Just a quote I read from an immigrant.
I actually think it does matter. There are certain rules that one must abide by and personally I don't appreciate those who are doing it illegally. I am speaking from the experience of spending thousands of dollars to come live in Australia. Yes, it took a lot of money and yes, it took almost a year, but it was the right way to do it.
Australia would be a great place to come illegally and live off the government. Don't have to pay taxes and get a big fat check in the mail fortnightly because your income level is below a certain amount.
Maybe I am seeing it wrong, do illegal immigrants pay state and federal taxes? Do they pay Medicare and Social Security taxes? Do they get Medicare and Welfare? I would say that the latter is the only one you might be able to say yes to as a whole. Prove me wrong if you know any good hard data. I am just assuming this from the natural state of human beings. I read an article on CNN about it and I think many of the proposals are reasonable. They include...
- illegal immigrants to obtain legal status, and eventually citizenship, by working for six years, paying a fine, undergoing a background check and learning English.
- a guest-worker program that will allow immigrants into the country to fill jobs that Americans can't or won't do
- Bush has adamantly opposed "automatic amnesty" for illegal immigrants already in the country, but he has expressed support for "a bill that says somebody who's working here on a legal basis has the right to get in line to become a citizen."
I have heard from news reports that American immigration agency is eternally slow and
needs fixing. I say "fine fix it, I'm sure it needs fixing because it is a government run project". I still don't think though it is an excuse for being illegal. Go through the steps, even if it takes a year or two. We did, we lived in limbo for that long surely 1 million others can too.
I know that some of these people come from really hard back grounds and countries that are not providing basic rights to their people, but there are still rules.
I know that it could mean splitting families up, fine give legal status to all those in a family, but something needs to be changed.
6 comments:
I would be very interested to hear what Jen has to say about all of this. Jen.......where are you?
tee hee, you mean me?
we're having a lot of fun here in chicago discussing this very issue.
personally, and most of our friends would agree, we don't really like the concept of a guest worker program. i agree more with the raid approach, actually. pay the consequences for not being here legally. get out, or be sent out, and come back here when you do it right. this would certainly put the onus on the countries from which the people are coming to actually DO SOMETHING about their social ills that are driving their populace to the U.S. especially MEXICO.
as for those who are here already, i'd say, either register with the government, pay the fine, and get in line for legal status, or wait for (what i think should be a cash infusion to border patrol/national security concerns) the guvment to come get you and make you get out.
also, we need to build a wall.
uncertain times, important measures.
but anyway, that's just my two cents. i want to love people, i want to understand their plight, but i can't help but become very angry when i see what my pals brandomegalene went thru to go to Oz when we have people literally flooding across to the U.S. in an illegal manner every day.
oh, and the allusions to racism regarding the Minuteman Project are absolutely abhorrent and irresponsible. I don't care what race you are, don't come into my country illegally and ask for any help or a job.
On the specifics, I think Jen and Tom are on the right track. But...this issue has become so complex and its so important that I think we are approaching it from the wrong angle. We are wrangling over specifics before we lay out broad principles. Maybe this analogy will help. If the specific details of a problem are like iron filings, we spend a lot of time trying to individually figure out which way the filing should point - this takes a lot of energy and time and results in some weird compromises that when taken as a whole, do not make a lot of sense. But, if you take a magnet and slowly move across the filings (details), then most of them will orient themselves according to the general direction of the magnet. The magnet stands for general principles laid down by the Founders.
There are three important founding principles that might help. One is the equality principle - "All men are created equal"; another is government by consent of the governed and finally the rule of law. Here's how these might be applied to the immigration debate.
The equality principle does not mean that all men have the right to come to the U.S. Rather, the Founders believed that immigration policy needs to protect the equality principle as it operates and grows inside the U.S. Unrestricted immigration is a danger to the equality principle both in number and type of immigrants. This why the Founders at first restricted immigrants to Europeans - not because they were racists, but because Europeans were the closest to embracing this principle - in fact, that is where we got it from. It is hard to imagine very many Africans or Asians in the 18th century that would have embraced the equality principle especially when it was so fragile even here. It is easy to see how a large number of immigrants especially from places where the equality principle is not highly valued might be a threat.
Second, a society based on the consent of the governed certainly means that the people inside the society have every right to decide who to consent with. This means the right to leave and the freedom to exclude. No one has a natural right to immigrate; all have a natural right to emigrate.
Finally, illegal immigration erodes the rule of law. This means that the law rules - not the number of protesters that you can get to show up. This is exactly what Madison was concerned with - the tyranny of the majority. Laws must be passed by legitimate authorities and they must be enforced. To allow illegal immigrants or employers to violate the law chips away at the legitimacy of other laws. Congress must draw lines in the dirt and stick to them with enforcement regardless of the mobs that disagree.
All of this and more is in a book entitled Vindicating the Founders by Thomas West. It also includes chapters on women, property, race, voting rights. West shows us that the principles of the Founding made since then and make sense now.
I suggest that our lawmakers get out a couple of magnets; if they pass them over all those iron filings, much of this will make sense to them and the American people.
Oh, I forgot. The book has a website, what else...
vindicatingthefounders.com
This site is one of the best I have ever seen, wish I had one like this.
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