The year is 1988. Reagan is wrapping up his presidency with style and a bit of dementia-inspired drool, Pan Am 103 is a few flights away from meeting its destiny, and illegal immigration is threatening to destroy the country. No matter, as Dutch and a compliant Congress stand at the ready for a great compromise: amnesty, with a little forgiveness thrown in. If you’re here and working and keeping your nose clean, you can stay. Deportation is off the table. Out of the shadows and into the light. Who knew the old man had it in him? Only there’s a catch. A loophole no one considered. A precedent that would be impossible to dislodge. The agreement, such as it is, also includes alien races. Non-humans. Coca-Cola obsessed beings from a distant world. Sure as shit, Trump’s MAGA movement began here.
At film’s end, we witness the ceremony. Mac’s father, lean and lanky and fresh off blowing up a grocery store, together with his wife (looking as if she raided Mamie Eisenhower’s closet), are being sworn in as U.S. citizens. Naturally, the alien children are also in tow. To hell with the paperwork and long wait, this entire family, born not in Mexico or El Salvador but another fucking planet, has been given a privilege extended to precisely no one else in the history of the country. Worst of all, they leave the courthouse in a car, with dad at the wheel. So yes, dad has also been extended a driver’s license, insurance, and the full trust of the people to know how to operate a motor vehicle, despite having never done so before. Rarely has the long arm of the law been so broken and battered.
And off they go. Destination unknown. But while the alien parents can now work and pay taxes, what, pray tell, will they do? Nothing in the movie indicates they have any skills, but clearly, they’re going somewhere. Factory work? A convenience store? High finance? Given that the movie acts as a Triumph of the Will-style defense of the McDonald’s empire, it stands to reason one of the two will be manning the French Fry station. Maybe husband and wife will be applying their skills of conquering time and space to keep the milkshake machine humming. Regardless, this is the big city. Expensive doesn’t even begin to cover it. And if they’re granted public assistance, that opens up a whole new can of worms.
At bottom, the movie can never explain why a group of naked, mute, otherworldly creatures were able to toss ICE and the entire weight of the American bureaucracy aside and become citizens. Sure, the dad brought a wheelchair-bound boy back to life, but is that enough? And why did no one at the Pentagon see the virtues of having Alien Papa on standby to erase battlefield casualties forevermore? Instead, they let this family slip away into the night to do whatever the hell they want. Maybe that’s their right, now that they’re no different than you and I. But at least E.T. went home. Did right by his people and ours. Mac and Me wanted a different outcome. Argued for a level of inclusion not even the far Left had considered. And by doing so, it sent the country careening off a cliff.
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