As many of you know, I am a vet­eran. I wore the uni­form of the United States Air Force for six years, and did so proudly. While I was not deployed to Iraq in the first Gulf War, I was active duty and I could have been. I joined up know­ing we were headed for a con­flict with Sad­dam and his, at the time, fourth largest army in the world. So every year on Memo­r­ial Day, I think about the oath I swore to pro­tect and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States of Amer­ica, and how we’re all doing with that.

My dad and I agree on a lot of things, and we were equally vocif­er­ous in our oppo­si­tion of Bush 43 and his administration’s reck­less dis­re­gard of the Con­sti­tu­tion. But while I think the anti-​immigration sen­ti­ment that led to Arizona’s uncon­sti­tu­tional “papers, please” law is fun­da­men­tally unAmer­i­can, he thinks we need to get rid of all these “ille­gals” who are wreck­ing his coun­try. This morn­ing, he sent me this.

MEXICO IS ANGRY
This is very inter­est­ing and if Ari­zona can do it, why can’t the rest of Amer­ica ?
Three cheers for Ari­zona
The shoe is on the other foot and the Mex­i­cans from the State of Sonora, Mex­ico doesn’t like it. Can you believe the nerve of these peo­ple? It’s almost funny.
The State of Sonora is angry at the influx of Mex­i­cans into Mex­ico . Nine state leg­is­la­tors from the Mex­i­can State of Sonora trav­eled to Tuc­son to com­plain about Ari­zona ‘s new employer crack­down on ille­gals from Mex­ico .
It seems that many Mex­i­can ille­gals are return­ing to their home­towns and the offi­cials in the Sonora state gov­ern­ment are ticked off.
A del­e­ga­tion of nine state leg­is­la­tors from Sonora was in Tuc­son on Tues­day to state that Ari­zona ‘s new Employer Sanc­tions Law will have a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the Mex­i­can state.
At a news con­fer­ence, the leg­is­la­tors said that Sonora, — Arizona’s south­ern neighbor, — made up of mostly small towns, — cannot han­dle the demand for hous­ing, jobs and schools that it will face as Mex­i­can work­ers return to their home­towns from the USA with­out jobs or money.
The Ari­zona law, which took effect Jan. 1, pun­ishes Ari­zona employ­ers who know­ingly hire indi­vid­u­als with­out valid legal doc­u­ments to work in the United States .
Penal­ties include sus­pen­sion of, or loss of, their busi­ness license.
The Mex­i­can leg­is­la­tors are angry because their own cit­i­zens are return­ing to their home­towns, plac­ing a bur­den on THEIR state gov­ern­ment. ‘How can Ari­zona pass a law like this?’ asked Mex­i­can Rep Leti­cia Amparano-​Gamez, who rep­re­sents Nogales .
’There is not one per­son liv­ing in Sonora who does not have a friend or rel­a­tive work­ing in Ari­zona ‚’ she said, speak­ing in Span­ish. ‘Mex­ico is not pre­pared for this, for the tremen­dous prob­lems it will face as more and more Mex­i­cans work­ing in Ari­zona and who were send­ing money to their fam­i­lies return to their home-​towns in Sonora with­out jobs,’ she said. ‘We are one fam­ily, socially and eco­nom­i­cally,’ she said of the peo­ple of Sonora and Ari­zona .
New Immi­gra­tion Laws:
1 There will be no spe­cial bilin­gual pro­grams in the schools.
2 All bal­lots will be in this nation’s lan­guage..
3 All gov­ern­ment busi­ness will be con­ducted in our lan­guage.
4 Non-​residents will NOT have the right to vote no mat­ter how long they are here.
5 Non-​citizens will NEVER be able to hold polit­i­cal office
6 For­eign­ers will not be a bur­den to the tax­pay­ers. No wel­fare, no food stamps, no health care, or other gov­ern­ment assis­tance pro­grams. Any bur­den will be deported.
7 For­eign­ers can invest in this coun­try, but it must be an amount at least equal to 40,000 times the daily min­i­mum wage.
8 If for­eign­ers come here and buy land… options will be restricted. Cer­tain parcels includ­ing water­front prop­erty are reserved for cit­i­zens nat­u­rally born into this coun­try.
9 For­eign­ers may have no protests; no demon­stra­tions, no wav­ing of a for­eign flag, no polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing, no bad-​mouthing our pres­i­dent or his poli­cies. These will lead to depor­ta­tion.
10 If you do come to this coun­try ille­gally, you will be actively hunted and when caught, sent to jail until your depor­ta­tion can be arranged. All assets will be taken from you.
Too strict ?
The above laws are cur­rent immi­gra­tion laws of MEXICO!

