it's just that i'm human before i'm an american....

thought one:

"[Language] is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: It reveals the private identity, and connects with, or divorces one from the larger public, or communal identity…To open your mouth…is (if I may use Black English) to ‘put your business on the street’” You have confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem and, alas, your future. ~James Baldwin

thought two:

live365.com has a superchevere repertoire of musical delights. so i'm listening to some baccan Nigerian beats and certainly jamming whilst i effect great social change through lesson planning. after a while, i realize, "hey, this is the same song that's been playing..." and i look... the blinking song is 19:54, ok! THAT is music. the one before it was 23:03... next comes on a sister and she starts the Total Prayer 2... her title, not mine. 20:11 ... it's total, for true.

thought three: upon viewing WETBACK, the Undocumented Documentary

So yeah, it was definitely a bit biased, and the complaints of the American citizens (eg: incoming criminals, identity thieves, gangsters, could-be terrorists) were pretty much ignored, but still...

ESPALDAS MOJADAS...
leave families, leave their mothers, leave their parents' graves, leave their born social network, leave home, leave their past, leave their record, run, ride, sit crammed, stand squashed, catch trains, hang on trains, hope not to fall or be pushed off trains, escape corrupt policemen, do not escape corrupt [read: WICKED] policemen, sweat, cry, joke, lose sleep, worry, dehydrate, panic, are robbed, rob, are beaten, fight, are attacked, sneak, swim, drown, walk, walk, walk, walk, trust, distrust, are taken advantage of, relocate, look for a job, swallow their pride, mow lawns, build houses, repair roads, clean apartments, live scared, live illegal, live as non-citizens... BREAK THE LAW...

just to be here.

Me, I was conceived.

I am legal.
I am a CITIZEN.


They are illegal.
"And if you consider someone who breaks the law a criminal..."
criminals, AND
ALIENS.

thought four: upon the same theme...

so, looking at all this from human eyes, and occasionally unlogical ones at that, it's hard for me to be loyaler to "America" than to the prerogative of people who want a better life.

why should i want to preserve american interests? i just happened to be born here, just like you (presumably). really, slightly selfish to criminalize people who happen to be born a little bit south and made their way a little bit north without permission because i don't want them to metaphorically muddy my filtered water of safe American living. can you fathom what its like to be in a situation with no prosperous legal exit?

~ while some thugs will be thugs anywhere (making deporting them all down south not so terribly ethical) crime IS exacerbated here...
~ i hate gangs, gang culture, and gang glamour, as i have possible intimated before... the issues are definitely related; how closely?
~ then there's the issue of everybody else in the whole world whose lot STINKS too and who have oceans, not the rio bravo, to swim to wet THEIR back...
~ i'm confused: what social services are illegal immigrants allowed access to?
~ also, it's not necessarily the healthiest thing for THEM to be in America either. this IS babylon, mind you... there ARE worse things than poverty.
~ oh, yeah... and sympathies aside... it is illegal. so maybe the rule is wretched, but how justified am i in supporting the breaking of ANY law...? ew. i hate ethics.