Most strive toward the same goal

I have no idea what sparked my curiosity but I took a small inventory to find out where some of my stuff comes from. By stuff I mean mostly clothes and towels and whatever else had a legible tag and was easy to get to.

The results surprised me. Out of approximately 50 items only six claimed to be made in the U.S. A. China was the top contestant in my little exercise with a total of eight items. Close behind were Cambodia with six items, Vietnam and India tied at five each and Pakistan had three. El Salvador and Lesotho tied at two each.

The rest only had one product. These were: Nicaragua, Swaziland, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Egypt, Jordan,  and Thailand. Honduras also garnered points for one item that was assembled in Honduras using American components. Mexico had a lone entry of one product that was made in Mexico of U.S. fabric.

So what? In these days when Mexico is portrayed as evil incarnate, taking away American jobs, all the while being a country full of criminals, I found only one item in the house that had been touched by Mexican hands. Even then it had been made with a product from this country. I infer from that bit of information that if the Mexican company stopped producing, American jobs would also be lost.

Not one item in my little survey came from Canada, Europe, Australia, Russia or even Japan. I stress that this survey would not hold up under scrutiny because of the small sample size and the random method of choosing which items were included and which were not. Also, I need to look up Swaziland as I am not certain where that is.

The question is, are all these foreign products? Am I un-American because each and every item I own does not have a made in the U.S.A. tag? I have never been to any of the above mentioned countries, yet, here are products made by their citizens. I bought them at American stores. That means someone in this country made money by selling the product to me. Countless people worked together so that I can have one pair of jeans that fit and those were made in Egypt. 

Like it or not, we are part of a global economy. There is very little that goes from raw material to finished product without intervention from an outside source. There was a Nissan plant just down the street from where my mom used to live. Nissan is a Japanese automobile manufacturer. So, since the plant is a part of a Japanese company is Nissan Japanese? Or is it  American since mostly Americans work there? Think about it.

Sometimes I wonder why people want to come to this country. We seem to treat immigrants poorly and have almost since the beginning of this place we call America. What would it take for us to leave our own beloved country and go someplace where we are not wanted and don’t speak the language fluently? What would it take for you to take your children on a long and perilous journey on a chance that the life you are going toward will be better than the one you are leaving behind?

As I read the tags imprinted with the names of foreign countries, I wonder about the people who made what I am holding in my hands. Did they work in a sweatshop? What are their lives like? Are they happy?

By the way, according to wikipedia, Swaziland, is a landlocked country in southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its north, west and south.

The whole point is to illustrate that we should not lump the entire population of a country together and label them as being violent drug smugglers. Some are. Some aren’t. I believe it is unrealistic to think that each of us resides on our own little island with no help at all from anyone else on the planet. I firmly believe that as awful as life is to some of us, that most people are simply trying to get by.

Just. Like. Us.