The title specifies Mexican, but within the confines of this post I’ve selected the term “Mexican” to represent all populations of immigrants; part of the reason I made that decision is to parody–then educate–the large numbers of ignorant people out there who refer to everyone and anyone from Latin America as “Mexicans.”  If you’re interested in offending me and the 474,373,897 people that live in Latin America, and aren’t Mexican, then ándale, baby.  Go ahead, try me.

The other day I’m standing in line in CVS. The line was being held up, because a little boy of approximately 10 years in age was counting a series of worn dollar bills out one by one, reaching up timidly and placing each one gently atop the other on the red counter in a neat pile.  He painstakingly listened to the amount the cashier was asking for and tried to match it with the bills he fingered in between his small, delicate hands.  His mother stood on with his younger siblings, all three awaiting the completion of the transaction in nervous anticipation.  A quiet, pleading look of desperation remained fixed in the mother’s eyes, as her long, dark hair served only to shield a portion of her humble humiliation and loss of dignity.

The customers in line remained silent, as a thin but noticeable veil of awkwardness cast itself over the store. Right then, I heard the sigh.  She was middle-aged, with a highlighted blond bob, a leopard print scarf tied neatly around her neck and unusually large pearls dangling from her earlobes.  The frosty pink lipstick goes without saying.  I shot her my most deadly oh-no-you-didn’t death stare, and immediately felt my heart sink.

Impatient sighs transcend language barriers.

And in this case, this particular impatient sigh communicated a second meaning as well, one of apathy and rejection.

Now, raise your hand if you think that standing there at that counter would be easy, as a mother who has perhaps just newly arrived in a foreign country, can’t yet speak the language, doesn’t have a single ally, isn’t familiar with the customs or social norms, is confused, scared and uncertain of everything, including the people, and now has some cold, pretentious BMW bitch sighing at her? If I had to guess, I’d argue that coming to the United States has to be one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do in her life.  I’d also argue that what she’s doing sounds a lot like some other people I happen to know…

Yes, that’s right…lifestyle designers.

No administration could stop the tidal wave of immigration that swept over the land; no political party could restrain or control the enterprise of our people, and no reasonable man could desire to check the march of civilization.

Nelson A. Miles

That woman is not here in this country because she wants to piss you off.  She is not here so she can try and sneakily take advantage of the welfare system, she is not here to make every attempt to destroy the “culture” of the United States, and she is certainly not here on spring freaking break.  She is here because, despite the soul-sucking, spirit diminishing flat-out shitty challenges she faces each day, the quality of her life is still 10 times greater than it was before.

As aspiring lifestyle designers–and human beings in general–isn’t that exactly what we’re all seeking?  Greater quality of life?  Yet, our fellow Americans who gripe and moan and complain about immigrants are the same ones who would eagerly pat us on our backs, were we to make the decision to run off and relocate to Costa Rica–likely praising us for our sense of adventure–when, in essence, we are doing nothing more than what immigrants to the U.S. are doing: Seeking a better life. The only difference is that our definitions of what constitutes “a better life” vary. For a Mexican, they are coming to the United States largely due to a severe lack of economic resources in their home country, and are seeking to gain an economic advantage. (You actually think they wanted to leave their family and everything they knew behind, to come to a country where they’ll be routinely called derogatory names like “wetback” and be looked down upon?  Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart.)  For us, we have already experienced what it’s like to have an economic advantage, and now we are in search of exactly what the Mexican likely left at home: tranquility, sense of community, an escape from the capitalistic pressures that define our society.

That said, beyond the fact that a sombrero is clearly way cooler than a comb over, I have much greater respect for a Mexican immigrant than I do a corporate CEO. It seems more virtuous to be a Mexican immigrant, putting your life, your pride and your family on the line in order to simply have the possibility of an opportunity to work–and not just any work, but hard, back-breaking work, which is what’s available to them–than a CEO who went to college (likely because that’s what everyone does these days; not because he had some yearning desire to learn), and then just leisurely fell into some company in which, by simply showing up everyday in one of five rotating suits, doing what he’s told and filling out some reports, he managed to work his way up the predictable corporate ladder.

The next time you see someone struggling with a language barrier, looking lost, confused, or needing help, I encourage you to remember, unless you’re Native American, you, too, were once an immigrant. We are a nation of immigrants.  We don’t have one dominant culture; English isn’t even the official language of the United States.  (Fact.) Hey, I have a good idea, everybody!  Let’s all immigrate to the United States for decades and decades, and then one day let’s just decide to shut our doors.  No more! Does that sound good to everyone? Have some compassion, people.

There was a time when we [the U.S.] had completely unrestricted immigration, when anybody could come to these shores and the motto on the Statue of Liberty had some real meaning. This was a country of hope and of promise for immigrants and their children, and as many as a million immigrants a year came in 1906 and ’07 and ’08. By 1914, roughly a third of the population was foreign-born or the immediate descendants of foreign-born…The fact that year after year hundreds of thousands of people left the countries of Europe to come to this country was persuasive evidence that they were coming to improve their lot, not to worsen it.

Milton Friedman

Anyone who has taken a leap of faith to be here, deserves to be here, and they deserve your respect and kindness, too. We should be grateful to embrace the wonderful cultural diversity that they offer us, in turn helping us to become more worldly, understanding, knowledgeable human beings.  Not to mention the contributions they make to our economy, contrary to popular myth, which you can read more about here, in a study conducted in August of this year that shows that immigrants actually help Americans move up. Read it. Although I don’t believe that immigrants hurt the economy, I do believe that if we could stop thinking in terms of monetary value for once, and start thinking in terms of what’s humane, the immigration debate would be a lot less of a debate.

The point I’m making with all of this?  Simple.

Homogeny is boring.

Immigrants are good people, too.

Don’t be a tool.

The end.