For class tomorrow I decided to look up and explore any letters to the editor I could find until I came across something fascinating. Now, the thing that caught my eye was an article written by the mayor of our fine city about immigrants and the letters recieved in response to it.
We must have some SERIOUSLY backwoods people living in Lancaster County, which makes me equally as proud to not have been born here as I am of not having been born in St. Mary's County. Sure all places have their problems but I was too young to remember the problems from my hometown... (besides being born near the Mexican border and being taught French in Pre-School).
To show what I mean:
IMMIGRATION
No comparison
It is very apparent that the mayor of Lancaster (a former defense attorney: If you can afford me, I'll get you off) has little regard ["In My Opinion," Sept. 9] for certain laws of this country.
Illegal aliens (undocumented workers, in the words of the mayor and most liberals) have broken the law of this country. To compare their treatment with the black slaves and their offspring and the legal Irish immigrants to this country is the typical and contrived liberal political/racial rhetoric. If this country is to remain a free and great experiment Mr. Mayor, the law is the law, just as "a rose is a rose is a rose."
-Dick Weber, East Hempfield
Sides with mayor
The "In My Opinion" column by Mayor Rick Gray [Sept. 9] is 100 percent correct. I recall my father telling me union bosses would not hire him for work as a carpenter because he was of Italian descent.
That resulted in his going to night school to learn English. Being able to talk in two languages to immigrants who worked on the Atlantic City trolley line, he became the foreman for some 42 years under six superintendents who knew little about how to run a railroad-track gang.
We must give legal immigrants the same chance we had to pursue a better way of life. As a Roosevelt Democrat all my life, my hat's off to mayor of the great City of Lancaster.
-Henry R. Boney Sr., Reinholds
++++ Alright now to interject here before the next letter lets focus on the fact that the first letter is laying it down, illegal immigrants=illegal (OBVIOUSLY) so that part speaks for itself... the second letter starts to lend itself more towards the emotional side of the argument. Hey, we all immigrated here, or our ancestors did, so we should show some respect to those who are doing it now. A good point but we still need to consider that we have the laws we do for a reason and as such we can't get teary-eyed every time somebody without a green card gets shot down for a job. It puts the employer at risk, it's not fair. There are proper channels to go through to get things done and we need to respect the need for order. Now, back to the show...++++
Speak English
I believe Mayor Barletta [Hazleton] has the proper perspective concerning immigration.
There is the argument that Latinos are learning English like other immigrants. Why, then, do we have to push "1" for English and "2" for Spanish, have bilingual Spanish education, translators in hospitals and public buildings, ballots in Spanish, etc.?
The compassionate thing to do is to have all learn English and become educated so that they, too, may succeed as other immigrants do. If they don't want to, then they may return to the country where they are more comfortable.
-Edward L. Rhawn, Lancaster
++++ So I'll go ahead and say it, this guy is a tool. Sure when we go to foreign countries we're expected to have some vague understanding of their language, but most of us don't. "Mooch-ass Grass-ass sen-or" I mean c'mon. How fair is that, we'll only judge immigrants by their ability to speak our language because, face it, that's what makes them really belong. No, I refuse to accept that. PLUS, Spanish is a beautiful language, why should one have to abandon their heritage to live here? If you head out to the Southwest the good ol' U.S.A. becomes heavily flavored with Mexican and Spanish influence, it's delightful. In cities you've got China Town and Little Italy, we need the cultural differences to improve our country, to gain a better understanding of who we might be.
What makes Edward L. Rhawn of small town Lancaster, PA better than anybody else? Ignorance is a terrible crime, and one could argue that I'm denying him his right to pose his argument in the first place, making myself ignorant to his point, but I'm ok with that. I heard his point and I am positive based on my core values that he is wrong.
I'm Native American (that's right, I claim it, I go there) and maybe I want Ed Rhawn to speak my language.
The whole thing is just bogus and we need to be more accepting of each other. I don't ask him to stop being a narrow-minded jerk and he shouldn't ask an immigrant to speak "his language" because he's too lazy to learn their's.
Ridiculous!
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Well, I dropped the ball on this one. It was my intent to take examples of "cheesy arguments" as an opportunity to examine logical fallacies.
You concede a point to Dick Weber of East hempfield that "illegal immigrants" are, after all, ILLEGAL. Well, yes, if they are ILLEGAL. I guess we have to start somewhere, so let's consider this one. A distinction can (or should) be drawn between what is LEGAL and what is MORALLY UPRIGHT.
We want that which is LEGAL to be MORALLY UPRIGHT, but there is sometimes a disjunct between the two. It may be LEGALLY required that all immigrants to the USA fulfill certain requirements and complete certain paperwork; whether this is MORALLY justified is another question entirely (not that they may not have the same answer -- but they are different questions).
