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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (June 5, 2017)
OPINION Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER June 5, 2017 Volume 27 Number 11 June 5, 2017 ISSN: 1094-9453 The Asian Reporter is published on the first and third Monday each month. Please send all correspondence to: The Asian Reporter 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217 Phone: (503) 283-4440, Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com Advertising Department e-mail: ads@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com Website: www.asianreporter.com Please send reader feedback, Asian-related press releases, and community interest ideas/stories to the addresses listed above. Please include a contact phone number. Advertising information available upon request. Publisher Jaime Lim Contributing Editors Ronault L.S. Catalani (Polo), Jeff Wenger Correspondents Ian Blazina, Josephine Bridges, Pamela Ellgen, Maileen Hamto, Edward J. Han, A.P. Kryza, Marie Lo, Simeon Mamaril, Julie Stegeman, Toni Tabora-Roberts, Allison Voigts Illustrator Jonathan Hill News Service Associated Press/Newsfinder Copyright 2017. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication. Member Associated Press/Newsfinder Asian American Journalists Association Better Business Bureau Pacific Northwest Minority Publishers (PNMP) Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA n Polo Correspondence: The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. Please send all correspondence to: Mail: 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 ** Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES (U.S. rates only) Individual subscription (sent bulk rate): q Half year: $14 q Full year: $24 q Two years: $40 Individual subscription (sent first class mail): q Half year: $24 q Full year: $40 q Two years: $72 Office subscription (5 copies to one address): q Half year: $40 q Full year: $75 q Two years: $145 Institutional subscription (25 copies to one address): NEW SUBSCRIBER / ADDRESS CORRECTION INFORMATION FORM: Subscriber’s name: Company name: Address: City, State, ZIP: Phone: Fax: E-mail: Mail with payment or Fax with credit card information to: The Asian Reporter, Attn: Subscription Dept., 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 * Fax: (503) 283-4445 q q q For VISA, Mastercard, or American Express payment only: Name (as it appears on the card): Type of card (circle): VISA Mastercard Card number: American Express Security code: Expiration date: Address of card: The last four issues of The Asian Reporter are available for pick up free at our office 24 hours a day at 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, Oregon. Back issues of The Asian Reporter may be ordered by mail at the following rates: First copy: $1.50 Additional copies ordered at the same time: $1.00 each Send orders to: Asian Reporter Back Issues, 922 N. Killingsworth St., Portland, OR 97217-2220 The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. If you have a comment on a story we have printed, or have an Asian-related personal or community focus idea, please contact us. Please include a contact name, address, and phone number on all correspondence. Thank you. A Wall for our Americas C ome close. I want to tell you something. Pero please, not a word of this to mi familia or my facebook friends. Not a whisper to my Mexican or Muslim best buds. Nor to our Filipino or Chinese neighbors. Okay? Here goes: I submitted a bid to build The Wall. That $20-billion wall. Sure, big U.S. and Mexican contractors submitted theirs. But mine will win, because my Wall will dwarf China’s Great Wall. Mine’ll divide the Americas in a way that will put Israel’s awful Wall to shame. Remember that ugly thing that cut Germany in two? — Forget about it. Forget all that old-school history, my Wall is cool, what’s more, it’s practical and cheap. The Border Wall must be cool because, as any fifth-grader will tell you, our executive branch can propose whatever it wants, but only congress can fund it. And congressional approval requires cool. To please establishment GOPers, my Wall has swinging doors — the kind harried waiters hip-bump dashing between steamy kitchens and hungry eaters. Willamette Valley farmers, Clatsop County dairymen, and Beaverton suburb builders love this feature. I asked. Ask chambers of commerce, coast to coast. They’re not shy about articulating just how far behind the ball D.C. has been in lowering the black- berry bramble of federal regs, appellate board deci- sions, federal court rulings, and presidential orders that in the awful aggregate gets called “immigra- tion law.” Sure, our angry neighbors insist “those illegal aliens gotta wait in line,” like their ancestors waited at Angel Island or Ellis Island. But N.E. Broadway’s café owners and Silicon Forest chipmakers will say: “What line?” For both our demand and supply sides, there is no system to meet their needs. Business big and small has waited for decades. Analogize this to running trains or busses. Imagine TriMet’s sleek MAX or my morning bus without their handy ticket outlets or those hip smartphone apps. My Great Wall will have tidy turnstile ticket machines, miles and miles of them. Pling-pling. Liberal Demos will love my bid too. My Wall To please establishment GOPers, my Wall has swinging doors — the kind harried waiters hip-bump dashing between steamy kitchens and hungry eaters. Willamette Valley farmers, Clatsop County dairymen, and Beaverton suburb builders love this feature. I asked. includes cool passage for the healthy grazing and happy mating of Mexican jaguar, West Indian manatee, pronghorn antelope too. It’s chest high where our Pacific Northwest monarchs and Chapman Elementary chimney swifts have always crossed. Not cool is dividing our love for bugs and birdies from our love for human families, each doing what each has always done everywhere, across our precious planet’s well-worn face. Because my Wall will be less about walling out necessary and natural phenomena, my Wall is cheap. Say, 70 percent less to build — less the pro- ceeds from ticket sales to those 10 million shame- lessly ambitious Mexican men and women already working real hard here. And, add to the “plus” column, lease proceeds for 1,000 spidery cell towers I’ll raise to keep up with expanding markets for the great ideas, for Amazon deliveries, and for the digitalized dollars these families spread across our Americas. Sure, getting zippy chimney swifts and grumpy jaguars to pay for passage will be harder, but not really necessary. Big Wall talk is actually not about barrier building. The former USSR tried and tried to divide Europe, but now chunks of Berlin’s Wall are on eBay. China tried it too, but today’s Great Wall crawls with tourists. It’s really more about national theater. And that won’t cost $20 billion. Bottom line of my no-drama bid: Dollars and goods move, people and birdies move, Depoe Bay’s beloved gray whale families move. This movement has always been necessary and natural. Beautiful. Only borders are new. And tall Walls are dumb. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication. 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