Get a Widget for this title
RSS FeedShould US immigration reform focus on amnesty for illegal aliens or tighter enforcement of borders?
Results so far:
| Amnesty | 38% | 119 votes | Total: 317 votes | |
| Borders | 62% | 198 votes |
Amnesty
Write now
Print
Invite a writer™
Add to FavoritesThe focus of US immigration reform should be bringing public policy in line with the pubilc good. Tighter enforcement of bad policy doesn't even constitute reform; it constitutes doing the same thing, and harder.
The US's ever-growing economy has created a demand for labor, signaled by relatively high wages and benefits. Of their own accord, immigrants would come-feeling it worthwhile to surmount the barrier-to-entry that is travel expenses-to meet that demand, and in the process grow the economy further through productive labor and, if not prevented from doing so, thorough continuation of the US's long tradition of immigrant entrepeneurship.
Cont rary to the arguments of economically ignorant xenophobes, the economy is not a fixed-sized pie that is divided among residents, with each arrival making our slice smaller. Immigration is a response to a shortage, and like any such response, it makes us better off.
The Federal government, motivated by concerns other than the general welfare, has thrown a monkeywrench into the market's invisible gears. The mess began with 1921's "Emergency Quota Act", but our current dilemma stems more immediately from 1965's Immigration and Nationality Act which, with modifications to its quotas, governs our immigration and visa process. Instead of letting supply and demand determine who comes and how long they stay, the government created an alphabet soup of visas and arbitrary caps on the total per hemisphere and per country. From a thinking man's perspective, this makes as much sense as placing caps on the number of people who may open pizzerias each year. No government official or group of officials knows how to set such a number, nor would the nation's economists, if they all worked at it together; economic central planning does not work!
To top matters off, no visa class exists for unskilled workers! The invisible hand of the market still works nonetheless; immigrants who cannot get visas, most of whom cannot get them under any circumstances, nevertheless find very expensive and sometimes dangerous ways to come and stay; a meager life in the US's underground economy is better opportunity than life at home.
As a result, immigration has moved off the roads and to the deserts. A corps of smugglers, no better than gangsters, that would not exist were legal temporary and permanent immigration practically possible, has developed to help people come to the US illegally. Processes intended to keep dangerous criminals and people with untreated hepatitis or tuberculosis out are of little effect, because in order to come at all, most immigrants must bypass screening. The system of quotas and alphabet-soup visas for skilled workers and family reunification is not meeting society's needs.
A permanent underclass, limited to menial off-the-books jobs and barred from all but petty entrepeneurship, has also developed as a result. Immigration reform must, first and primarily, solve the systematic problems which caused this situation in the first place-amnesty itself cannot be the focus of reform-but even after such reform happens, those twelve million remain.
Rounding them up and deporting them would be cruel, and limiting them to menial jobs and de facto lack of protection of law because they never got visas that our government wasn't offering is perverse. Rounding them up and deporting them would also cause a massive recession, while limiting them to their current underclass status severely limits their ability to contribute to our economy. An amnesty is the only sensible response; current undocumented immigrants must be regularized, checking in with the Department of State and getting screened for contagious diseases and criminal backgrounds, perhaps being charged a modest fee to cover the process.
Since the current policy is so out-of-tune with the market, stricter enforcement would be extremely costly. Show me a twenty-foot fence, and I'll show you a twenty-foot ladder. The marginal cost of each fractional reduction in illegal immigration naturally increases. The first fifty percent may be cheap, but we'll spend the country to ruin stopping the last, craftiest, most determined two. It makes no sense to spend billions enforcing a policy that has obviously failed. Control of borders would be much easier were immigration reformed. Who would cross the Arizona desert who could come on the interstate? How many "coyotes" would still be in business when nobody needed their services? And how many criminals would slip in undetected when reasonable and moral people no longer needed to presume that someone without a visa was a mere victim of a broken system?
Learn more about this author, Bennett Kalafut.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Borders
If the economy of Mexico was half of what America's is, would illegal immigration into America by Mexicans (the largest population of illegal immigrants in America) be that much of a burden, or relevant at all, to be a cause for concern?
