Tuesday Boredom: Immigration and Change

2:00 Tuesday, nothing to do, and nowhere to go. I'm in the lame duck time period at my current job, so I have little to no responsibilities, and a lot of time to think.

I wonder where America went. When I was in elementary school I remember that America seemed like America, and that same old cliche about the dream seemed alive and well. A scant 16 years later, the entire climate has changed. Property values are sky high, above what most people can seem to afford on normal wages, gas prices are through the roof, and I'm moving to Charlottesville and hoping to God that I can buy a house in a year before it all falls apart.

Like I said in my opening post, I think that America has sort of been undone by its own popularity, by people hanging onto the system without contributing, by complacence, by a number of things. The 1950's are long gone, and I dont think they'll come back in my lifetime.

And then I think about the speech that Bush gave last night. We talked about it at work today for a little, and it was said that Bush's speech was two faced. He talked about us being a nation of immigrants and laws, he suggested that illegal immigration was a problem that didn't deserve amnesty but offered amnesty at the same time. The problem seems to be more that America is hanging on by small threads in the global marketplace. Corporate interests are in keeping illegal immigrants illegal. They, along with China's forced exchange rates, and other factors, are artificially keeping inflation down in America. It's almost like we're living in this system that has just had a triple bypass surgery, and now the other arteries are blocking up. We just haven't quite felt the angina yet.

Maybe I'm completely wrong to say that we're doomed. Maybe America is in the middle of one of its cycles. Maybe the Depression in the 30's seemed like the end of the dream.

And perhaps the most interesting of my theories. Maybe with all of this interconnectedness and information that pulses through us every day via the internet and cell phones, humans just don't know how to filter it all and turn it into something that makes sense. And without these mechanisms, and with the sensationalist attitudes of the media, I just turn and worry. All I know is that illegal immigration is a problem, and for once, I don't know how to balance my compassion for people just trying to make it in the world with my want for a system of democracy and economics to function well. It's odd how Americans have seemed to bear this burden for the entire world for the last 60 years.

We used to know how to handle it. Hopefully we can figure it out again.

-K