Am I supporting illegal immigrants?
Definitely not. Because we are already allowing legal immigration from all countries even from those countries who are our enemies. Only that from the hostile countries immigration occurs as refugees.
Our forefathers allowed immigration because they suffered discrimination in their own European homelands. They believed every culture had something good about it and by bringing representative sampling of each culture here and combining the good already here we can create a better nation, if not the best. Most such communities have utilized that opportunity and bettered the nation by getting their children educated and contributed to this nation by paying taxes and doing business. Some have misused the same opportunity by diverting their own new arrivals to drugs and crimes to make easy money without getting educated.
So, we already have a responsibility to look after legal immigrants from all countries including those from our immediate neighbors. Many think that USA has unlimited resources to cater to the needs of the whole world. For many among us ego used to prevent us in admitting that even USA has its limitations as far as resources are considered.
Illegal immigrants should realize that their actions will jeopardize opportunities for their own legal immigrants here, even reduce legal immigrant quotas for their countries or worse still, stop immigration from their countries and give those quotas to other nations.
How illegal immigration started?
Our government issues work quotas for our immediate neighbors in preference to other countries. These quotas increased after the signing of NAFTA. Liberalization of rules means it becomes easy to misuse them. With open borders it became still easier for those people who failed to get work licenses due to numerical limits to infiltrate into this country.
Did border states encourage illegal immigration?
Yes, though they are the vociferous opponents now, border states openly encouraged illegal immigration out of their myopic views on economy and economics. Agreed not everybody can be an expert on economics. But still simple commonsense is enough to realize that it was patently wrong.
The selfish reason for border citizens allowing influx of illegal immigrants was:
– cheap labor
The selfish reason for border politicians loving illegal immigration was:
-it afforded a surreptitious way for building future vote banks. Their miscalculation was that those illegal immigrants in future can be legalized and thus made their loyal voters.
Yes, the guys and gals you see now totting guns and making vitriol in front of the whole world on TV were also the ones who started this mischief against all economic realities and rules.
Why the border states are now doing a somersault?
What couldn’t be calculated in advance during all this tragic-comedic exercise in miscalculations were two:
1. That Presidency and Congress will pass on to Democrats
2. That USA will inexorably lapse into an economic downturn.
Yes, even today most of the border states are Republican with a smattering of Democratic pockets. They encouraged illegal immigration for cheap labor and for building future vote banks through the backdoor. That truth cannot be erased even if they show an ignorant Sheriff threatening Federal government or a gun totting old woman assuming a threatening pose on the TV now. Yes, they started this vicious cycle.
Now that economy has gone down the same people who gave jobs to those illegal immigrants cannot do business as before. So they don’t want those people any more.
If these employers wanted to do things the right way, they would have asked the government to issue more job licenses so that it could have been done in a legal way. But that entails responsibility for the employer to send those people back at the expiry of those licenses. So they encouraged illegal employees from over the border to avoid legal responsibilities and to save money.
How do we solve this problem without all this drama?
Give the illegal immigrants time to surrender so that they can be given a chance for deportation in a civilized way.
Tell them why they have to go back: the economic reasons. This will need some honesty on our part to admit that we are not as rich as they thought. They should understand that because they too have seen some educated but jobless people foraging through supermarket dumps on TV .
Tell them also why they have to leave for the future of immigrants from their own countries.
Give them preference in allotting future quotas but with the express condition that their movement will be restricted to the state they are allowed to work and they will leave as soon as those job licenses expire.
That is the civilized way of doing it. No need to kill or threaten anybody with guns and add a delay with criminal cases before the courts.
Then if anybody is still not willing to surrender after a prescribed period, then only they be treated as fugitives – not by citizens but officers of law enforcement. In a democracy citizens don’t take law into their hands. Otherwise there is no difference between us and our enemies.
What they don’t realize is that this the beginning of a drive against all illegal immigrants not just against one racial group. They got prominence because they are the numerical majority. Other groups will be facing the law soon.
Aside:
The Sheriff who appeared on TV and challenged the Federal government probably is ignorant about the consequences of his show off on TV. If he is smug with the belief that his state laws will save him, he is absolutely mistaken.
As for the old woman who was showing off her gun, let me ask her, “Do you really know how to use that weapon?” especially with her hands trembling before the TV cameras.
The constitution of this country is quite capable of dealing this situation. But if some border states first create vicious cycles for making money against economic truths and then want the nation to quickly share the ill-effects of their actions, the nation may not oblige them with the same speed.
So never start vicious cycles like illegal immigration even if for making money or for gaining political mileage. That is a sure-shot way of digging one’s own future economic grave.
Since USA bases its economy on free enterprise, economic cycles with regular ups and downs will happen in future too. So let us not start ignorant vicious cycles that go against economic truths for transient gains.
