Immigration

A lot of things have happened since last I blogged regularly on political issues. I stopped because I got the feel that it was somewhat futile, and like I was just adding my voice to an already unnecessarily large preponderance of blogs. But I've decided to write again for me, so that's that.

Here's my take on illegal immigration: If it didn't benefit the immigrants to come here illegally, they wouldn't do it. There are people making money hand over fist on the backs of illegal immigrants, and they're passing the savings on to us. If we were to build a wall, or kick out all of the illegal immigrants, or both, two things would happen. One, companies that employee illegal immigrants would no longer be able to support the prices they'd been charging for their products. In order to remain profitable, they'd have to raise prices, and that would hit every consumer in the country in the wallet. Two, the amount of money it would take to raise a wall along our whole southern border (because let's face it, when most people say "illegal immigrants," what they really mean is "Mexicans"), as well as to staff an increased border patrol would either force higher taxes upon us, or would force us as a country ever deeper into the already crippling, almost 14-digit debt that we've already accrued.

So what to do? So far as I can tell, what really gets people's goat about the issue (those who aren't closet racists, that is) is the illegal part. So make legal immigration easier and more attractive than illegal immigration. And punish companies that are found to employ illegal immigrants. That'd do it, wouldn't it? I guess it wouldn't address the oft-cited concerns about "preserving our American culture," but we all know what that really means, don't we?

As for the guest worker program, it's not an original thought on my part, but I happen to agree with the line of thinking that it's a horrendous idea, and would create a permanent underclass of resentful non-citizens, and we do not want that in the slightest. It's largely because of that that I applaud the Democrats for sticking up to Frist and the other blustery bullies in the Senate. Aside from the actual provisions of the proposed bill, with which I strenuously disagree, the Democrats' actions show me that they're interested in business, rather than in endless debate that doesn't result in a bill. They've set up a cloture vote on the bill proposed in committee (effectively barring the attachment of amendments until the vote is held), which makes perfect sense, because if the bill won't pass as is, it's unlikely to pass with a bunch of amendments attached to it.

It gets repeated often enough that it means basically nothing by now, but this country was built on the backs of immigrants, and it's being sustained on the backs of immmigrants. To throw that away because of some xenophobic commitment to whatever's meant by "American culture" is not just shortsighted; it's morally reprehensible.

Fargus...

Tags: Immigration, Bill+Frist, Democrats