An evangelical Christian conservative “friend” on Facebook, and a big Trump supporter, continues her ongoing rant against illegal immigrants. (However, I don’t remember her ever discussing the subject before Trump made it a center piece of his campaign.) This time she posted a picture of guy who was obviously was arguing with a brick wall. On the picture was printed the following message, “Trying to explain to liberals the difference between legal and illegal immigrants.” This was one of the times I took the bait and replied on her timeline. When I checked for replies to my response in about an hour or so, she had deleted my reply, a sure sign that she was unable to respond intelligently. So I decide to share my response here. (Please understand that I live in Alabama so this response was originally written for local consumption.)
“Total BS – we know the difference, but in illegal immigrants we see hard working people trying to provide for their families and who are vital to our American economy. Go ahead and kick them all out of the country and watch the GDP go into negative territory and your cost of living go up. Much of the produce that your family enjoys will vanish from your tables, the price of meat, especially chicken, will sky rocket, the cost of construction will rise, your motel room on next vacation will cost you more, just to site a few examples. Inflation will become real problem again. If you don’t believe what I am telling you,, consider this example. Illegal immigrants make up between 50% and 70% of American farm workers. If they don’t tend and pick the crops, most of that produce wan’t get to market, and what does, you won’t be able to afford.”
“But heck, don’t let that deter you. You conservatives in Alabama have been voting against your economic best interests your entire life, so don’t stop now. Along with many red states, Alabama receives far more in federal funds than its population pays in federal taxes. For every dollar we Alabamians pay in federal taxes, over two dollars of federal funds is spent in our state. Only a financial idiot wouldn’t like that deal. And yes, while you will certainly deny it, you do benefit from those federal dollars. Federal funds make up 36.64% of Alabama’s state revenue. That money is spent with the companies where you work, on the school that your children attend, on the roads that you drive on, etc. However, like financial idiots, you consistently to vote to reduce federal spending along with lowering the federal tax rates. Given the deal like we get, that is the definition of stupidity in action. Who votes against their selfish self interest? Answer, you do.”
“But I digress, back to the illegal immigrants. Never mind that kicking all of the illegal immigrants out of the country will cost approximately 500 billion of your tax dollars. Those are federal tax dollars that I would rather see spent fixing our crumbling roads and bridges, finding and arresting terrorists, and/or taking better care of our disabled veterans, to name a few things. But never mind that, press ahead! However, until you can get all of the illegal immigrants kicked out of the country, talk to all of your very conservative business owner friends who hire them. If they couldn’t get jobs they wouldn’t be here.”
“And here’s the bottom line – probably your biggest problem with illegal immigrants is that they don’t look like you and they don’t speak like you. They have a different culture. They are different, and you don’t like different. If the illegal immigrant living next to you was from England or Australia you probably wouldn’t give a damn. That means you are just plain prejudice, but hey, we have a long history of prejudice to uphold in the state of Alabama. I know you will deny that charge outright, but you alone know the darkness that hides deep down in your soul.”
Cajun 5/4/2017