ILLEGAL SHOULD MEAN ILLEGAL BY BOB UNTERMAN
Curtailing illegal immigration
Suppose bank robbery was not punished. If you robbed a bank and you were caught, you'd simply have to give the money back. And oh yes, you'd get a lift home. Obviously, if that were the case, we would have banks being robbed every second of every day. So why are we surprised that illegal immigrants flood across our borders every second of every day? If caught, Border Patrol agents simply ship the illegal immigrants back home. Our government's attitude seems to be, 'no harm, no foul'. And now we are going to spend a ridiculous amount of money on an utterly ridiculous, and useless, fence as the "cure" for this serious problem afflicting America.
There is a better solution. I have a radical idea; let's make illegal mean illegal again. Let's pass a federal law saying that instead of merely being sent home, anyone convicted of illegally entering the United States would serve 6 months in jail for the first offense, 18 months for the second offense, and 36 months for the third offense. And only upon completion of their sentence would an illegal immigrant be sent home. This would remove the primary impetus for such illegal immigration, sending money home. An incarcerated illegal immigrant can't earn money; he or she can't send money back home, so why cross the border? Hence once America seriously enforces such a law on a nationwide basis, illegal immigration would drop precipitously.
(Depending upon how seriously we want to curtail the flow of illegal immigration, we can remove other rewards for crossing our border illegally. We could end the practice of granting automatic citizenship to children born here even if the mother is here illegally; we could stop free health care and free public education. All these reward illegal entry. America needs to decide just how firmly we want to deal with this problem.)
But wait, you say, can we afford to build and staff thousands of new jail cells? Wouldn't incarcerating this veritable flood of illegal aliens cost billions? But no, I say. Let's steal an idea from Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. Let's set up large tent city jails near the US/Mexico border. We could house the illegal immigrants in these inexpensive, temporary facilities. Those caught in other locales around the country could be transported to these southwestern locations. Again, I suspect that once we were to seriously enforce such a law, the need for such facilities would fall dramatically.
{Yes, we need some sort of guest worker program (a future blog entry from someone smarter than I), and some sort of grandfather clause for folks who have been here and paid taxes for many years (another future blog entry). Yes, the United States bears some responsibility for the crushing poverty in much of our hemisphere (yet another blog entry). But the lack of legislation in these other areas should not deter this crucial first step. This fairly simple, cost effective, solution can become a reality, but only if we have the national will to do it.}
So when will Congress grow some cojones and pass such a bill? Believe it or not, something quite similar to this law is already on the books. This is precisely why these people are already called 'illegal'! So why isn't the Bush administration enforcing the law? Beats the hell out of me.
posted by Sandy Trupp @ 7:45 AM
8 Comments:
When my grandparents and father came over here they learned English right away and were proud of it.
Why would they ever want to hold up another flag other than the American flag which they loved. They somehow passed the test (which was in English) and became citizens. They worked hard too.
They had real values that we take for granted today or that some just laugh at. Somehow the children they produced did "better' than they did and all studied and worked hard for what they achieved. Why come to this country if not to be a citizen?
Mr. Unterman,
Your words make absoute sense. However, I feel that the "national will", as you said, is weak. As our nation's 'better' jobs are being outsourced on the one end, the drive toward cheap labor on the other (with illegals) is gobbling away at the other. The erosion of the middle class is in full scour, like a torrential rain in desert gully.
At Nero Fiddles...
Mr. Unterman speaks eloquently and without ceremony. Refreshing. When I read about the events surrounding rallies and "rights" of illegal immigrants, beyond human rights, I wonder how far I would get if I decided to leave America and go to France, or Australia or Thailand and demand not only the rights and priveledges enjoyed by their citizenry, but in reality, more than what many of our elderly are seeing in terms of medicare and general health care, at the expense of government, today. Benefits that continue to be dispersed on people who have not earned the right to have them. Exactly who comes into someone's home and makes demands? Complete arrogance. I don't see Mexico exporting any of their rich executives. That would be novel.
Does anyone remember what happened to the Haitians last month when they, sick and weary, near death, blew up near a U.S. shoreline? No, of course not. They were too sick and too Haitian to rally yesterday. Most likely, when no one came to their aid, they were shipped back with little ceremony, sad, pathetic and desperate, leaving our shores probably to never see it again. But does anyone care? Of course not -- they don't fit the right demographic for public sympathy, but if we wait long enough, maybe their turn will come as the ethnicity du jour.
