How many ignorant Pollacks does it take to write to a Senator?

This woman wrote to Senator Obama about immigrants from Mexico:

Subject: My reply to Senator Obama on Immigration

Senator Obama,

I am replying to your reply. I am a supporter of yours and truly hope that you will run for the

Presidency in 2008. I know that is asking a lot of you and your family.

However, I must say that I do not agree with all of your views on this immigration problem.

I along with I am willing to bet 90% of Americans want the illegals deported back to the

Mexico which has the largest amount of illegals in this country.

I want to know why the illegals from other countries are deported and not the Mexicans???

I am of Polish heritage and we just had a Polish couple who came here several years ago

and when their visa expired they remained here. They were a young couple and married. They had bought a condominium and both worked. Then one day the immigration people

knocked on their door and took them and deported them back to Poland.This just happened recently in the last couple months. My daughter knew the young woman because she painted nails in the nail salon where my daughter has her nails done.

Now I want to know why our immigration authorities will deport the Polish and not the Mexicans. At least the Polish all work hard and pay their bills and save their money to buy their home here. They learn to speak English and most today learn English in Poland and

speak very good English. They are proud to live here and they don't march for rights and

they don't demand to get everything free. They don't sneak into this country. They come on

a visa even if they stay after the expiration date but they come here legally even if it is on a

temporary basis. I don't see them going on Public Aid and I don't see them sending all of

their money back to Poland. They don't come here and have a baby immediately so they

can scream that their child or children are citizens and they have a right to stay.

I would like an answer to this question as to WHY ARE THE POLISH DEPORTED AND NOT THE MEXICANS? THIS IS DISCRIMINATION. I am going to get the Polish communities

to start marching for equal rights. I am going to send notice of this recent deportation to

all the Polish organizations.

This is America and we speak English here. They can speak whatever language they want

in their homes but outside of the homes and in the businesses and schools it MUST BE ENGLISH.

I haven't seen the Polish demand that everything be in Polish. They speak English and

speak Polish in their homes and among themselves.

Now I want equal rights for the Polish people.

Elaine K.

Des Plaines, IL
------------------------- my reply is below:

This woman is citing only one family as an example of people of Polish nationality who were here in the U.S. illegally being deported. This is known as anecdotal evidence--a logical fallacy that creates a very weak argument. Because of this, she jumps to an erroneous conclusion that Polish people are being deported by immigration officials, while Mexican people are not.

When I read her assertions, I spent only five minutes on the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' website (formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or the INS) and got the facts. They have a spreadsheet which shows how many people were deported in the year 2004 (the most recent year for which they supply statistics) and their country of origin: http://www.uscis.gov/graphics/shared/statistics/yearbook/2004/Table36.xls

Get ready for this, Elaine. I know facts are bothersome to bad arguments, but the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2004:

• deported a total of 1,241,089 people
• deported 1,142,807 Mexicans (a whopping 92% of all deportations!) back to Mexico
• deported only 440 Polish people (a tiny .0003% of all deporations) back to Poland.

Oh, my God! No wonder Elaine is so upset! The immigration authorities are really out to get Polish people. She's right. It's soooooooooooo unfair! Whaaaaaa!

Seriously though, Elaine heard of one family she cares about being deported and was upset by that. That's understandable. But then she gets racist. She states that the Polish immigrants:

--all work hard and pay their bills and save their money to buy their home here (all Polish immigrants work hard and pay their bills? I know a Polish couple that immigrated to the U.S. and drank themselves literally to death, causing the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services to take protective custody of their three young daughters--who we taxpayers are now subsidizing)

--learn to speak English (not true--I know several Polish immigrants who only speak Polish)

--are proud to live here (has she conducted a poll of Poles asking if they are proud to be here? What was the sample size in the poll? The margin of error?)

Next, Elaine lists several bad things she claims that Polish immigrants don't do, but implies that Mexican immigrants do:

--they don't march for rights and they don't demand to get everything free

--they don't sneak into this country

--they come on a visa even if they stay after the expiration date but they come here legally even if it is on a temporary basis

--go on Public Aid and send all of their money back to Poland.

--They don't come here and have a baby immediately so they can scream that their child or children are citizens and they have a right to stay.

As a counselor who has provided services in the homes of people in two counties in the Chicago suburbs for the past seven years, I have had the privilege to work with families born in this country, as well as families who immigrated from around the world, including several Polish and Mexican families. I have seen both Polish and Mexican families who work hard, pay their bills and save their money to buy a home in the U.S.. I have seen both Polish and Mexican families who learn to speak English (and some from both countries who don't). People from both nationalities seem equally proud to live here.

I wonder how many Mexican people Elaine actually knows. Can she point to specific Mexican immigrants who "demand to get everything free," are "on Public Aid," send "all their money back to Mexico," "come here and have a baby immediately so they can scream that their child or children are citizens and they have a right to stay?" I know many Mexican immigrants and I don't know a single one that fits into any of Elaine's categories. I'll bet she also can't point to one specific person who immigrated from Mexico who is doing ANY of these things that she is complaining about. In fact, I'll bet she doesn't even know one Mexican person. I'll bet that those qualities that Elaine attributes to Mexican immigrants truly exist in only one person: Elaine. Those qualities exists as an ignorant, uninformed, racist construct in Elaine's mind--not in any person she actually knows. If she doesn't know enough Mexican immigrants to intelligently form her opinions of them, then WHERE do these contructs come from? The same places that other stupid white people get their misinformation from: yeah, I'm talking to you, FoxNews, CNN, MSNBC, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, the Heritage Foundation and other conservative purveyors of hate and ignorance.

In a supposedly enlightened society, shouldn't we all understand that there are good and bad people in every gender, race, nationality, religion, etc.? Whenever you attempt to dismiss or denigrate an entire group of people, it is YOU who looks foolish.

I suspect that Elaine's letter to Senator Obama will be read by one of his staffers who will simply add one more tick mark to the tally of ignorant, racist letters regarding immigration that his office receives daily, then dispose of it. But as a man whose father was an immigrant from Kenya, and who himself immigrated with his mother from Indonesia back to the U.S., and who has been exposed to horrid racial attitudes throughout his life, I suspect that Senator Obama wouldn't appreciate Elaine's racist immigrant-bashing.

And I remember as a child, we used to tell some jokes that seemed fun and harmless at the time. But looking back, they were mean. They started like this: "How many Polacks does it take to..." You know, the ones about screwing in a lightbulb. But then I grew up, developed a more sophisticated view of life and people, and no longer make those kinds of jokes. And I no longer subscribe to the notion that people of Polish (or any other) descent are stupid or otherwise inferior in any way. Come to think of it, I haven't heard a "Polack joke" in over 20 years.

I wonder if Elaine is old enough to remember those mean jokes and stereotypes about her people.

I wonder if Elaine is glad that Americans have dropped those stereotypes about Polish people and fully accepted them into the melting pot of America.

I wonder if Elaine will ever pass along that kindness and drop her own stereotypes about Mexican people.