If we Americans were collectively a teenager we would be in therapy for cutting on ourselves.  How very odd that we would arrest one the of support beams of this sprawling concept called the ‘American Work Ethic’.  Keep in mind one does not successfully motivate a population to work the hours we work in this country with threats and harassment.  What seems less apparent these days is our revered work ethic has actually been largely supported by a steady stream of immigrants seeking the American Dream. One can find no crime is simply being willing to work hard and long for the realization of that dream. The Work Ethic has never been different than it is today.  Why any of us would applaud the arrest of this feeder stream of motivated workers in America defies imagination. Only long term generational American wealth could become so oblivious to forget they and their children no longer necessarily represent working America and are in fact dependent on it. 

The arrests of immigrants are not uniformly a brave wave of law enforcement officers raiding well armed cartels of criminals.  As we saw in Georgia last week the arrests are concentrating on numbers and they arrested a good slice of not only an American based  company’s unarmed productive work force, but a key source of that community’s small business income. Those arrested and scheduled without due process for deporting were mainly citizens of South Korea, an American ally (or perhaps now former ally).  Why do we insist on destroying such a critical source for our 250 year run on creativity and innovation?  We are starving the preservation of the one thing long term wealthy countries rarely preserve; our work ethic.

A Modest Proposal for Good

Good is reading your history as a nation for information rather than confirmation.  The people rewriting our history in this Administration are confirming their prejudices and bias’s and in some cases racism with false historical narratives.  They are perverting the truth of us. We must face the truth.  Immigrants built, preserved, and made this country possible. Nearly every city in America has a street named after immigrants.  Some examples are Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson etc.  Good should be respecting our history of innovation by building an interstate scaled system of immigration allowing a legal path for people of all races and ethnicities from all over the globe to legally and safely feed the American work Ethic. To do any less is to bleed the colors out of the red, white and blue just before its 250th birthday.  But we must hurry for we are fading fast.