The following is a contribution by outside blogger Gregory Sokoloff. Opinions expressed are solely those of Mr. Sokoloff.
As was to be expected, Hollywood has just given another nod to the open-borders, illegal alien amnesty lobby. And it did it in a subtle, subliminal way as only Hollywood masters of fine art can do.
On Tuesday, the Academy nominated Mexican actor Demian Bichir for best actor for his role in the 2011 movie “A Better Life” where he played an illegal immigrant from Mexico trying to make a living in California against overwhelming odds. Nothing against Mr. Bichir, whom we already know from 2008 Steven Soderbergh’s movie ‘Che,” where he played Fidel Castro. But “A Better Life” was aptly described by the Toronto Star critic Greg Quill as “more than propaganda for immigration policy reform.”
Its main character, Carlos Galindo, lives and works in Los Angeles illegally, his life full of trials and tribulations. He is caught and deported and decides to come back by again crossing the border without a permit. The human drama depicted through most of the movie does not eclipse the political punch line that comes at the very end. As they prepare to cross into the U.S., a coyote asks the group in Spanish: “Are you ready to go to the other side?” Carlos responds again in Spanish: “Let’s go home.”
Why is the United States his home? Because he has decided so.
The movie subliminally promotes a fictitious right of an individual to settle wherever and whenever across the world as if humans were migratory geese — flying back and forth across frontiers and then plopping themselves in some nifty pond and declaring it home just because the reeds are green and the moss is thick.
Sorry, it does not work that way in the human world. I just wonder: If a flock of illegal aliens descended on the Beverly Hills or Malibu mansions of Academy members and landed in their swimming pools, would they still support this theory?