Do All Lives Really Matter to You?

During World War II, the United States government confined more than 100,000 Japanese immigrants into internment (concentration) camps.  That same government (US—us) at the same time was administering the Bracero Program, which allowed millions of Mexicans to enter the U.S. to work on farms.  Nearly fifty percent of the 1.4 million field workers in the U.S. today are undocumented immigrants (according to the Labor Department).

Arizona passed an anti-immigration bill in 2010 and several other states followed suit.  Undocumented immigrants left those states (80,000 workers left Alabama, for example) with disastrous results.  Georgia’s immigration law led to more than $140 million in unharvested crops in 2011.  Arizona suffered an average 2 percent drop in the state’s gross domestic product every year through 2015 (Wall Street Journal analysis).  In 2011 there were 489,000 unemployed in North Carolina.  The North Carolina Growers Association announced 6,500 available jobs, only 268 applied, and only 163 showed up to work, and only seven finished the season (Partnership for a New American Economy Study).  Let me repeat:  fifty percent of the 1.4 million field workers in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants.  The agricultural industry need these workers and we need these workers, unless we want to pay 10 to 20 percent more for lettuce, grapes, tomatoes, etc., at the supermarket.  Surely Congress can come up with new immigration laws  that would benefit all of us, including the undocumented immigrants.

A typical reaction in response to the Black Lives Matter Movement is to say All Lives Matter.  Do all lives really matter to you? The young 20-year-old woman murdered by an undocumented immigrant in Iowa seems to matter more to some than the young Black woman recently murdered by a White man in California (I’m avoiding names).  If all lives matter, we would express grief and horror over both victims—and grief and concern for the perpetrators as well.  Do all lives really matter?  If so, then no life can be perceived as being more important than any other.  If you can’t walk the talk, then stop using the rhetoric!

The alleged perpetrator in the death of the young Iowan woman is an undocumented immigrant—one out of a half-million field workers (undocumented immigrants) in the United States.  How is it that suddenly all those “half-a-million” field workers are lumped together and become responsible for one violent crime—allegedly committed by one person?