Chrissy Olinger

A
newly crimsoned Cardinal-- O'Malley-- is creating controversy for the Catholics again, but this time he's actually following the teachings of his faith. Go figure. Like that funny dude with the beard who welcomed all sinners in that melting pot of Israel, O'Malley put forth the bizarre idea that a Christian church should consider itself separate from state and ignore immigration laws that might-- say, for instance-- be directly contrary to Christ's teaching.

But wait a second, this isn't about church and state, it's about the WAR ON TERROR.

I do think it fascinating that so many privateers in the mighty battle against illegal immigration of terrorists are pointing their cannons at Mexico. My memory of 9/11 is pretty crisp. The terrorists who were not here by legal means left by way of Logan Airport, 36 miles to my north. They came by way of Canada. Yet nobody is patrolling Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire's deadly terror-zone with guns. Shawn Hannity isn't galloping across the terrain on horseback like a fair and balanced apocalyptic badass.

Why? If we're really worried about terrorism, why?

We aren't worried about terrorism crossing our borders any more than we are worried about "them coming over here to take our jobs." Illegal Mexicans aren't taking jobs any of us want. The same idiots who spew this were whining on the floors of the senate and house last week about "inaccurate economic growth markers." The jobs with which everyone says we were rewarded during the boom aren't good jobs and most poor people have to work three of them to get by. The jobs so crappy Mexican illegals take them-- like working strawberry farms in California-- are quite open and available to any American who wants to work 15 hour days without bathrooms, benefits, or back pain medicines. We could, of course, stop the migrant work camps by refusing to buy produce from those who employ these hiring practices. Check the label on your strawberries lately? I thought not.

No, what we are REALLY worried about hasn't changed in a post- 9/11 world. We don't want more brown people speaking their funny language and eating their funny food and marrying our foolish daughters. You get babies that are disturbingly beige when that happens, and that's Un-American.

Thank goodness my own ancestors-- all of one generation ago-- were honest enough to do things right. MY Nana wasn't sneaking across borders in the dead of night to work a cleaning job somebody else might have wanted. No, my Nana walked right onto the subway in Southie and hoped the bag between her shoes didn't slosh too much... you never knew who the revenuers were. My grandparents got in the old fashioned way-- they bought fake documents from dirty politicians in exchange for votes. They came here for the RIGHT reasons. Not because they wanted a better life for their starving children (they were actually quite wealthy). No, my grandparents came because they'd have been dragged off to prison for involvement in the IRA if they didn't. They came to vote illegally in order to advance the Irish cause. They came to speak their funny language, eat their funny food, and...

OOOPS.