My reac­tion was, “Yeah? So?” I think it kind of proves my point. Amer­ica is sup­posed to be bet­ter than this. We were founded on the idea that this was THE place, the one place on Earth that any­one could come to for a bet­ter life. We were founded on immi­gra­tion. Even the “native” Amer­i­cans migrated here from Asia thou­sands of years ago. The United States of Amer­ica is sup­posed to have open, wel­com­ing bor­ders, so that those “hud­dling masses yearn­ing to breathe free” can get here and start anew. So telling me that Mexico’s immi­gra­tion laws are far stricter than our own tells me that we’re get­ting it right. The peo­ple com­plain­ing that the coun­try is being over­run by Lati­nos sound just like — and just as stu­pid and fun­da­men­tally unAmer­i­can as — the peo­ple who com­plained we were being over­run by the Ital­ians, or the Chi­nese, or the Irish.

Note the ref­er­ences to the “nation’s lan­guage” in the rules above. Amer­ica doesn’t have an offi­cial lan­guage. We don’t. Never have. There was a fierce debate almost 200 years ago whether the offi­cial lan­guage of the United States should be Eng­lish… or Ger­man, which was spo­ken in much of Penn­syl­va­nia, at the time the largest state. After a long drawn out fight, they agreed that Amer­ica wouldn’t rec­og­nize an offi­cial lan­guage at all. Eng­lish is by far the most com­mon, but peo­ple who insist that it’s “the” lan­guage of the United States don’t know their his­tory. We’re a melt­ing pot. We’re sup­posed to be. The fact that the ratio of white peo­ple to every­one else in Amer­ica is drop­ping is what is sup­posed to hap­pen. (For the record, I’m white.) Now the same peo­ple in Ari­zona are try­ing to pass a law stat­ing that peo­ple born in the United States aren’t cit­i­zens if they’re born to undoc­u­mented par­ents, a bla­tant vio­la­tion of the 14th amendment.

I carry a copy of the United States Con­sti­tu­tion on my iPhone, and refer to it from time to time as a reminder of what this nation is sup­posed to be about. That we’re sup­posed to be free from unrea­son­able search and seizure — which Arizona’s “papers, please” law con­tra­dicts — and we’re sup­posed to be ded­i­cated to mak­ing sure the first amendment’s free­dom of expres­sion and assem­bly is sacred.

Phil Plait, of the pop­u­lar blog Bad Astron­omy, gets this.

Today is Memo­r­ial Day in the United States, where we take time to remem­ber those who have died, and specif­i­cally those who have fought and died for the coun­try. In my opin­ion, they didn’t fight to pro­tect our coun­try, they fought to pro­tect the idea of our coun­try. The prin­ci­ples for which it stands, the ideas and ideals that give peo­ple the chance to reach their full poten­tial. That’s what Amer­ica is sup­posed to be about, and the frame­work that pro­vides that chance is the Constitution.

The issue Phil links to is about a Chris­t­ian high school stu­dent object­ing to an offi­cial school prayer at his grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mony, because the kid knows his Con­sti­tu­tion and knows that reli­gion is sup­posed to be kept sep­a­rate from government-​sponsored orga­ni­za­tions like schools. It’s galling how often we for­get this, or choose to ignore it.

So today, in honor of the brave men and women who have given their lives to pro­tect and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States, read over our Con­sti­tu­tion, or at least refa­mil­iar­ize your­self with the Bill of Rights, the first ten amend­ments. These are the found­ing prin­ci­ples of our Repub­lic, and they are not optional. This is what we fight for, and what so many have died to pro­tect. Respect their sacrifice.