Monday Mood: Finding the Keys

Found on a parking bollard in Brugge Belgium. 

The keys to coping these days are to limit what you allow in, what you allow to occupy space in your mind, and how you respond to what happens. 

Lots of really crappy things are happening in the world, war, genocide, racism, fascism, . . . the list goes on. It is enough to get anyone down. 

Don't let them take your dignity. Hold your head high. Don't let the bastards wear you down.  

Some of them are trying to keep you thinking about them, and how special they think they are. Ignore them. Nothing will drive them crazy faster than being shunned. Give them the silent treatment and go on with your life. Fly your flag, live your life, and when they get in your way step around them and keep marching. Lock them out, and drive them crazy. 

Lock the entry to your mind. Control what you read and see. If you can't change it, don't let it in. And there is much more evil the world than I can change. If I let it in, let it get me down, I can't change the things that I can change. I have largely stopped reading the Washington Post, I check the homepage of the BBC, if it is really important, it will be there, the rest is just noise. 

The battle for midterm elections is already starting. And many incumbents are vulnerable based on their recent records. Support in the ways you can, candidates that offer hope for the future. Good people have to show up, support good candidates, and VOTE, or the bastards will win. The key to change is VOTING. 

Warning Political Rant - Look Away If You Are Likely To Be Triggered. 

The foundation of the United States is immigrants, seeking safety, freedom, and opportunity, and escaping from human rights abuses. Few of our ancestors would have said goodbye to family, friends and the life they knew to venture thousands of miles away to a strange land, if they had felt safe, stable and secure in the land of their birth. And immigration continues today. But the United States' vastly outdated immigration laws have created a humanitarian crisis. We have known for decades that the laws don’t work. People with a legitimate claim for asylum are forced into a system that is overloaded and incapable of handling the volume of requests.  The number of immigrants is limited, causing years of limbo and with people waiting for permanent status. 

For much of the last 40 years, the solution to the outdated statutes has been to ignore the law. Much of this happens as people cross the border as tourists and never leave. Our outdated system lacks the ability to track this, and lax enforcement of employment laws allows this to happen. People are here for decades without legal status, working, buying homes, paying taxes, and raising families. The vast majority of illegal immigrants, it may be politically incorrect - but if you are here for more than 90 days without a visa, you are here illegally. The campaign to call them something other than what they are, was ignoring the law, and you don’t change the law by ignoring it. Most illegal immigrants are good neighbors, who earn a living, raise a family, and except for breaking the immigration laws, are law abiding citizens. Ignoring the law does not change the law. The law is out of date and needs to be modernized. 

Ignoring the law has created a humanitarian crisis. People living for decades in the shadow of the law. Never being fully a member of the society - lacking the right to vote - worrying that something as routine as getting a driver's license might trigger a challenge on legal status. Second is enforcing the law, after decades of ignoring the law. This is what is happening today, enforcing laws that have been on the books for decades, and have been widely ignored. This uproots members of our communities, and often sends people to countries they don’t know, don’t understand, or that they fled in fear. Businesses lose loyal employees. Families are ripped apart. 

During the Obama administration, rather than pressure congress to change the law, the decision was made to ignore the law by not enforcing immigration laws for young persons who arrived in the United States as babies and young children, most often brought here by parents or sent to live with family or friends. I understand the desire to help, but again ignoring the law does not change the law. At the time, I understood why we wanted to help, but thought this is going to bite us in the arse on down the road. And it has. With the United States committing deplorable humanitarian abuses. These people grew up in the United States, they are as American as their friends and classmates who were born in the United States. Returning them to the country of their birth is exiling them to a country they know nothing of, often they don’t speak the language fluently, they don’t understand the culture or the laws of where they are being sent. They are lost - dumped unceremoniously in a foreign land. 

The protest today needs to be to Congress, and to every congressional candidate, to update and modernize our immigration laws. We are a huge country, we have a vast ability to embrace the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. Our outdated laws, and a racist administration, cast a deep shadow over the golden lamp of promise that is the United States. The people we are deporting are already here, already a part of our communities, a part of our country. Changing the law is not allowing illegals in, it is making our neighbors, friends, and co-workers legal members of our society.