One of the problems with having flashes of enlightenment is that nagging feeling that associates with the light-- namely, "why didn't I think of this sooner?"
With the current US vs Arizona court case (re: AZ SB1070) working at a breakneck pace to come to a decision before July 29th, of course the major news media are publishing every possible angle on the story.
One angle is, as always, "Why break up families?" And I have to admit, as staunchly anti-illegal immigration as I am, I have always twinged a bit at the thought that the mother or father of a bona-fide US Citizen might be deported BACK to where they are legal residents of.
Man do I not like the idea of breaking up families. Of course, the illegals (they are illegally here) could always take the anchor baby home with them. That is one solution that certainly adheres to the "personal responsibility" I respect so much.
But you can't force a citizen to leave. (BTW, if you don't like that the anchor babies are citizens, tough. It's in the Constitution. Amend it.)
But it just hit me: I have heard more stories for decades along the lines of "they come here to work and they work really hard and they send money back to their family back in Mexico or El Salvador, etc."
Exactly.
Coming here, illegally or otherwise, is for the most part, an act of breaking up your family. Yes, the intentions are good. So what? Breaking the law and breaking a family are bad, no matter what the intentions are.
But, and this is a big but, I hold myself and America to a higher standard than just "well they did it so we can, too." I hold myself and America to the standard of "do what is RIGHT."
And what I believe is right is to allow the parents to take their US Citizen child home with them to their legal country of residence. Once there, the whole family can work to make their legal home better. A place that we would want our citizens to live. A place where they can prosper. And if anything happens to our citizen while there? We have laws and procedures in place for that.
And if they decide to leave the citizen here while they go back to their legal residence and get in line to come here legally?
Well we have lots of people in America that love to take care of children. Our citizens, even the poorest, enjoy a decent standard of living. And of course the US citizen child can travel freely between their US home and their parents legal residence until the parents get legal permission to come back, should they choose that over the option of improving their homeland.
And another note: if you worry that we are deporting people back to places that are unfit for them to live... remind them that God gave them the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
America's founding fathers, bless their eternal souls, believed in that truth so much so that they risked their property, their fortunes, and their to lives make it possible.
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Hmm. I guess I'm a little shielded (but not completely) by the illegal alien arguments by virtue of living so far from the troublesome border, and so far from the warm climates, and so far from the major cities.
Here. we have work to do that doesn't get done. We have corn that sits in the field while the white kids sit inside and play video games or walk the mall or text each other. The farmers offer to pay $10/hr for unskilled help and the kids say no thank you. Apparently, not having any skills at all qualifies you for more than the federal minimum wage.
Often, farmers turn to whoever is willing to do the work in order to get the crop in to have food for the winter for their cows, in order to be able to generate milk on a daily basis, in order to sell 100# of it for less than a case of Mountain Dew costs. Then, after they break their backs, with the help of migrant workers, to sell milk for less than it costs them to generate it, their kids go out and buy a case of Mountain Dew.
I was at the Westby, Wisconsin "Syttende Mai" (17th of May - Norway's version of the 4th of July) festival, with a parade and such, and within SIGHT of the Westby Coop Creamery (home of the cheese I like to give as presents, and open 7 days each week since the cows need milked 7 days per week and the farmer needs somewhere for the milk to go 7 days per week, and at this festival in the heart of America's Dairyland, at each of the stands where you could buy traditional Wisconsin food or traditional Norwegian food, you could not buy milk. You could get any flavor of sweetened corn syrup (soda) that you wanted (and I don't think it's Wisconsin corn, either) but I had to walk to the creamery to get milk.
I love walking into WalMart and seeing the unemployed people spend their government checks to buy stuff from China.
I love going to the coop and seeing the hippies take their EBT card out and buy stuff from California and Mexico.
We live in strange times. No one is looking at the forest anymore. My car is German because ALL I CARE ABOUT IS SURVIVING THE CRASH, not whether Detroit or Cadillac or GM or America survive their own crashes.
So when someone tells me that a transaction someone else is making with a boss affects them personally, such as a worker coming across the border and taking your job, I have to accept that as the net result of me driving a Benz, Westbyans drinking Mt Dew, and Viroqua hippies eating Kombucha from California. I don't look at it as affecting me without also considering the impact of Americans doing less than they can to defend their liberties, pay their share, etc.
How is it less criminal to live off the country than to sneak in and take the jobs?