To the best of my knowledge, my ancestors had very little difficulty entering the States (those who came here after the creation of the States); reasonably we may ask why anyone, having arrived here, should be subject to any type of clearance.
Oh, we could argue that we don't want to be admitting any terrorists, but one can be a terrorist on vacation, on the one hand, and on the other, terrorists arise from our fine, upstanding, multiply-generationed Americans. Of course, we try to stop them from terrorizing, too, but anti-terrorism is not a particularly strong argument against open borders.
How about the language issue? My ancestors spoke German in the home right through into the 1970s. Sure, they also spoke English -- after about 1910. Before that, they could easily get all the news and other information they needed in the "comfort" of their native language, German. (Locally, "The Reading Eagle", since the nineteen-teens an English-language paper, was founded as "Der Reading Adler".)
What the writers here do not address, because, as you note, they are tools, and they do not wish too much to give offense, is the very considerable cultural gulf between Latinos and Anglos.
As a general rule, here in Lancaster at any rate, Latinos live with a conspicuously different set of habits and expectations than Anglos. The language issue indicated in the letters you cite is to my mind less of an annoyance than what appears to be a cavalier attitude toward civic hygiene. I am personally amazed to witness Latinos quite deliberately carry trash or recycling -- not in bags but simply as produced -- to the street, and there leave it for someone else or some force of nature to remove it.
This may be a matter of expense -- rather than paying for a hauler, folks simply put their waste in the street, hoping that it will be removed. Certainly, in Lancaster Latinos tend to be less wealthy than Anglos.
But while I think the disparity between "haves" and "have-nots" is part of the distinction between Latinos and Anglos, I think it runs deeper. The Latinos here seem to fall into two basic demographics: those who have a direct connection with agriculture here in Lancaster County and those who do not. Those in the first category may have roots in the area going well back into the last century; those in the second are relative newcomers, certainly within a generation.
Despite their numbers, Latinos in Lancaster have extremely limited political force. While other communities have overcome this hurdle, Latinos have not. In the southwest of the USA, as you note, Latinos have been influential -- but... well, they were there first, no? Not very first, of course, but well before the Anglos. If we figure that the secession of Texas and the German settlement of the Ozarks is basically the first Anglo incursion, then the Latinos have a good three-hundred year lead -- there. Here, you're a descendant of Hans Herr or not worth considering.
But we may well ask why it is that it seems an Anglo from Pennsylvania can go to Arizona or New Mexico and readily establish herself or himself while a Latino from Mexico, say, has a terrible time becoming part of the main culture here.
And here again, a person from Mexico may not be part of the main culture -- but is this really a concern for her or him?
It seems to me that some of these writers are simply concerned that everyone should be like them, so that THEY can be comfortably unchallenged.
As to Weber's "the law is the law"... well, sure, for folks like you, Mr Weber, that may be. But who makes the law? "They" do. The law, in the sense of constitutional law of the USA or of Pennsylvania, is not fixed and immutable. Weber wants to argue that the nature of the law is like the nature of the rose. This is a false analogy. A rose may well change, but it may do that on its own, because it is a living thing. The law is inanimate. Further, a rose as a rose has a fixed nature, while the law as the law has a fixed nature only so long as it serves the purposes of those able to act as legislators.
If the law permitted anyone to emigrate to the states, perhaps Weber would have no objection -- certainly not on legal grounds.
"If this country is to remain a free and great experiment", Weber implies, we must be certain NOT to be free and NOT to be experimental. We must prevent just ANYONE from entering the country without following legal protocols (established NOT by the emigrants, but by those already well-established here); we must experiment, perhaps, but only with the variables we (who have already been established here) prefer. How much is this "great experiment" what it is because of difficult in immigration, or selectivity at an entry point? "Great experiment" implies both a higher degree of consciousness and deliberation than is likely to have been present over time, and some degree of randomness which Weber wants to eschew.
Weber commits a number of fallacies:
1) argumentum ad hominem (abusive and circumstantial attack on the person) against the mayor: first, the statement that the mayor has little regard for law; second, the implication that defense attorneys by nature are corrupt (should we assume that Weber will never require one?). The same fallacy is committed in the next paragraph against "liberals".
2) false cause (non causa pro causa): No inevitable or necessary connection exists between freedom and experimentation and law. A more extended argument is required.
3) faulty analogy between 'rose" and "law" (as noted above).
Henry Boney's letter also includes a fallacy, albeit a somewhat mild one. Again, it is a matter of false cause. Are we truly to believe that Boney's father became a foreman precisely and simply because he knew both English and Italian? It may be true, but there is insufficient argument here to so indicate.
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