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On the immigration debate, I have one question that no one will answer. So I'll ask you and the author Debbie this question and see if you can answer. I'll preface it like this, theres 6 billion people on this rock and most are much poorer that our poorest of poor. They would kill to come here and eat trash from my dumpster. Each case is tragic and I'll allow them all to stay here if you can answer this one question.....
How many?
How many?
The answer to your question I have indirectly alluded to before and I will attempt to adress more directly here. In better times; with a different non-overextended economy, a non $8 trillion debt, a non-outsourced infrastructure, and a non-moron President; I think we could absorb the current load of Mexican immigrants - all 12 million of them. Maybe. But we are not in those times. We are a long way from being in that position again. We cannot afford the start-up costs of launching a large-scale world's poor and huddled masses melting pot industry. Such an industry will undoubtedly be profitable down the road - say one or two generations - but we simply don't have the capital now to be so gracious.
I do not advocate wide open borders. I never had. Not in today's world. Once we all join the United Federation of Planets and unite against the looming Klingon threat, maybe we can rethink our borders, but for now we are stuck with them. Nor can we unilaterally heal the world tomorrow through our generosity, not when we are so ill ourselves. You cannot rescue a drowning victim when the current is too strong for you swim against yourself; you cannot put the oxygen mask on your child in a decompressed airplane when you are also passing out. That doesn't mean your shouldn't try to do what you can, but you can't break yourself in the process.
Why do I keep talking about going after the illegal employer first and foremost? Because it protects our economy, enforces our laws, reverses the invasion of illegal immigrants, and doesn't involve direct and sometimes vindictive targeting of people who wanted to feed themselves more than they wanted to respect our immigration policy. I fully understand why AA is upset that a family member from out of state pays higher college tuition upon moving to AZ than the child of an illegal immigrant who happens to de facto call AZ home. Seems unfair. But, to quote some scripture here, the sins of the father should not be visited upon the sons. It is not the fault of a Mexican child who finds him or herself in the US because the parents broke the law and illegally dragged the kid here. When that person grows up and wants to go to college, and has never known any other home than the state they now reside in, then why shouldn't they get in-state tuition? What did they do wrong? Our legal system does not execute the children or a murderer. We should not misplace our wrath, and as I said above, the really criminal is the pusher of illegal jobs to economic addicts, not the user.
What about when an illegal immigrant is found in this country with children born in the US? Do we send the whole family back to Mexico, let them all stay here, or split them up? This is the quandary one encounters with a deportation-centered solution to the illegal immigration problem. I have no easy answer to this question so long as economic opportunity promised by illegal employers continues to drive massive numbers of people North across the border. But if the opportunity to find a job without proof of US citizenship or a proper work visa becomes zero, then the influx of economic refugees into our country drops precipitously, many already here without family will deport themselves back South, and the ones that remain will WANT to become US citizens because they want to assimilate and be Americans. Those are the people I want to stay. Those are the families I will not break up. Those are the people I want to educate. Those are the people I want to become U.S. citizens. Those are the people who are in every way like our ancestors who made it possible for us to be Americans.
Six billion people are on this rock, and as you say, most are poorer than us. We cannot help them all by sacrificing our life blood. Nor should we throw up figuratively and literally impenetrable walls and become Fortress America. Presently we are the dumping ground for people coming here for a piece of America, like it was a piñata waiting to be smashed for the candy inside. Our toleration of illegal employers drives this, and our elimination of these illegal employers will stop this. We will be left with manageable numbers of immigrants that want to stay and be legal Americas - not Aztlanders. the rest will stay in Mexico and eventually become such a force for change in their own country that they can not and will not be denied. The oligarchy will fall. That will be how we help them.
Unless we become fabulously wealthy through some alchemical breakthrough that turns bulls*** into gold, that will be the only way we can help them. That goes for the rest of the of the world too. It's a lesson we should take home from Iraq. Solving the world's problems doesn't mean shoving the US down everybody's throat or adopting every poor kid like Angelina Jolie and bringing them home with us. It means enabling other countries to fix their own problems with good-neighbor progressive policies, or sometimes just leaving them the f*** alone.
One thing that must be understood is that some hard decisions will have to be made here. Employers will have to pay the penalty of their actions, on this we agree completely. If there were jobs here to get, high payig ofr not, there would be a huge decrease almost overnight in the illegal activity of border crossing.
Beyond that the family issues are the fault of those crossing the border not ours. So too is the college tuition question. Should these people truely cared for the welfare of their children they would have waited to cross illegally until the child could be born here or they would have done whatever was necessary to ensure the childs legal status in this country upon crossing the border at a legal crossing point with proper documentation.
I don't like many of our laws, but you give me no pass should I break one nor should you. Why then can you make countless excuses for these people to break the law and look the other way while stating you understand the unfairness of a system that would afford an illegal alien a benefit in the state that it would not extend to an American citizen albeit from another state?
Feelings not honest thought is the guide who brought you to this point. Hard decisions are made by leaders, unlike those who lead America right now regardless of party, a day will come when a strong leader will emerge and their will to produce the best policy for the most possible Citizens will cause many to be unsettled, but these hard dicisions will have to be made. As with the dropping of the weapons on Japan, the D-Day invasion, the passing of the Constituion and the Declaration of Independence, all of which caused in turn much bloodshed, none can be said today to have been the wrong decision though in their time many were thought of as horrible.
By todays standards the exportation of millions of illegals back to their home countries would not begin to rise to the equality of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people around the world from just these three or four examples. What we need to do we need to do, the conciquences be damned in this case as we are not talking about the mass ending of lives.
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