ASU Artists Protest Treatment of Illegal Aliens…
April 23, 2008
A few ASU students held a protest on campus Tuesday by erecting a cage. The performance was called “aliens in a cage” and it was to protest the treatment of illegal immigrants in this country.
One of the students involved, Renato Ramos said, “We want to get people to see what is going on with all the anti-immigration rhetoric that we’re hearing these days.” More from the article: On the wire cage hung slips of paper with “Sheriff Joe Arpaio” and other names written on them - all representing groups or individuals Ramos and his friends consider unfriendly to the cause of undocumented workers.
I wonder if Ankarlo’s name was put on the cage? Speaking of Ankarlo, remember he was banned from the ASU campus buses. The reason he was banned was because one student found him to be offensive and distasteful. Couldn’t some consider the “aliens in a cage” performance offensive? ASU seems to have no problem with it though since I haven’t heard of any performance art bans on campus.
I’ll point to another part of the article: Theater Professor David Coffman also stopped by and dropped some change on a table set up beside the cage.
“I support any free expression of ideas,” Coffman said. “There are students at ASU who through no fault of their own are undocumented and are suffering from other people’s political posturing. We’ve had students stop coming to school because of that.”
Coffman might support “any free expression of ideas,” but does that include allowing Ankarlo (or any other radio station) to be aired on the campus buses? Does ASU support the same philosophy? Or do they only support it in some cases?
One final part of this story stood out to me: Student Carlos Garcia, 24, was part of the project on the mall and said the cage symbolized “not just the literal cage that ‘illegal aliens’ might be put in, but there are many undocumented people at ASU who don’t come out about their status and they’re in a psychological cage. It’s a bad place to be.” Give me a break Carlos. If an illegal immigrant feels he is in a psychological cage he put himself there. What ever happened to that personal responsibility? Every illegal immigrant knows they are breaking the law. True, they are trying to earn a better life for themselves and their families. But, if you sneak across the border and struggle, who’s fault is it really?
A caller on my Sunday show threw a hypothetical at me. A illegal immigrant meets and falls in love with an American woman. They have three kids (who are all American citizens). The illegal immigrant has a job and isn’t on any government assistance. But, he gets deported and now the wife and kids end up on welfare. The caller asked me if it was better to keep the illegal immigrant here to take care of his family. I said it’s a heart breaking situation. But, did this illegal immigrant steal a social security number to get his job? This could have potentially ruined someone else’s life. I also said that he was taking personal responsibility out of the equation. This man knew he was here illegally and he knew he was breaking the law. He knew that at any moment he could be deported. He then got married and had children knowing he could be shipped home. This man might be the greatest father to his kids in the world, but shouldn’t he have tried to become a legal citizen for his family? Maybe he have thought about doing things the right way and he wouldn’t be in this situation or in a psychological cage.
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Coulldn’t agree more with YOUR position and opinion. Getting pretty tired of this “racial profiling” smoke screen. It appears that it is OK for the illegal proponents to use half-truths, deliberate ommissions etc.
Back to the racial profiling. If the elephants are running amok thru the village and destroying the farms and gardens, you don’t go out looking for goats. You try to find and minimize the damage by looking for the elephants. Once you find the elephants you try to relocate them back into the forest.
I have another problem with this issue, and that is the position of apparently so many Citizens?? of hispanic ethnicity. It seems to me that their heiratage is more important to them than their citizenship.
By the way, I am not a redneck. My wife of 49 years is hispanic and her views on this issue are very similiar to mine. She feels that these people are making it harder on her. She has no fear of going outside our door as so many hispanics claim. Her position is that she was born here, raised here, worked for the Air Force for 33 years and is retired here. She is a US Citizen and has no fear of the law..
Sorry for the length of this message but you are one of the few in the media who is taking a stand on this important issue.
Thanks for reading
Sorry if I sound just a little cynical, but all I have to wonder if the media would have gotten so upset over ASU’s “ban on free speech” if the speech they wanted to ban had been, for example, Air America. I think no one would even raised an eyebrow.
many people are here illegally because their parents crossed them across the border when they were too little to have a say. i agree with your post but i also know it’s not everyone’s deliberate fault they’re in a psychological cage because of their legal status.
ps. i meant, because of having no legal status. i guess that would be politically correct yet totally incorrect, seeing as it’s a crime to cross the border.
The first stated Declaration is “All men are created equal.” It is un-American to say that an accident of birth denies someone the right to basic freedoms. To deny someone an education, when that person has clearly earned the right through study and sholastic effort is to ignore the Declaration of Independence and say that some people are more equal than others. The taxes you pay are for the education you received. The taxes that these educated undocumented immigrants will pay will pay for their education and make the wolrd a better place.
Just because an American Ideal is inconvenient does not mean you can ignore it. Witness the recent Supreme Court ruling on Guantanamo Bay Prisoners and Bushe’s Un-American Activities of dening them their basic human rights as out lined in the U.S. Constitution.