If the argument for illegals to be 'legalized' is that the American economy is so desperate to have them in our workforce, then our system is grossly flawed. Automation has replaced the average American worker and with fewer teenagers today needing to work because mom and dad foot all the bills, there are fewer people to fill the spots. Fine. Maybe American companies need to pay a higher minimum wage and keep our jobs home and legal. The point is, when money is sent overseas to families from alien workers, and companies and individuals do not have to account for their earnings, we lose as a country. The only reason we are where we are today is because the system makes us accountable through taxes, so we can support those who genuinely can't support themselves. If able-bodied individuals never pay into the system, but get benefits as though they did, we all lose. The flood of entitlement must end.
Does "illegal" immigration pose a lethal threat to American society? Or is the so-called threat mostly hyperbolic rhetoric, seen in one dimension to obscure deeper societal failures and historical movements?
The human tragedy we confront at the Mexican border is in reality a continuation of a long tectonic shift, not only of immigration and migration, but rather an ongoing struggle between the haves, the have-mores, and the have-nots.
From the French Revoloution onward, the struggle is waged on many fronts-- social, political, and economic. It is curious to note that the American founders debated whether or not the "pursuit of happiness" outweighed their original language which gave us the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of PROPERTY."
We have revived property as the imperative, and illegal immigrants serve this end. Having grown up in the diaspora of the European immigrant flood of the 20th century, I suggest that those who poured through Ellis Island and other U.S. ports a century ago were viewed by established capital in the same way we view Mexicans today--as property to be exploited in ways that perhaps only today's "illegals" can appreciate.
Why are our southern borders so open, even welcoming, to this flood of desperate people whose primary drive is simple survial? We are told by capital that "illegals" do jobs Americans refuse to do. But we know better--or we should. The Mexicans we have stigmatized and criminalized are the new exploitables, the lowest end of the bottom line. They, along with the children of Asia and Africa who earn pennies a day for American importers and manufacturers, are throw-away humanity: invisible and expendable means of "economic production."
Lock them up? We have jailed more humans beings than any Western society, and it might be wise to think long and hard before we begin erecting concentration camps in the desert for those expendables who ran out of luck, who were detained by U.S. authorities before they could disappear into jobs working 16 hours a day for $3 an hour in our fields and slaughter houses or in the not so luxurious basements of luxury resorts.
Immigration, endless migration and the need to survive must be seen through a humane lens in the light of history. I suggest a toning down of the rhetoric and perhaps a little less flag-waving.
(from the author of the original posting.)
It may surprise the anonymous poster of 10:16 AM, but it is precisely because I view immigration through a humane lens that I put forth my ideas. For only when we have curtailed illegal immigration will we be able to set up a sensible system for increased legal immigration and a guest worker program. That way we can put a stop to the exploitation of immigrants, so they are NOT treated like "throw-away humanity".
And I take personal affront to your characterization of minimum security tent holding facilities as "concentration camps". That is a horrible, reprehensible, disgusting misconstruing of my idea. If you need to learn the difference between a well run miniimum security tent holding facility with well fed and well cared for detainees, and a concentration camp, I suggest you ask my old and dear family friend whom I call Uncle Jean; he's the one with the number tatooed on his arm.
No one would dare have concentration camps for aliens.
It would be too visible.No one wants that. Let's leave the Holocaust out of it.
We should be fining the companies that use illegals. We won't though.
Its another way that the rich get richer etc. People are getting fed up hearing press one for English.
Why can't the illegals get legal???
Do we as a country make it easy for them? NO!
This is a big problem.Fixing it doesn't have to be that hard.
As a legal immigrant (courtesy of having got an American woman in the family way) I must be the best qualified of this group to cast an opinion. I find it strange that the Bush administration has chosen one of Israel's methods of combating terrorism - the wall - to deter the hapless underclass of Mexican Strivers. This is much too embattled and passive a response for the expansionist spirit exemplified by the American Eagle. Rather we should annex a foot of Mexican territory for every migrant that crosses over. We would then welcome them in as the taxable base headed South.
Obviously no attempt has been made for years to seriously impede the flight of the desperate into the USA. This is because the spirit of the Statue of Liberty undercuts the will of the lawmakers to formalize the making of citizens. The downtrodden have always been able to rely on the megaphone of the First Amendment to counter exploiting trends. There is no downside to the flood of illegals that is permanent. Mexifornia here we come.
Post a Comment
<< Home