Yesterday, Americans who immigrated from Mexico (both legally and illegally) held a party in Chicago billed as the “fiesta of illegals”.
The idea was to put a lighthearted spin on the issue of people sneaking into the US, highlighting their valuable contributions to society.
Not everyone was happy though. Some were worried about appearing to mock US immigration laws by being flippant about an issue as serious as respecting a nation’s laws and borders.
Others were unhappy about the word illegal being used at all. They don’t like the word illegal being employed to describe people who break the law by not coming here legally, the way others do.
The really educational part of the story, though, comes in the last paragraph of the article linked above (isn’t that always the case).
Arreola [a Mexican native who is political director at the Illinois Coalition] said he sought to diversify the event, but couldn’t because other ethnic groups that could benefit from immigration reforms, such as the Chinese or Polish, are ashamed to highlight those among them without legal status.
That would be what is called a teaching moment, if only the organizers of this ill conceived event were attending the class.
