A Minor Matter

I walked into choir practice last night, and almost walked right back out again.

No, it wasn't the director's choice of music. I might have chosen something different, but I'm not the director.

It was the copyright notice. There at the bottom of the page, that little c in the circle and the publisher's name. Then "All rights reserved. No copies of this music may be made for any use, including emergency, home, church [etc.] . . . ."

But the choir director passed out photocopies to the choir.

It's unfair to the writers and publishers of the music. It's against the law. It's dishonest. And I won't participate.

I'll try to send an email to the director and get the whole story--maybe there is an explanation. But if not, I find another choir to sing with.

One Month and Counting

We sold the family car one month ago today. For the first time since January 1, 1982, we are carless.

As the old Alka-Seltzer ads said, What a relief it is!

Now, I realize that for many of you non-readers out there (does anybody read this thing?), going carless in modern America would be impossible. All I can say to you is "Too bad!"

But, how do we get around? you ask.

It's easy--for us (admittedly not for everybody, or even for mostbody [why isn't that a word?]).

One: walk! Amazing, isn't it. Even though our 50th birthdays are receding in the now departed rear-view mirror, we can still walk. And we do. To the butcher, the baker, the drycleaner, the grocer, the bank, etc., etc. (It helps to live in Brooklyn, New York, a liveable city, not some arid, built-for-cars-not-people blot on the landscape.)

Second: bicycles. My wife rides her bicycle the mile to work. I work at home so the commute is shorter. Errands to shops more than five or six blocks away are also done by bike. I rode to a client's office yesterday by bicycle, and make my daily runs to Staples, my satellite office, by bike as well.

Third: public transportation. Again, we're blessed to live in a city that gives us this option. I've found that many of the places I go regularly can be reached nearly as fast by subway as by automobile. And, I get 20 or 30 minutes of reading time each way, instead of 20 to 30 minutes of aggravation.

Fourth: by car. Ok, I know I told you that we got rid of the car. That's only 99% true. We got rid of all the hassle, and a huge portion of the expense. We own a fractional share in a whole lot of cars, sort of. Zipcar. For $50 a month we have about six hours of car, and every hour above that is between $8.50 and $12.00. So, for the trip to the supermarket or Costco, or the run to the airport, we have a car "when [we] need it" to paraphrase Zipcar's PR folks. And, for that $50, we get the car--insured, fueled, garaged, repaired, complete. All we pay for is tolls and tickets. And the car is new. And I expect that it'll continue to be new--no 5- or 10-year-old rattletraps.

Fifth: by taxi. For the times that the Zipcar doesn't make sense, and public transportation is a hassle (like my daughter's trip to the airport 3 weeks ago--I gave her a hug at our curb, instead of the curb at LaGuardia--no difference), we get a cab.

And, what do I miss?

• paying for insurance, gas, oil, new exhaust systems, tires, repairs, parking tickets, etc.
• alternate side of the street parking rules (only in New York, I know)
• having my radio stolen
• looking for a parking place
• swearing at the traffic on the BQE--now it's the subway system that catches it

And, I get to feel righteous about not polluting the air or clogging the roads.

There is one thing I really do miss--taking my 4-year-old yellow Lab Abby to the park in the mornings. The Zipcar rules say No Pets, and it's too far to walk.

But, if I can get her to ride in a bicycle trailer, we'll be in business!

And a Strip Miner Shall Lead Them

CNN reports that Kennecott Copper is developing a large (144 square miles) parcel of currently undeveloped land in southwestern Salt Lake Valley. Among the features of this development:

• No garages on the fronts of houses--they're all back in the alleys
• Lots of parks--within a five minute walk of any home
• Village "centers" with shops, grocers, restaurants, etc., again within a five minute walk of any home
• Front porches on most homes
• Miles and miles of walkways and bicycle paths
• No aluminum siding or fake cobblestone veneers on homes
• Connections to the center of Salt Lake City by highway and light rail

As you can expect, some of the builders Kennecott invited to bid on the project "rolled their eyes" and walked away from it. I guess they're too busy building McMansions.

But, what a great idea! To make an urban community that's pleasant to live in, convenient without the use of that gas-guzzling behemoth SUV--it's almost unheard of outside the left leaning coasts.

The shame of it is that for the past 60 years the heirs to the Mormon pioneers, who built an intermountain empire on the bedrock of community, have instead been building on the shifting sands of self-centeredness, and it took a gentile strip mining corporation to reintroduce community to the Wasatch Front.

I'd be Embarrassed

Carlos de Icaza, the Mexican Ambassador to the United States was on C-Span a few days ago to talk about U.S. immigration reform and the widespread demonstrations in U.S. cities the past two weeks.

He said what you'd expect--that Mexico supports strengthening ties with the U.S., that the border needs to be brought under control, that smugglers and bandittos need to be arrested. He referred to the U.S. as the richest, most powerful nation in the world. He spoke of the essential work of the U.S. being accomplished with the help of Mexican labor.

But, he didn't mention the elephant in the corner--the thing that should make him hide his face in shame. And nobody asked the questions that ought to be asked of Vicente Fox and all the rest of the oligarchs who run the Mexican government.

And that is:

Why on earth doesn't Mexico work?

Why does Mexico, a land rich in resources (including petroleum) have to "export" a tenth of its population to el Norte?

Why is it that remittances from that tenth to families back home constitute the second largest component of Mexican national income (after Petroleos Mexicanos)?

What is so wrong with the Mexican polity/economy that the aforementioned 10 percent risk death in the desert, abuse by los coyotes and arrest by Customs and Border Protection so they can come here and work without benefit of unions, workers compensation, pensions, etc., etc., and struggle at surviving in a foreign culture, all instead of staying in Mexico?

