by

Deport

I feel incredibly guilty when I catch myself judging someone else, but I try pretty hard to move from judgment to a compassionate desire to engage and discover why they feel the way they feel. AS I was leaving the hospital the other day I was behind a person whose bumper sticker said, “illegal aliens are not immigrants,” and whose license plate says, “Deport.” The bumper sticker is one thing, because those can be placed in a moment of fervor and there isn’t the same kind of permanence (though I did see a political sticker from 30 years ago the other day) as a license plate. The license plate means that they are so sure of their position that they are willing to pay extra to clearly state that opinion to anyone who happens to see their car. i suppose if I were to get a single word license plate it might say, “simplify,” or “intentional,” but even with either of those I would hesitate to apply them without reservation to every situation that might be facing the person who is reading my plate.

I doubt that I will ever get the chance to talk to this person about why they are so strongly in favor of deportation, but it does make me wonder how prevalent that sentiment might be. I think back just a few years to a proposal from President Bush which called for imprisonment followed by deportation for any illegal immigrant pretty much regardless of circumstances. in most instances the people i heard in favor of the proposal felt a lot of fear about drugs and “those people” and anger of a perception that “my taxes are paying benefits to them,” without actually looking at statistics pointing to illegal immigrants more consistently paying their fair share of taxes that legal citizens or considering anything beyond their perceptions. it’s the last part that gets to me; when people fail to consider anything more than what they already perceive. There are very few absolutes in this world. I don’t say that there should be no rules, but circumstances, context and reason always need to be considered.
Just like the fact that I have no idea why this person feels so strongly, I worry that they won’t let themselves see why someone else might feel just as strongly in the opposite way.
I apologize for any judgments that I have made. I know that every situation can be looked at from a million different ways and I believe that unless we are willing to look from the viewpoint most opposite our own then we are in no position to declare anything.

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