amputee.  So maybe immigration reform should focus on not “securing” our borders from the Mexican boogie man, but creating a program that allows people to enter with priority access so they can continue to work and do the things that they do, without the stigma of being an “alien”.  It’s funny how most of the legislators who are against immigration reform that is pro-Mexican have been busted for having migrant workers working in their own homes.

I think the legislative alchemy of turning “aliens” into humans would make any presidential candidate my hero!  And to the homeless dude who proudly states he’s not a Mexican… I reply, “Of course not my friend, you are a lazy freeloader.”