Tuesday, June 05, 2007

More Pointless Immigration Comments

Okay, so this whole immigration thing just isn't going away, huh? You've got people screaming that we are rewarding the illegal immigrants with the plan that is before Congress, that it is little more than total amnesty. Then you have others saying that it doesn't go far enough, that the fees required by the plan are punishment.

Let me clarify my take on this before I add my penny's worth of thought. If people enter a country through any means other than those required to gain citizenship, then they have violated the law. That makes them illegal in the eyes of the country's laws. We aren't going to quibble over who fought at the Alamo and all of that history. History is full of people being pushed around. That is human nature and no amount of political backpedalling will ever change that. I don't see my Celtic ancestors demanding their lands back in Europe. So, you enter a country according to its laws, or accept the fact you have violated that country's laws and deal with the fallout, no matter how much it sucks.

Having said that, I do believe that anything akin to rounding up all of the illegal immigrants and shipping them out of the country smacks of fascist nonsense. Offer the olive branch, set a deadline (a fair and generous one) for all illegals to step up and join the citizenship program, then make anyone who avoided that deadline fair game for deportation. You are attempting to make people respect the laws without being evil. You are giving them options. It is then their choice.

But, I have one big problem with any plan to make illegal immigrants full citizens, and I have yet to see this topic broached in the mainstream media. I hear liberals claiming Bush and his posse want to push this plan through so that they can maintain the cheap labor base that the major corporations exploit to make their profits. Okay. I admit to being a Democrat, but the flaw I see in this whole thing is that once these people become American citizens, they will then have to paid like American citizens and will have the ability to take legal recourse to get that pay. Cheap labor is gone. Prices will soar. And we will have an even larger base of working poor being crushed by an imbalanced economy. This will push more people into the welfare state, which will cripple the government even more.

This isn't the fault of the people who come to this country seeking better pay and safety. This IS the handiwork of a government that has consistently done everything it can to keep the boot on the neck of the working class. So we have really piss-poor options being offered to us: Exploit the illegal immigrants or use shortsighted legislation to further repress the economy.

And to think we voted these people into office. Who are the REAL idiots?