If a country allows entertainers (i.e. athletes) to make millions to play a game, and if a country tolerates the fact that 85% of 8th graders, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, answer "famous," if we can tolerate the internal degradation of our families, our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, our governments, even our country, then we might as well open the borders and hope for the best.
I'm paid to follow the rules. Some of the rules are things that I question, but I am paid to follow them.
When I was struggling with my own existential thoughts in the early years of high school I decided that it would be easier for me to make my mark on the world if I were a part of it. My philosophy was that it would be much easier to change the things I dislike from within (and especially if I were in charge) than if I were to sit outside with my sandals on carrying a sign with a cheesey mis-informed slogan. (It is funny to me that the hipocrit hippies say Karl Rove divided the country with smoke and mirrors and exploited it when they do the exact same thing [in other words, they're both a bunch of liars])
So, after a 5 year drinking binge I decided that I should act on those adolescent thoughts, and now here I am being paid to follow the rules, but subsequently in a position where I can actually affect them. It is well within my reach to be in a position where I can re-write the rules if I choose.
So what the hell does this have to do with it? Well, we have these rules in place about immigration, and so my automatic stance is that they must be upheld. It also seems silly to me that the AZ bill only allowed a state agent to do the same thing a federal agent could already do, and now the federal courts have injoined the state law.
I see Alex's point, apathy kills.
I see Eric's point, follow the rules.
I guess I must have taken the week off with dad for Balloon Fiesta when we went over in civics class the day that America stopped being a melting pot for immigrants.
My fear of opening the border's and hoping for the best: you wanna talk big governement, how bout 'UUUUGE government? we're going to have to create oversight committees for every single job that used to go to illegals to make sure they are properly being taxed now... but don't worry, because with all those taxes, we should just about be able to cover the committee member's salaries.
I think that a Wall is a waste of time and money too. Perhaps Felipe Calderón is the solution, and not anything that USA can do? Who are we to always think we are the solution...?
The bright side of opening the borders: I'm not a jet-setter (yet) but I'm pretty sure that Europeans have an easier time gaining dual citizenship, and europeans also take alot more days off and drink more.
Shit, if we keep artificially inflating our economy then it might not be too long before the dude jumps the wall/swims the river/floats the boat over here, pokes his head up and says, "Damn, they lied..." and turns around trying to beat the rush back to their country.
I'd like to point out that we all love to hear ourselves talk, also, I'm not sure I made a point, but these are things we can all chew on, and when I'm in charge you can advise me on...
Alex and Matt,
You both know I have a lot of respect for you so the fact that I am disagreeing with you is not personal.
You are making great arguments that no longer apply.
1) America is a melting pot. Yes. So adopt our laws, language, customs, and play by America's rules if you want to melt in. The melting pot in Southern California is vibrant and robust and swamped with folks who have no interest whatsoever in melting in.
2) I love immigration. And Matt, considering that you are now a rules guy, I would think that you would prefer people to be coming here who follow the rules. We have a VERY tolerant immigration policy. It is a policy and a set of laws that can be flexed if they don't work. Not broken. I want the rule followers here first, not last.
3) Alex, if there is not enough labor to milk the cows because of video gaming children, it sounds like you are solving one problem with another by looking the other way for illegal immigrants. There are legal fixes for this problem: raise the price of milk; hire legals; allow more legals in; eat less; throw less food away; raise the prices of milk products; pay the kids what they are worth; stop buying kids without jobs Nintendos.
4) The current situation is not anything that fits into the somewhat sterilized idealistic responses you guys have made in that every person here illegally could have gotten here legally.
5) I used to believe that anyone who wanted to be here badly enough to lie, cheat, and sneak their way in would probably turn out to be good for America. I was wrong. The quotas can be expanded. If we eliminate the slave labor that American consumers are enjoying the benefits of, and prices soar, we will stop using and eating and wasting so much of our resources. If we chase off the illegals in the same way that you would chase a cat burglar out of your home, you would see that the problems the illegals leave behind are all solvable with other legal means. And, at the very least, we could accelerate the legal immigration of a broader mix of peoples from all over the world who have respect for our laws and our rules and our culture and did I mention laws?
At CIPS I am sure a lot of the people I worked with were from places that they desperately needed to escape. But I also had a salesman working for me with an MBA and a legal American citizenship, transplanted legally from Mexico, and he believed in his heart that America was worth playing by the rules to get into.
And I agree.
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