I realize I was raised in a small piece of the United States. I always referred to it as a “weird” part of California. Others referred to it as the Bay Area.
You see, the Bay Area is weird in every sense of the word. It’s a place where the minorities can sometimes be the majorities. It’s a place where the stoners can sometimes be your professors. It’s a place where the “American Dream” truly lives.
Where if you work hard, you can make it. Where technology is often the currency of the day. It’s one of the few places in the world where you can hear 3 or 4 different conversations happening in equally different languages. The only other place where I have seen this is NYC and Paris.
In short, it’s a melting pot of cultures and ideas. I think this is really one of the reasons Silicon Valley can exist. I happen to work there, at one of the most famous companies in the world and everyday I see opinions and ideas being valued by the merit of their intellect and data, rather than by the color of the skin of the person giving the opinion.
This idea that immigrants from these certain “Muslim” countries will keep us safe is just silly and if you feel it has any merit, chances are these words will not change your mind. However, keep this in mind… when was the last time, your freedom was encroached by one of the immigrants from the Muslim countries in the Executive Ban? If you are truly honest, you’ll come to realize it’s never happened and will never happen.
Folks from these countries do not want to come to “America” to turn it into their country. They want to come to America to become Americans themselves and to give their children a better opportunity than they have now.
America has always been… well, America. It was always the land of opportunity and inequality. It was always the land of immigrants and racist. It was always the land of the educated and uneducated. But with these silly laws and anti-immigrant sentiments, I am afraid of what it will turn into. Folks always seem to want to go back to the Golden Time of America, the 1950s. I always wonder what it is about the 50s they miss so much? Is it the smoking? The telephone communication? The 3 channels on TV? Or is it the fact the was a ruling class? I wonder if these same people think they’d get a piece of the ruling class simply by “voting” for it? Silly rabbits.
Anyway, from the “Mother of Exiles” AKA refugees…
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