Giving amnesty to all the millions of illegal Mexican immigrants currently in America is not going to strengthen the Mexican economy; is not going to create more jobs, more business, more wealth for the Mexicans who remained in Mexico; is not going to build a freer society within Mexico; is not going to make it any less likely that the millions of Mexicans living in extreme poverty in Mexico will not also dream of something better for themselves and their families, and thus dare to pursue a path to America, illegally, if necessary.
The problem has never been America, nor its determination to build a wall along the two thousand mile stretch of border with Mexico. Every sovereign country in the world knows that without a border, without some kind of demarcation line to indicate on which side of that line is our land, and which side is your land; and without a willingness to protect that line from unwarranted encroachment or trespassing - that very sovereignty would be in peril. Somehow, for some reason, at some point in American history, there evolved the idea that America should not be sovereign; that America, because of its wealth and prosperity (all built on a foundation of free markets and capitalism) should no longer be sovereign. And now this idea has been picked up by millions of non Americas, including those that are in America illegally.
Among some of the more prominent supporters of amnesty for illegal immigrants are, of course, the ACLU and the Democrat Party, but also La Raza (The Race) and MALDEF (The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund); both organizations of which are very pro-Mexican and which devote a vast amount of time, money, personal energy and resources to the idea that America, and its borders, ought to be more open and inviting for all Mexicans. But the biggest supporter of amnesty for illegal immigrants may be a surprise. The government of Mexico itself! Well, perhaps that really wasn't much of a surprise after-all.
It is the consorted endeavor by all these groups - dishonest as they are - and everyone else, to fulfill an end that not only does not justify the means, but is drenched in a stench of misguided, ill-contrived, fallacious lies, Amnesty is nothing short of a scam! And the ones hurt by it most are the illegal immigrants themselves, who are nothing more than pawns and tools to La Raza, MALDEF, the ACLU and the Democrat Party. The Mexican government is just happy to be rid of them; for the sad, bitter irony is that Mexicans are worth more to Mexico in America, whether they are legal or not, than they could ever be worth in Mexico, no matter how hard they toiled. The money they send back home is more money than they could ever hope to make in Mexico. It is more money than the government of Mexico is willing they should make in Mexico! And that is the crux.
The problem is not America. Neither it's attitude towards Mexicans, or any immigrants; or any unfounded, damnable cry of bigotry or xenophobia leveled against loyal, patriotic Americans. The problem lies with Mexico itself, and its own government. A government so blind, so immoral, so ensconced in corruption it is willing to throw aside its own people, and make them the concern of another government. It is the Mexican government itself that ought to be held to task; ought to be held accountable; and ought to be held in deep contempt for bigotry against its own people.
There is wealth in Mexico. And there is an accumulation of that wealth in Mexico. Enough wealth to begin the process of transforming Mexico from a third world nation into that of an economic leader, should that wealth be properly invested. The Mexican government knows this wealth exists. They are the ones holding it hostage!
Never-mind America focusing its energy on amnesty. Our own government ought to be pressing that of Mexico to release this wealth back to its own people. This is where the solution to illegal immigration in America truly resides. For, should the Mexican government ever give up its stranglehold on the accumulated wealth of its citizenry, and open itself up to free markets, capitalism, low taxation, less regulation - everything we have here in America - the Mexican people are intelligent, capable, and without question, able bodied enough to lift themselves out of the despair and misery that has forced and compelled so many millions of them to risk their own lives searching for better fruits in another land without legal consent.
If ever Mexico should regain its independent from its own government, throw off the shackles of socialism, and embrace freedom - then shall we in America see mass deportation of illegal immigrants. But "en masse" of a different kind. For, it will involve an exodus whose participants are actually willing, and who will come out of hiding on their own. They will want to return to a country that is economically productive and fertile, where they can earn a living for themselves and their families without having to look over their shoulder, or wonder if today will be the day they are turned in; a country where they can make enough money, and keep that money; where they can raise their families, invest in their futures - and do it all legally, on their own soil, in their own sovereign country.
Learn more about this author, T. W. Fuller.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Difference of opinion? Debate now.
- US Immigration
- Should Bush give up on the Immigration Bill and accept a loss?
- Should local police enforce federal immigration laws?
- Should landlords be required to check visa status and turn in illegal immigrants trying to find housing?
- Is your life better or worse as a result of immigrants who are not here legally?
- Should detention and deportation for minor crimes by illegal immigrants in US be mandatory?
- Undocumented and illegal immigrants should have a roadmap to US citizenship
