by digby
Here's a sickening conversation between Bill O'Reilly and Journalist (and DREAMer) Jose Antonio Vargas to end your week with a bang:
“I don't know if people know this, but more than half of undocumented people in this country have been here for 10 years or longer,” Vargas responded. “This has been our home, this is where we go to school, this is where we work, this is where we go to church, this is what we call to be our own communities.”
Vargas lamented that the President's immigration actions were so politicized before O'Reilly cut in to tell him the real "deal."
“It is a compassionate move, but it may not be a just move because you and the other people here illegally don’t deserve to be here," O'Reilly said. "That’s harsh. It’s harsh, okay, but you don’t have an entitlement to be here.”
"Sir, I don't feel entitled to be here," Vargas responded. "I don't ask for any sort of entitlement. All I know is this is where I grew up, this is my home, my family is here."
Vargas was only 12 years old when he came here. It was not his choice. And even if it was, he's been here for most of his life. Like most undocumented people he's a contributing member of this society. He works. He pays taxes. He is part of the social fabric of the nation. And he's certainly "entitled" to be treated like a human being rather than seen as some kind of a virus that's destroying this great country's culture of strip malls and fast food joints.
By the way, the "entitlement" O'Reilly likes to claim is a bit of a stretch too. Unless he is a native American he came from immigrants himself and up until the 1920s we didn't consider immigrants to be illegal or legal. They just came. So, it's a little bit much to claim this "entitlement" for yourself just because some old European great grandparent crawled on a boat and landed in the US back when almost all Americans were refugees, criminals, losers and dreamers. To hear these people talk you'd think they were all descended from British Royalty.
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