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Day 1, Entry #1 with Rebecca Royen discussing HB 56 and the concerns with immigration in the state and the U.S.

 

I guess I will go ahead and get the conversation started…

I will be the first to admit that I am not the most knowledgeable on the ins and outs of these bills. I have a general idea of what the immigration law entails and have read about the proposed changes to it. I suppose the perception is that people who are in this country illegally appear to be a drain on our resources and are therefore perceived as being “advantage-takers” or unwelcome members of our collective society. However, in my personal experience, that is a very skewed perception of the issue.

As a whole, the immigrant population of this country, and specifically, this state, seems to be a driven, hard-working, self-sacrificing people. By and large, it seems that they have come to this country because it affords them greater opportunities to work and make a living than they would have possibly had in their native countries. The idea of being able to provide a better life for themselves and their immediate family, as well as often taking care of extended friends and family that may still be in another country, seems very noble to me–much more noble than many members of our society who seem to do what they can to take advantage of this country’s resources simply because they can.

In my experience, there are many Americans who are not interested in contributing to society through entering the workforce or otherwise taking an active role in the betterment to our economy and its growth. They expect “the government,” which, in reality, means the contributing members of society, to take care of them because they deserve it solely by virtue of being born here. It seems to me that if we are supposedly cracking down on illegal immigrants for taking advantage of this country’s resources, then we really have to take a close look at the Americans who are unfairly taking advantage of these resources as well. I do not think we can categorically eliminate people who happen to have not been born in this country as productive members of society.

Hope this gets the conversation going. I’m very interested to see what everyone else has to say about the issue.

* Check out more information about HB 56 as well as stories from those personally affected by HB 56 by checking out Alabama Immigration: Making Sense of HB 56 and They Are Us, community websites created by Kristy Shaulis and Ana Rodriguez.