According to a CNN.com article, an American woman wrote to President Obama asking for his help in resolving her husband’s immigration problem. The hubby’s bid for political asylum had been denied a decade ago, and the man has been dodging immigration authorities since then, remaining in the country illegally.
The guy has not been sitting on his laurels in the meantime, however: the couple got married five years ago, and he finished an engineering degree two years ago.
Having entered the U.S. legally myself, with the intent to marry a U.S. citizen, and being therefore familiar with the process, I find it difficult to understand how a guy who managed to get an engineering degree failed to take care of this problem a long time ago. His wife is even a VP at a marketing firm. Surely they had the financial and intellectual resources to determine the best course of action to change his status.
The President isn’t a 911 operator or an immigration attorney. If you get arrested for dodging a deportation order, your lawyer is your first phone call. The President has taken an oath to uphold the laws of this country; should he personally help you find loopholes around them just because you know how to write a letter and lick a stamp?
I don’t agree with how the man was detained, as described by the article in question, but this piece is written with such an obvious slant that I have to wonder what’s being left out.
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Mika Salakka is a Finn living in the United States. He is a nursing assistant, a creative writer, a devoted husband, and an observer of the human condition. His interests range from music and literature to psychology, sociology, medicine, technology, and spirituality.
Mosque Building Plan At 9/11 Site Is Not The Best Of Ideas
July 16, 2010
in Commentary,Equality,Society & Culture
I don’t really care to argue or reiterate the points made by the plan’s proponents; they are right to want to expose people to a more fair and balanced examination of Islam than what the average American gets from watching television. It is also incorrect, in the factual sense, to view the proposed mosque as a monument to terrorism. Any educated brain knows that the terrorists who flew jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not terrorists simply because they were Muslims, just like Timothy McVeigh did not bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City just because he was a Republican, a Roman Catholic, and a member of the NRA.
The true evil of terrorism lies in the acts themselves and their perpetrators, and not in the core beliefs held by millions of people which happen to be shared, supposedly, by these terrorists. How many homosexuals have been beaten to death on a city street somewhere by people who consider themselves to possess Christian values?
So, with the blatantly obvious out of the way, why do I agree that building this mosque at Ground Zero is a bad idea, even though I don’t see an equation between celebrating Islam and propagating terrorism?
Because it’s a bad idea, and everyone involved knows it, yet they decided to pursue it anyway. This is not a matter of differences in religious or ideological stances. Racism, homophobia, women’s suffrage – these were and are valid social issues, and yes, sometimes reform in these cases is not achieved through quiet contemplation. However, many Americans equate terrorism with Islam, and they fear Islam because they don’t really know much about it. In other words, they are not necessarily objecting to specific values held by Islam, they are simply afraid of what they don’t know.
There is no reason that I am aware of why this mosque has to be built at Ground Zero. I guess the sentiment is that if we build this mosque, and people will be more readily exposed to it, in time we will learn more about Islam. Perhaps. But these good intentions will eventually be overshadowed by public outcry and eventual vandalism. This “building of peace” will be a magnet for every local yahoo. It has not even been a full decade since 9/11. While it may be true that it’s unfair to blame Islam for 9/11, it is nevertheless illogical to proceed with this plan and expect an outcome that is of a different nature than what we are already seeing
Tagged as: 9/11, bigotry, injustice, Islam, prejudice, racism, religion, Society, terrorism
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