Hey, amigos, China is doing it (and there are a billion of them). Singapore has done it. Korea (at least the non-"Peoples" Republic of Korea) has done it (and what a economic basket case it was in 1953). Japan did it (although prostrate in 1945, and in deep waters recently). So what is it with Mexico?

I don't want to be misunderstood, Ambassador de Icaza. I am not one of those raw meat anti-immigrant yahoos who think that all "illegal" immigrants should be deported tomorrow. Or ever. I agree generally with the Senate Judiciary's approach to legalization of those currently out of status. I'm tempted to say "Amen" to what Mayor Bloomberg said last week about the issue: who's fooling whom? they're here, and we're not going to deport them. So, let's welcome them into our nation and let them become legal residents, and citizens if they desire.

But, for the sake of the Mexican people, who should have a chance to flourish in their homeland, who should be able to build up their own communities in their own rich culture, and in their own language, without the terrible stresses of moving to a new land, and a new culture and a new language, it's time to hold you, sir, and your government accountable for what you have failed to do!

And because of that failure, which has continued altogether too long, you should hide your face. Either because your nose is to the grindstone, working on ways to make Mexico work. Or from shame.

Undocumented Entrants

Two posts on Times and Seasons, here and here, serve to illustrate the difficulty I have with restrictionist immigration policies.

Those two lovely babies entered the United States without inspection (no passports, no visas, no Customs and Border Protection officer to usher them in).

They didn't have to wait for their priority dates to become current.

They didn't have to wait for USCIS to process their paperwork.

They didn't need labor certification, although their mothers would likely certify that labor was involved. No employer had to show that they will not take a job where there is an able and willing American worker available to fill it.

They couldn't pass the English proficiency test, to say nothing of the U.S. government and civics test. Not only are they illiterate, they cannot even talk. No English, no Spanish. Nothing.

They are unlikely to pay taxes for nearly two decades, and they will be a net drain on resources, governmental and familial, for years.

And, on top of all that, their ancestors probably immigrated to the United States without fulfilling many of those requirements. Odds are, they paid their passage, got listed on the passenger manifest, and came ashore in New Orleans or New York or Boston or Baltimore or Philadelphia--no passport, no visa, no USCIS paperwork, no sponsoring relative or employer, no labor certification, no priority dates, nada, nichts, nani mo nai.

My guess is that there were at least two babies born last week in Puebla, or Tabasco, or Jalisco, or Chihuahua. Explain to me why they should be denied the opportunity to come to the United States if they want, to try to make a better life for themselves here than would be possible there. And "they are Mexicans" is not an explanation.

Immigration for Dummies

No, this isn't a "how-to" guide for all you travel agents and insurance salesmen who want to start practicing immigration law without a license.

It's a brief explanation and diatribe about what's wrong with the Lou Dobbs-Bill O'Reilly-Tom Tancredo-James "I'll make you nostalgic for our Sen. Joe McCarthy" Sensenbrenner school of "fixing" immigration by building a new version of the Berlin Wall across the southern border.

You can't build a barrier high enough to stop it, folks.

Just as the Berlin Wall didn't stop Peter Fechter (right) and countless others from trying to escape the tyranny of the Communist rulers, no wall, no motion sensors, no stepped-up patrols by Customs and Border Protection, no denial of drivers licenses and social security cards and education and health care and citizenship for children born here can stop the longing of people for freedom, for a chance to earn a decent living, for a chance to eat tonight before they go to bed.

That's the explanation. Here comes the diatribe.

The blowhards over in the anti-immigrant gallery talk as if leaving one's home to travel to a foreign land is easy. Blinded as they are by the great shibboleth illegal, they forget how much these people give up to come here:

Why don't you, Lou, move to a foreign land and learn a foreign language?

Don't pick an easy one, like Spanish. How about Japanese? Or Finnish? Something with a lot of tenses and cases and genders.

Then, spend your life trying to get by in that language.

Do it without help from any social service agency.

And, do it working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week as a presser in a dry cleaners, or a drywall installer, or a day laborer, waiting by the train station hoping that someone will drop by and offer you work for the day.

Then, live in a dump. How about an old house that's been divided into 15 rooms, each inhabited by one or two or five people in the same situation as you--sharing one kitchen and a toilet and a shower. Pay 60% of your weekly wages as rent? Send another 20% home to your family, who would starve without the help you send.

It takes a pretty powerful force to get people to leave their native land, where they can talk to anybody without a struggle, where they know and are known by the folks around them. Maybe the folks in Puebla don't believe the tales of how difficult it is in New York, or Albuquerque, or Victorville. Maybe they still think that the streets of the United States are paved with gold.

That force is freedom and economic opportunity. It's time you folks in the anti-immigrant lobby return to your Laffer curve, your voodoo economics. Quit trying to control immigration by raising the barriers to entry. Instead, reduce that force that is drawing people in. Reduce freedom in this country. Line everybody up and issue a national identification card. Don't let people travel without it. (Sounds like the old Soviet Union--remember how bad we thought it was that someone needed an "internal passport" to travel from some godforsaken rathole to another in that land of socialist opportunity!) Suspend habeas corpus, beginning with anyone who isn't a citizen. And, shut down the economy. Nothing like a nationwide depression and 25% unemployment to end the problem with illegal immigration. Hell, we won't have to deport them. They'll be digging tunnels under the new Berlin wall to get back to Mexico.

In the end, all the anti-immigration arguments are reducible to "We got here first, and we don't want to share the good things that we've got" or "They're not like us (ideal Americans) and they'll change this ideal America that we live in." We're all immigrants--the only thing that distinguishes one from another is how long ago we got off the boat.

And one of the founding principles of America--it's even in the Constitution, baby--is that there is no aristocracy, no nobility, no titles.