[speaker001:] the subject is how we feel about immigration
[speaker002:] yes
[speaker001:] would you like to get started or would you like me to
[speaker002:] well I am very much in favor of closing our door to some extent I'm afraid I've gotten a little bit America first when I get a cab in
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] almost any large city in the United States and the driver barely speaks English
[speaker001:] yes
[speaker002:] uh
[speaker001:] that's happened to me too
[speaker002:] yes of course it also happened to us in Sidney Australia this Summer uh or last Summer we got a cab and again it was an oriental person and we asked him to take us to the opera house and he did not know what we were talking about
[speaker001:] oh my
[speaker002:] so maybe my isolation isn't for our country might be a little bit for the world I don't know but uh I just feel like we are we have accepted people other people from other countries so well to the point that we have not taken care of our own how do you feel about
[speaker001:] well I have I'm really torn on the subject I'm not a good candidate for this one I see what you see and I agree with you
[speaker002:] however
[speaker001:] well the other side I see because we have Mexico as a neighbor
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and I can tell you right now
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] that if I were living in Mexico and trying to raise several children and I could see across the border where the good life would be for my children
[speaker002:] uh uh-huh
[speaker001:] would I swim that river every night twice if that's what it took you know I don't care whatever it would take I have real sympathy for those people I really do and you can
[speaker002:] um you betcha I um however if you were living in Mexico in those conditions would you have several children
[speaker001:] probably they don't have birth control
[speaker002:] well
[speaker001:] they have no concept of it it's against their church
[speaker002:] but yourself you yourself would not do that you would not have several children if you couldn't
[speaker001:] well but they don't have if you know if I had to put myself in their shoes I have to do it one hundred percent
[speaker002:] uh yeah but you don't have
[speaker001:] their church doesn't teach birth control they preach against it
[speaker002:] that's not my fault
[speaker001:] I understand what you're saying but I'm saying
[speaker002:] I know
[speaker001:] I feel real sympathy for them so I really and and and by the way I feel the same way when I I just got back from Florida
[speaker002:] um
[speaker001:] and boy I tell you happily happily I can I can understand just a little bit of Cuban English
[speaker002:] uh uh-huh
[speaker001:] just a little bit which was about all I wanted to understand
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] uh but I it's amazing because they're they're bilingual
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh
[speaker001:] everything is is Spanish English in Florida and I didn't particularly enjoy it quite frankly
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh at one point and I cannot say that it's true now but at one point the city of Chicago was required by federal law to hire teachers who spoke Spanish so that they could teach to the the children there who only spoke Spanish
[speaker001:] yes
[speaker002:] but this is America and our language is English
[speaker001:] that's right and I'm sorry that business that's right and I'm sorry that business of making it mandatory I don't like mandatory anything
[speaker002:] no
[speaker001:] because it just doesn't work all the time it doesn't fit there are circumstances that are different but I do think if you come to America and you're going to live here and you're going to go to our schools and do all of this speak our language
[speaker002:] uh um I think so too
[speaker001:] I really do and it's only fair to the children I think making giving the children an out that they don't have to speak English is just encouraging them to drop out later on because they'll never make it through high school
[speaker002:] yeah huh-uh well it's English
[speaker001:] and if they do it won't make any difference because there's not a job for them
[speaker002:] it's encouraging them to not speak English
[speaker001:] that's exactly right and that is the wrong message
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] I just I don't know I feel so sorry for them but at the same time
[speaker002:] but that's the same thing you're saying about the little Mexican children that you feel sorry for them and you would swim the river twice but I
[speaker001:] I would if it were if they were my kids I would so I have to sympathize with the people that come over here and work and send money back
[speaker002:] sure but uh-huh
[speaker001:] you know it's it's right on the survival level and we do what we do to survive
