Cinco de Mayo was Monday!

So I'm a lil behind the 8-ball...but so what?

On my Myspace blog Monday I asked if anyone knew what Cinco de Mayo is all about. Before you say it, NO it's NOT the Mexican Independence Day. Sorry.

It's actually celebrating the Battle of Puebla, which happened on (you guessed it) May 5th, 1862. While we were slaughtering ourselves up and down the Eastern Seaboard, the French were trying to make the Mexican government pay its loan interest.

The battle itself was kinda a mistake. The Mexicans thought the French walking wounded were attackers in violation of a withdrawal agreement...the French thought the complaints about the walking wounded were a ploy to start fighting...and all hell broke loose.

4500 or so Mexican troops with 18 artillery rifles ended up smashing the occupation force of 6300 French troops and THEIR 18 guns. Not too shabby. Think about that the next time you start whining about bi-lingual signs.

Segue into an opinion piece. About how "immigration reform" is the new racism. It's not politically correct to say "I hate those damn Mexicans," but is IS ok to say "I hate those damn illegal immigrants." How our only hope is to bring immigrants in, embrace them, get them in the system.

But really, there's no convincing anyone on this issue. The key of a persuasive piece is to be able to actually persuade...and people are too passionately caught up in this. No one is thinking anymore.

So all I have to say is fix the system. I think having this many people want IN our country is a great thing, it's a strength. No one is running from our country yet. We're still the best place in the world to live. How about we harness that and put it to work instead of bitching about having to "Push 1 for English?"

And for all of you genuinely concerned with the illegals? Fix the system. Then you can deport them, and they won't have any reason to hop the fence. You have to fix the system and develop a way for immigrants to come in, work, pay taxes, and follow the law. Until we have that, there's still going to be 100 people trying to hop the fence for every 1 we can deport.

Fix the system. Embrace the heritage of immigration. Each of us came from somewhere else. Each of us trace back to illegal immigration. Just ask a Native American what they think of our pesky influx willing and able workers.