Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Today I was going to post Santa Claus's response to The Spare's Xmas demands,  requests, as listed below. However, when I sat down to type the Jolly Old Elf's letter into this space, I saw a news story that explained how the Republicans successfully blocked a bill that would provide a citizenship status to upwardly mobile young people who came into this country illegally.

I, Anne Johnson, member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, am sickened by this.

Why do people pick up their belongings and leave the countries of their birth for a new, strange land where they don't speak the same language?

 Here's the scenario: "Kiss your abuela goodbye, Juan, we're leaving the Dominican Republic on a whim because we like Big Macs."

Oh, pleeeeze.

Then as now, no one packs up and leaves a native land for any other reason than desperation. This nation has always welcomed the desperate of other places, and those immigrants have made our country vibrant, interesting, and the envy of the planet. Now, even though our population is diminishing, the Republicans want us to deport people. Not just slackers, but serious young people who would not only become part of our intellectual pool, but who would also vote Republican, because so many of them espouse the values of the religious right.

Every year I teach persuasive essay-writing, and every year I get a student or two who writes about seeing a cousin, brother, father, deported. I remember one girl who wrote so hauntingly about a cousin of hers who had been accepted to college, who spoke no Spanish, who had been in America since she was eight years old. On the eve of moving in at her dorm, she was deported to the Dominican Republic, where she had no immediate family and no knowledge of the native language.

Just so you Red Ebenezer Scrooges know, you will be adding that poor would-be American to the long chain of sins you have visited upon the working class in America. I hope this vote comes back to haunt you. I hope that the growing number of Hispanic voters in this nation stay firmly in the Democratic ranks. You Red morons are sending "home" the very people who would vote for your conservative agenda -- good Roman Catholics who believe in the values of hard work and self-sufficiency. Oh yeah. Let's send them home to the DR and Mexico!

Do you Republican numbskulls know how hard I have to work to make absolutely certain my Pagan family values don't seep out into my classroom? The people you're deporting think the way you do. My students would be mortified to know they were being taught by a Pagan. They and their families are "God and country" all the way.

Go ahead. Send them home. The word "moron" does not begin to describe you. That foot you're shooting? *snort* It's yours.