Weblog

If one will open his or her eyes while walking around my campus, one would be amazed at what can be found. One thing that surprised myself was a vehicle parked in the fire lane behind the J. Alvin Brown Residence Hall. The problem with such should be apparent with the phrase “parked in the fire lane.” Should the need arise for emergency vehicles to service the residence hall, the presence of the vehicle in the fire lane would have hurt the emergency effort.

It is never okay to park in a fire lane. If that were it, I'd be done writing, and this column wouldn't make the press because it would be so short. There was more: campus safety placed a clamp on one of the front tires so that the owner of the car couldn't move it without calling campo and paying the fine for parking in the fire lane. I would hesitate to use the word idiocy to describe it because whoever put the clamp on the tire will probably end up reading this in the campus newspaper, but no other word comes to mind. If having a car unattended in the fire lane was bad enough, now imagine an unattended car in the fire lane that can't be moved. If an emergency event were to occur, campo would have to come out and unclamp the vehicle before the car could even be removed by the owner. Collecting parking tickets seemed more important to campus security that it was willing to take a dangerous situation and make it even more dangerous — a perfect example of self-defeating behaviour.

However, I'm not writing this to complain about the use of wheel clamps on my campus. The topic that I wish to bring up is completely unrelated: immigration. In this country today, there are nearly twelve million undocumented migrants. Whether or not fanatic conservatives wish to admit it, these people contribute substantially to the œconomy of the United States. Still, people across the country are shouting louder and louder to have all illegal immigrants deported from the United States.

Do these people not realise how bad that would be for themselves? They refuse to see that if the immigrants were allowed to stay, work and live here, their lives would be better, this country would be better and, most importantly, the world would be better. Still, instead of doing the right thing, these anti-immigrant folks are pushing to have these immigrants punished at the expense of the general well-being of anyone involved. Even superfanatic conservatives (I cringe as I think of such) are calling for an end to all immigration — legal and illegal.

Does it matter that with a declining birth rate, immigration is the only viable means to even have a sustainable population? More importantly, does it matter that without immigration, we would have a deficiency of workers in our labour force? Most importantly, does it matter that without immigration, we would be seriously lacking good Mexican food? No, having a society free from foreign infestation seems more important to these überfanatics that they are willing to destroy their means of survival — a perfect example of self-defeating behaviour.