What do we do about illegal immigrants? Heck if I know. Recently thousands took to the street to oppose Sen. Bill Frist’s proposal to make it a felony to be in the country without proper documentation.
My gut reaction is to close the floodgates letting people in, and to say that the reason “Amercians don’t want to do those jobs” is because they only pay dirt cheap wages. In theory, I’m in favor of raising American’s wages. We’ve got plenty of our own uneducated people who could and should do those jobs so that we don’t need to import any workers to do it. We should support our own people first and not those who come here from somewhere else. In reality, I know that the dirt cheap wages have contributed to keeping inflation down for valuable food stuffs, and like everybody else I don’t like to pay any more money than I have to.
My gut reaction is also to throw the illegals out of the country, but that doesn’t answer the question of what we do then with their children, who were born in this country and thus are US Citizens. We can’t throw them all out too, obviously.
My gut reaction is that the US is paying for the Mexican welfare system, and that the Mexicans should take care of their poor people, not us, but I’ve no clue about what to do about that.
Anybody have any good ideas about what to do with the immigration mess?
I think the real solution would be stiff fines and jail time for those enabling illegal immigrants. If someone is employing illegals, giving housing to illegals, or giving health assistance to illegals without reporting them, they should be heavily penalized.
If the argument arises that we need them for cheap labor and the economy, well then make them legal.
I think we send a mixed message of “we’ll do everything to keep you from getting across the border, but if you make it, we’ll give you jobs, healthcare, and housing without any repercussions to the enablers and no questions asked.”
I guess we really need a concrete decision on “are they legal, or aren’t they?”
None of this wishy-washy “well, some we need, some we don’t, let’s keep the ones we have just don’t let any more in” bullshit.
The closest example I could think of is a club owner who hires an outside company for bouncers. They find that the club has a problem of underage drinkers getting in. Instead of acknowledging that the minors are there illegaly and kicking them out, the owners serve them alcohol and claim they need them because they are a big segment of the business they do. Their solution being it’s the bouncers fault for letting them in and they need tighter security. But please don’t harass my paying minors that are already here.
If illegals arrived to the U.S. only to find employers wouldn’t hire them (for fear of fines and jail), landlords wouldn’t lease to them (for fear of fines and jail), and hospitals would treat them then immediately release them to officials to be deported (for fear of fines and jail), I don’t know why they would still want to come.
I don’t have all the answers to illegal immigration, but quite obviously we need to come down hard on employers who knowingly hire illegals.
However:
–the Republicans have no interest in controlling illegal immigration because they want cheap labor.
–the Democrats have no interest in controlling illegal immigration because they hope to build a power base among the new immigrants much like they did in the 19th century.
Since neither one of the major parties is seriously concerned about controlling illegal immigration, it’s going to be damn hard to get anything done at the federal level. And that’s where it needs to be done.
I think it is curious that virtually the same solution I proposed a long time ago is the one that is being discussed in congress right now, it is also curious that the solutions presented in this thread so far have very little chance to pass.
Both very good points. They both want to make it look like they’re tough on immigration to John Q. Public, but it’d both hurt them. I can see the Republicans caving first because one has to make a stand. I can see the Republicans making it an Us v Them situation.
I haven’t seen it before. Obviously, being in Arizona brings a lot more of this to the forefront than the person having to bludgeon canucks hopping the border into Maine.
For my benefit, would you mind stating it succintly or posting a link to whatever it is Congress is working on?
I’m one of those who doesn’t necessarily see immigration as a pressing problem that deserves the amount of attention it’s getting. There are other, more important issues.
I see the recently proposed legislation as causing more problems than it solves. We’re not going to “catch” them all, nor is it going to make immigrants say, “Gee, I guess we’d better go home.” No-- it’s just going to push them further into the underground. By denying their children a public education, we’re virtually guaranteeing an increase in crime, and by denying them healthcare, we’re setting ourselves up for a public health crisis. (Children who aren’t immunized can get diseases which can then mutate and become epidemics.)
Yes, I think immigration should be controlled, but as I see it, we’re gearing up to spend more trying to stop it than is the potential economic harm that the illegals can cause. (A billion-dollar wall???) For the most part, illgeals just want to work, and they’re not taking jobs that Americans want. In my opinion, you gotta give them at least a little credit for their gumption.
I think this issue gets the kind of attention it does because of subconsious racism and classism. (You don’t see thousands of people setting up vigilante guard squadrons for the Canadian border, do you?) Immigration doesn’t seem to alarm some people for the potential homeland security risks or potential increases in crime, as much as the idea of a bunch of brownish people coming over here to LIVE does. (I’ve seen alarmist articles citing that there are more Hispanics than whites in some areas, as if this is a problem.)
