The last few weeks have been insane.
A couple of weeks ago we had a huge student walkout at our school. Of course that was regarding the HR 4437 bill, which will make illegal immigration a felony and helping illegal immigrants a serious crime. Forward, the liberal club, my main club, was support it, but I just couldn't join them.
I've had a lot of people who tell me "Well, you're an immigrant, so you should support them." Well, no. Fuck no. I support anyone who is out there protesting because I believe that people should stand up for their convictions. But I'm not going to protest.
Yeah, I'm an immigrant; I was born in Russia, and my whole family immigrated. But guess what, I'm a LEGAL immigrant. My parents went through insane processes of trying to get out of Russia. The only reasons we were even able to escape that hellhole is because
1. They hate Jews in Russia (and thus wanted us out).
2. My parents have extremely high educations (Ph.Ds and the like) and so America wanted us.
My parents had to go threw tons of crazy meetings, signing papers, etc. They fucking worked to get here. Legally. So don't tell me I should support people breaking the law just because I am also an immigrant.
Imagine there are two very wealthy people. One began a business, worked years and years honestly and ended up making a lot of money. The other one robbed banks, or embezzled money. Is the first supposed to support the second just because they both ended up wealthy, even though one did it fairly and the other did it illegally? Probably not.
Now I do understand why people are coming here. Immigrating here legally is a very difficult process, and there are not the same opportunities for workers in Mexico as there are in America.
I also know that we benefit a lot from having cheap labor. They do jobs that Americans simply will not do, and keep a lot of costs down. But it’s like saying that child labor in other countries is good because we don’t have to pay a lot, and Americans would never work for 10 cents an hour for 15 hours a day. It’s still illegal.
I'm also pissed off because they chose to have the walkout during schooltime. They were offered lunchtime, but they figured they could get the people who actually cared enough to leave class. Well, guess what they got: hundreds of kids who didn't have any idea what was going on, but just wanted to ditch class. Yay for them. I would definitely have gone if it had been during lunch or before/after school, just to get the information.
I did hear that it went really well at our school. Very peaceful, just kids sitting around and discussing. Some crazy shit went down though. As each person went in, they either had to get a 'mugshot' taken, or give their student id. The school admins also did things that are blatantly against the rules. They took my friend Matt's shirt that said "Peace. Love. Anarchy" and his flag that said "No one is illegal" in Spanish. Fuck. There are people who walk around with shirts with beer ads on them which are not allowed, and no one cares. But someone tries to express their beliefs (which is protected by the First Amendment) and they can't!
Bullshit.