Josh's Open Letter

Dear Arizona,

       I am a student at Arizona State University West, and was once as closed minded as you are. Immigrants from Mexico, and everywhere else should be welcome to cohabit with us. We should be so lucky to adapt some of their values. I feel that we way to often associate Mexican-Americans negatively because of the small amount of trouble makers that have come over. Well wake-up a little. Have you recently watched an episode of Cops? Ninety-five percent of the cases are from legal Americans. We have our trouble makers too. Who doesn’t? We can not hold it against the good people that live here, work hard, and raise their families with the same values and morals that they have. Truth is we could not survive if it were not for these hard working people. Who would work in landscaping in our 110 degree heat? Who would continue to work in construction in July? My feeling is that these hard, intense, yet low paying jobs would become seasonal. Our valley expansion and continuing appreciation would no longer be. We would be stuck in a rut, unless of course our Americans that have been on welfare for the past five to ten years instantly received the desire to work at a rate less than they make now on the couch watching Jerry Springer and Maury Povich. Truth is we owe these outstanding men and women a debt of gratitude for the work they put in, mostly for our benefit. They get no praise, no reward, and no standard of living increase. They are just happy to be here, with their families if possible, to make a better life for themselves, but also for us. We tend to become so into our own lives that we seldom look outside the box. If we did, we would not be aggressively passing laws to prohibit these people from a live unlike they would otherwise know. I do, however, not believe that we should just look the other way and allow anybody and everybody in to America. We need to screen people, but that can all be done. We just need to become more open-minded and sympathetic to other peoples needs. We need to stop only thinking of ourselves.