Universal trumps global

John Beams climbed down off his Glad Machine long enough to pen the article just under on “undocumented immigrants” for the Daily Punctilio aka the Journal Gazette. Beams apparently is the co-founder of something called the Center for Nonviolence.

As an aside, I don’t know were violence got such a bad name. Violence has ridded the world of the likes of Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, and has the Taliban and al Qaeda on the run. Seems every time some nut job tries to squash people, other people come along and violently squash the squasher. In that sense, isn’t violence a good thing?

Anyway, here’s Beams’ piece, if you can get through it:

Don't criminalize immigrants

People are not “illegal.” To define and describe an entire population this way is wrong. Undocumented immigrants live and work here. They are our friends. They contribute revenue. They pay for services. They are quiet, hard-working people who just want to live. They have babies who are U.S. citizens. They have married our sons and daughters. They sing and have dances and bring joy and color to the community. They want to be our neighbors. They want to be Americans.

The Center for Nonviolence is dedicated to community justice and global peace. The world needs us all to come together in reconciliation. From Northern Ireland to Darfur, almost every point on Earth has been troubled by hatred and violence, sometimes in the name of “lawfulness.” The Center for Nonviolence takes a stand for peace, even when it is not popular to do so.

The Center has welcomed and assisted Latinos and other immigrants for decades. We call upon our community to remember the humanity of each man, woman and child living among us. Let us have a measure of humility as we recall that our own ancestors did not always ask permission before arriving.

We call upon all people to be compassionate enough to remember the humanity of those affected by our public policies. The people of Indiana are faced with legislation (Senate Bill 335) designed to prosecute all “unauthorized aliens” and those who employ and harbor them. We ask that citizens not break the complex fabric of love and trust in our community by hastily adopting this or other legislation criminalizing good people who live and work in our midst.

Before passing more laws, we ask that the people of Indiana learn about the real suffering, anxiety, fear and desperation that these initiatives create on a daily basis.

JOHN BEAMS Co-founder Center for Nonviolence

Now I was told once that newspapers are loath to run sarcasm, other than their own, on the editorial page, least the page devolve into an Onion or Scrappleface type publication. Well blow me down. The editors at the local fish wrap are considering this response – be sure to check out the signature line:

Call it by its name

Other than the fact that it accurately and descriptively calls something by its name, I can’t think of a reason why we insist on calling immigrants who enter our country illegally “illegal immigrants”.

I suppose we could take John Beams’ idea a step further and call the “illegal narcotics” some “undocumented workers” bring into the country “unregulated prescriptions”. I mean come on, who is the Federal Drug Administration to tell “undocumented workers” what drugs are legal here anyway? Get with it.

Only some black hearted moralizing hypocrite can’t see that these narcotics are no worse than cigarettes and beer. Besides, these salt of the earth “undocumented workers” are only providing the “unregulated prescriptions” our kids and the entertainment industry demand.

And could all of you xenophobic isolationists just get over it when one of God’s children, who happens to be an “undocumented worker”, runs a stop sign and plows into a school bus killing four children. Who says “undocumented workers” have to stop at stop signs anyway? That is an awfully narrow-minded point of view. These are hard working people who need to get to their jobs. Stop signs, like borders and other laws, only impede the saints from performing their saintly duties.

Yes, yes by all means, let us demonstrate our compassion and humanity by bringing a permanent underclass into our nation to clean our homes, trim our grass and serve our meals. There cannot be anything immoral about that whole set up. Or can there?

Doug Schumick
Founder, Universal
Peace & Love Through
Superior Firepower &
Border Protection Foundation

Notice how I seized the moral high ground? Beams is only interested in global peace. I on the other hand, being much more high-minded, am interested in “universal” love and peace. And universal is …well…universal.