Over the last several months, and leading up to the recent elections, there was a lot of talk about immigrants, usually those here illegally. Much of the talk has revolved around how to grant these folks some sort of legal status. Many of the illegal immigrants perform work that legal workers don’t want to do (for many reasons, ranging from low pay to undesirability). (These illegal immigrants are often called “guest workers”, because “illegal immigrants” sounds like they should be thrown in jail.)

There seem to be two polar opposites on this topic: kicking these immigrants out of the country, post haste, and granting them “auto-citizenship”, usually in the form of some type of amnesty. When you hear the pundits talk about this, they don’t generally offer any middle-ground. But, of course there’s middle ground:

1. You could make them legal workers without making them citizens. If the employer is willing to sponsor an employee, charge a fee, fill out some paperwork, do some kind of background check, and give the worker a visa. This would be similar in concept to the H-1B visas we already have in place today.
2. Put them on a path to citizenship. If they’re here, and they’re working, and they’ve established roots, and they haven’t been in (too much) trouble, let them get in line to become a citizen. Ensure they go through some process to document them, and them make them provisionally able to hold a job. They shouldn’t get special treatment ahead of those who came here legally, but they should get credit for the time they were in the country.

These aren’t meant to be solutions to the problem of illegal immigrants; they’re only meant to demonstrate that there are options worth investigating. The reality is these illegal immigrants are, in most cases, productive members of society, raising their children (many of whom were born in the United States, and are thus legal citizens), and trying to live a good life.

Many of them don’t know any other country as “home”, so deporting them—often breaking up families—is merely punitive. Every illegal immigrant is someone’s mother, son or cousin. And I don’t want my cousin to be kicked out of the country simply for trying to make a better life for herself.

This country is founded by immigrants. You’d think we’d be a bit more understanding.

Many Republicans have this whole “defense of traditional marriage” thing they believe in. It’s code for “no gay marriage” of course, and just about everyone understands that.

I’ve always wondered though, just what is “traditional marriage”? If I remember my history correctly, marriage traditionally has included such rules as:

• The wife is considered chattel. She’s not a person, she’s a possession.
• No interracial marriages. Unless you wanted to end up in jail, or dead.
• Underaged marriages. Because 14 is old enough to bear children.

I’m not being fair, of course. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone defending “traditional marriage” using these examples. But it highlights my point: “traditional marriage” has no lasting meaning. What’s traditional today is likely to be considered “outdated” tomorrow.

With the number of “traditional marriages” failing, and people like Britney Spears getting married and divorced twice in two years, one month and 55 hours, why are people looking to stop the union of couples who’ve been in monogamous, committed relationships for decades? People who have raised children together. People who, were they different sexes but still gay, would be considered something of a role model.

My mom, social conservative that she is, doesn’t like gay marriage. She believes they should have all the rights of heterosexual couples, it just shouldn’t be called “marriage”. That word, she says, should be have some traditional meaning.

To me, that meaning is “bigotry”.