[speaker002:] uh-huh absolutely and and I know what you're saying we do what we have to do for our children regardless regardless of what that is but I'm a little bit unsympathetic with the families right here in our own small town of five thousand who have not limited their family we have three children and that happens to be what we could afford but I don't really feel like I ought to help even if they're people from Indiana support ten children that's not fair I didn't get a say whether they had them or not so I don't think I ought to have to help raise them too critical I I'm concerned about world birth control and
[speaker001:] oh I'm I'm that's that's one on me too I mean
[speaker002:] uh-hum
[speaker001:] there are too many children that are just conceived and produced and dropped on society
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] without a thought these crack babies
[speaker002:] oh isn't that awful I was just reading this thing in the Chicago Tribune yesterday about this little girl who was a crack baby and she was put in a foster home for five years and was having a wonderful life and then her mother
[speaker001:] are so sad
[speaker002:] claimed to have her self her act together and she was given back to her birth mother who she had never seen I mean it was just one of those awful things where the Child Protection Service completely broke down and now two years later the court ordered that she be given back to the foster people I it's just awful it's just awful the whole thing
[speaker001:] doesn't make any sense
[speaker002:] it's just awful I I as I say I'm isolationist I think we need to to close our doors to some of the immigration and now they're talking about how we're bound to have an influx of immigrants from the latest war from Iraq Iran Saudi Arabia so on and so forth and uh I'm I'm really sorry that I feel the way I do but I just think that we need to not take people as we have over the many last many many years
[speaker001:] well we had there there's a little background here but it it builds up to what we're talking about our church had a long long discussion group and basically the question started out that as at the time when there were starving people in India I believe
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and the question was should we save these people
[speaker002:] yeah because
[speaker001:] and our bottom line answer was no because we cannot save the world
[speaker002:] because well and
[speaker001:] we cannot feed the world and we should not please the world this
[speaker002:] and I think probably they have said that if you save these people by feeding them then they reproduce and then you have a later more serious famine yeah
[speaker001:] this and the other thing is we can feed them today but they'll be hungry tomorrow what'll we do with them tomorrow do we feed them again tomorrow well how long how long can we continue to feed the world we can't do it are they starving to death yes and that's very sad
[speaker002:] yeah yeah um-hum um uh-huh
[speaker001:] sad but we cannot save them we you know okay we can save one
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and that's good but what's you know back to what you're saying if you want to save somebody there's plenty in the United States that need it to
[speaker002:] when our children were all three at home our oldest daughter uh is still a very giving caring wonderful person she's making a career of uh well she's a director at a care center close to here in fact my mother's a resident there anyhow was uh she got us involved in the Christian Children's Fund and we were sponsoring a young boy in Chattanooga Tennessee in a home then and that went on for oh four or five years and finally we had a letter from the Christian Children's Fund that they were no longer going to uh sponsor children within the continental United States that all of the money would be going to children overseas because for however much money we were sending a month they could buy so much more milk and bread and rice and so on and so forth for children overseas well at
[speaker001:] so they're taking the world viewpoint
[speaker002:] yeah well at that point we said no we're not doing this any more we wanted to help somebody here within the continental United States it wasn't our choice to to send and then too I think that money gets watered down in administrative costs when it all goes overseas and I always wonder if people who need it actually get it
[speaker001:] um-hum but by profession I negotiate for Texas Instruments a lot and I'm somewhat cynical
[speaker002:] um
[speaker001:] about humans and their behavior
[speaker002:] um uh-huh
[speaker001:] because I have had many interesting examples of human behavior
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] when you're talking about money you'd be surprised how human we all get very quickly
[speaker002:] it all turns different doesn't it
[speaker001:] uh-huh um
[speaker002:] we were on a cruise ship one time and some people from the Methodist Church were talking about how their church diocese had poured thousands of dollars into Haiti and it had been used for Papa Doc's daughter's wedding
[speaker001:] uh-huh there you go
[speaker002:] which I'm sure that's not what they had in mind when they were pouring that money in the
[speaker001:] but see that's what happens And the other sad thing I heard about the Kurds