I hear this constantly, but I’m immensely skeptical. My first full time job was taking care of profoundly retarded children and adults. Trust me, if you don’t think it’s dirty and dangerous to change a diaper on an angry 40-year-old man with the IQ of a 2-year-old, you don’t know what dirty and dangerous is. (Not to mention depressing.) I’ve washed dishes, mopped and swept floors, and cleaned surgery rooms. I used to get part-time janitorial work with a local janitorial service when I needed extra money. They haven’t hired me for several years now, and I understand their entire cleaning staff now consists of Mexicans–want to bet none of 'em are illegal?
Who do you think was doing these jobs before we had a flood of illegal immigrants?
This is one of the few times I’m in favor of something Bush is doing, still I would not give him much credit, this has been an idea that others had before. This is one of those “only Nixon would go to China” moments, the sad reality is that most of the Republican supporters are against it, so the only hope was for the leader to push it, problem is the timing of it with his support being this low, but I do think such a sensible solution will be considered if rank-and-file are informed better:
With all due respect, most people wouldn’t want those jobs.
I don’t think that a “flood of illegals” is a recent event. We’ve always had immigrants to do the “dirty work”-- think of the Chinese in California, for example, who built the railroads and did the laundry of miners. Immigration is one of the reasons why slavery fell out of favor in the north-- there was a constant stream of cheap labor which could be paid less than what it cost to keep a slave.
Well, duh. That’s the point. Most people wouldn’t want those jobs, but an American citizen still took them. And as far as I remember all of my co-workers on those jobs were American citizens, too.
I don’t think it can reasonably be denied that we’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of illegal aliens in our country over the last two decades.
True but irrelevant. Such guards are unnecesary because as I understand it Canada, unlike Mexico, has an adequate safety net for its poor people and has medical care for all. A poor Canuck would be quite reasonably unwilling leave the land of the Maple Leaf flag because of those reasons. There is no such similar force at work keeping Mexicans and other Latins from coming here.
You complained about Mexicans. You implied that some had to be illegal. 1)How did you know they were Mexicans? 2)Why did you think that they were illegal?
I think we should reform on many fronts at once, because there are clearly a broad assortment of issues which influence and are influenced by immigration policy. America needs to 1) get the labor our economy needs, 2) secure the border and 3) deter & punish those who encourage illegal immigation.
Labor Supply:
By way of accomplishing this, those here should be able to apply for amnesty (provided there is some security check on it) and future immigration should be easier. A lot easier. So easy, in fact, that it seems preferable to trekking across the desert or baking in a boxcar. Noone who is willing to work should be denied unless there’s a security concern. In this way, those who complain that a border crackdown would punish only those seeking a better life might be satisfied that those who are seeking such an opportunity have easily accessible and acheivable front door options, and have no excuse for sneaking in the back way.
Border Security:
Once the front door is open, the back door should be closed. Maybe not a wall, since that seems to offend almost everyone, but certainly a tougher stance (that is, criminal penalites) on anyone found entering the country outside of the normal channels (that is to say, scurrying through the desert in the dead of night as opposed to an immigation office) or overstaying their permission to stay.
Demand-side Crackdown:
After the front door is open, and the back door is being watched, anyone helping those still intent on coming through the back ought to be targeted. Since the process for entry is easy, there should be plenty of hands around to hire without resorting to those who for whatever reason choose to remain undocumented. With the excuses removed, enforcement should be stern: enough of a risk to make it a bad economic decision no matter how cheap the labor is.
America should be open and welcoming to those willing to invest their effort in improving their lot. However, it should not turn a blind eye to anyone who decides a legitimate chance isn’t good enough for them, and attempts to circumvent a fair and just system.
I doubt there exists the political will to implement all three parts of the above, though. Otherwise, whaddya think?
Innocent until proven guilty, my friend. It’s unfair to assume some of them must have been illegal just because of their ethnicity. It’s much the same as looking at a group of black people and assuming some of them must be criminals.
Thank you much. For the record, so far, I completely agree with you.
I wonder if i petitioned my congressman if he’d start throwing support…(Michigan, by the way).
In a lot of cases, it seems like people aren’t fired up about this until they have to “deal with it”. People don’t care about murder in the Sudan, but they care about the price of gas right down the street.
There were about 120,000 illegal immigrants from Canada living in the US in 1996, and these folks actually are taking good jobs from Americans.
One of the most common concerns I hear voiced over illegal immigration is the potential homeland security threats-- that if ordinary workers can get through, so can terrorists. This is an excellent article on the subject:
To me, it’s painfully obvious our preocupation with Mexicans is disproportionate, when there are other sources of illegal immigration that we’re mostly ignoring, especially considering that Canada’s lax asylum policies make it possible that illegals sneaking across that border might do more harm than people who just want to work.
