A Letter to CNN's Lou Dobbs on Immigration

Dear Lou,

I watched you feign surprise that Barack Obama and numerous others are associating you with hard-line anti-immigrant groups like the Minute Men. Someone even suggested that you were partly responsible for the increase in hate groups in America as reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It rose by 48% to 888 from the year 2000.

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Lou, when again did you start your campaign against immigrants – legal and illegals?

You seemed startled that the movie, Border, directed by Chris Burgard depicted human sufferings at the U.S. border – many of them inflicted by people who share your views on immigration.

Here is what Chris said to you: “The personal experience was just, the cruelness going on down there, the violence. On both sides, the American ranchers, the American citizens that live near the borders, the Mexicans and the other nationals that are coming across. You wouldn’t think that this level of cruelty and inhumanity could be happening in this country but it is.”

Cruelty. This is something your anti-immigration stance has not helped out in creating an environment where resolution is possible. Lou, I know you cannot see yourself unless you look in the mirror. I am sure the mirror you look into is not the plain type. Probably you have one of those crazy mirrors but do not know it.

Please read this story below and let me know what you think:

One Friday months ago, I walked into Brentwood Road branch of Chase Bank in Long Island, New York, to deposit a check. The line was long and I regretted that my direct deposit had not commenced. As I waited, the line continued to grow with little progress by tellers in attending to customers. I was seventh on the waiting line when I saw the line shoot out of the building onto the street. Frustration began to appear on the faces of those waiting. Some began to murmur. It was mainly in Spanish but I do not understand Spanish.

A bank staff soon intervened. She announced that all those who came to cash a check should leave the waiting line and form a new line. A teller, she said, had been assigned to serve those who came just to cash their checks. Immediately, three-quarter of the crowd left the line and formed a new line. Their line became even longer. And so was their irritation. To compound matters, the teller supposedly assigned to the check cashers continued to attend to regular customers first. The check cashers’ line was static.

It did not take time before the check cashers flayed up in anger. They began to complain openly. The same bank staff came and informed them that the bank’s first priority was its customers. It did not pacify the check cashers as they saw more bank customers joining the customers’ line. One man began to scream. Even though I could not understand the words he was saying, my guess was that he argued that those of them on the other line were customers too. His tantrum stirred up the rest of the people on his line.

The bank manager came out of his office and essentially repeated what his staff said. He asked those check cashers to open account with the bank if they would like priority service. Another man disagreed with him in Spanish. They exchanged angry words. At a point I became worried that violence might ensue. It heated up so much that the bank manager threatened in English to bar his staff from cashing checks from the upset man’s company. It did not quiet things down. Then he threatened to bar any form of check cashing for non- customers.

As a teller attended to me, I saw the envy in the eyes of the check cashers. Four weeks earlier, I had opened an account with the bank. I knew the amount of paperwork I was asked to bring before I could open an account. I asked myself a question I knew even the bank manager did not ask: It was easy to say come and open an account but could these check cashers be permitted to open an account if they walk in and sit with the manager the way I did few weeks ago? Would they be able to present the required documentations?

Lou, do you know that the front door of Ritz Carlton is always open without guards checking contents of one's wallets and credit records but many Americans have never walked in there? Imagine what chance many Americans will have if such a check occurs at the door? That is the irony in the open the front door/close the back door mantra. Though I know you want the front door closed too.

Do you know that any of those men and women at the bank could have been your wife Debi Lee Segura de Dobbs’ fore parents? Do you care?

Lou, how does carrying a loaded gun at the airport or at the border solve this problem? Where will it end? Carrying a loaded gun on the set of your CNN show, Lou Dobbs Tonight?

While you are at it, yesterday (April 1) over 150 thousand applications poured in for 65,000 H1 visas that are available for the year. I know it turns your stomach that highly skill workers are coming into America. But you know that the numbers of job openings of those kinds in Fortune 500 companies alone are much more. How do you hope to see America remain competitive when native born Americans shy away from the study of science and math? Or is that fiction, too? Have you been to a college Science Laboratory lately?

I await your reply.

Thank you.

Yours truly,

Rudolf