Well, to be clear, not anymore. I got away and have lived a mostly solitary life since finding Christ. But I've ended up not knowing exactly how the rest of the world is either, perhaps. Thanks for your post though. You and the Barbarian give plenty of food for thought.
Hi straykat,
Well, having been a drug addict myself, and also serving for a time as staff in a rehabilitation center, I've come to understand that a lot of what we believe individually is a product of our life experiences. As a marijuana user for decades, I used to believe that everyone smoked. Some just hid it better than others. Now, being on the other side of that addiction, I realize that I wasn't being truthful in my understanding, but rather using that as an excuse to continue my addiction. If I could justify my addiction by believing that nearly everyone used marijuana, then it was ok. Granted, a lot of people do use marijuana, but it isn't anywhere near 'everyone' or 'almost everyone'.
I worked for Bellsouth in Miami and there were neighborhoods in the inner city where we were strongly cautioned about leaving anything unsecured or being careful about what was going on around us. However, I generally worked in somewhat more affluent neighborhoods of the middle class and all of those warnings just seemed foreign to me. I could climb a pole with my truck parked beneath and never worried about locking all the doors since I was just up a pole and still was able to watch the vehicle. Some of the inner city technicians told of tales of being in similar circumstances and watching people just start rifling through their vehicles while they were being watched. Or being up a pole or working at a connection point in an alley and hearing gunshots fairly close by. I never experienced any of that in any of the neighborhoods where I worked and so that kind of working condition was hard for me to believe or understand. For those working in such neighborhoods, it was fairly common belief.
Another thing that I noticed about the techs working in the inner city and the techs working in safer neighborhoods was the individual's ability to trust others. We see this patterned for us a lot on TV crime shows. Police officers are loathe to trust people. Often times, even other law enforcement agencies. I believe this is because they experience the more dangerous aspects of life more than the average person does. Many of them are working in dangerous environments and so they tend to carry that trepidation and fear with them in other areas of their life and their understanding about life in general.
So, I do understand that we're all products of our life experiences. I understand that because of some of those life experiences we see others differently. Me, I've never been concerned with illegal immigration. Even though I read that it costs us all money, it has never cost me more than I could afford to pay and, being a believer, I don't begrudge those who are poor any blessing that I might provide for them financially, so long as it doesn't then leave me poor. In studying those who seem to be so strongly against immigration, specifically illegal immigration, the experience that I've had in dealing with such people is that they seem to be more mean and greedy about their stuff.
I had a friend who was
STRONGLY against immigrants. I don't think he differentiated between legal and illegal. He was just always bad mouthing them and claiming that he couldn't find work because they were taking all the jobs. However, in years of knowing that man, I knew that he was, by nature, a mean and difficult person to get along with. It didn't surprise me that he couldn't find work and it had nothing to do with someone else taking his job. He just was not a nice person to be around. Every time he'd call, my wife and I would look at each other and question whether we should answer the phone. We knew that we were going to have to listen to some diatribe as to how bad the VA was and the local and national governments are and all the richy riches of the world and, of course, all the immigrants stealing our jobs. Whenever I'd try to bring up faith and hope in Jesus, that would always be something that weak people hang on to. He was just a mean person and his attitude just always reflected that meanness.
Now, I'm sure that he'd had some tough times in his life. I know for a fact that women would shun him after they knew him for more than a couple of weeks. Because of his constant and insistent complaining of all the ills of the world and how they were ruining his life, no one much wanted to spend time with him. I've been lifelong friends of one of his short time girlfriends and every time his name comes up, she gets a sad look on her face and just bemoans how his nature had ruined his life. Of course, I'm not saying that everyone against immigration is quite so negative in their overall thinking, but when I hear someone that seems to be living a life near equal to mine as far as finances decry that immigrants are costing us boatloads of money, I just don't get it. Like I say, my understanding is that they're people just like me and likely the majority of them want the same things in life for themselves and their families.
I visited Mexico twice in my life. On one such trip to Cancun, my wife and I rented a car to go about seeing the country. I had a flat and so I sought out a tire repair shop. I stopped at a shop that had a tire sign hanging and went in and this woman with most of her teeth missing and wearing pretty shredded clothes greeted me cheerfully and asked what I needed. Through signs and by showing her the tire I was able to tell her what I needed. As she repaired the tire, I looked around at her shop and she didn't have any of the modern air powered equipment that we have in America to dismount tires. No!!! She did it all by hand. The shop was just a dirt floor hovel of a place and when she finished she said the charge was the equivalent of a dollar and a half.
Now I ask you, who, living in such conditions and knowing that just a couple of hundred miles away was this 'land of milk and honey' that we try to show to the world is what living in America is like, wouldn't want that for themselves or their family? Yes, some are willing to wait to come in legally, but others not so much. People without health insurance should go to a GP to have their common cold and flu addressed, but they won't because they don't have the money. Similarly, people who understand that immigrating the legal way may take years, believe that it may be easier just to do it and worry about the consequences later.
Other people in other nations are just as different as we are that live here in their individual understanding of things. People are people. Each and everyone who lives upon the face of the earth was made in God's image. Not just Americans, or the rich and wealthy.
Finally, this issue that they're taking our jobs just seems ludicrous to claim in a day that our unemployment is lower than it's been in some 50 years. I believe that we are an industrious nation and that we will build and grow to accommodate all those who live within our borders. Every immigrant that comes to America, under our capitalist system of enterprise, is just another customer. They'll have to buy food and clothing and keep a roof over their head as much as any one of us. They'll want to work towards getting a car and providing things for their children. They'll want cell phones and laptops and internet and cable service. Just another customer to a capitalist system.
God bless,
In Christ, ted