Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Immigration: Casually done
While there is no doubt America’s immigration condition is flawed. One must ask where and how is it flawed?
Immigration is flawed in the intent. The intent of immigration should be to keep America vital by allowing in hardworking, honest, productive law abiding people who want to become Americanized. This does not preclude harboring refugees who one day intend to return to their own nations. It does not and should not keep us from allowing people to come to America on work visa’s or for educational purposes. This is America, we and our ancestors built a nation that if here built to our ideals. If you like it, live with it. If you don’t like it, Canada, the United Kingdom and other places have relatively open cultures and you might find a better fit there.
Immigration is further flawed in execution. One example, and by now means the only is our southern border. Not only do we have a southern border that is virtually unguarded, we have a President who while simultaneously claiming to be tough on terrorism and committed to security has worked against funding the additional men, women, and equipment that are desperately needed to protect our southern border and keep illegal immigrants out. We have a former Secretary of State who authorized armed INS agents to storm the house of a family in order to retrieve a child who’s mother died to get him here, but again failed to protect our borders properly.
Many people assume that if you are strongly nationalistic you must be some sort of racist or xenophobe, in some cases this is true, in mine it most certainly is not. There are a lot of reasons to wish for stricter immigration controls. The first is simply that no one who can not respect the laws of this nation enough to enter it legally belongs here, period. The second is national security. With the events of 9/11 and the “War on Terror” unfolding around the world, as terrorist organizations lose the ability to strike back in a military fashion, strikes within the country similar to what is seen in other countries will rise if we don’t do something now. The third reason is to protect these people. There are unscrupulous, and downright evil people ‘helping’ them get across the border. Often at the cost of thousands of dollars, which they will have to come up with in advance or work off at jobs where they have none or few of the protections legal immigrants and Americans enjoy, they will in effect be chattel or slaves. They will not have medical benefits, and if they do so much as get a parking ticked they could end up getting deported and possibly have to leave their family behind here without one, or perhaps the only bread winner. There are other reasons, but those are the most important ones to enter legally.
So while there are certainly people in the Immigration and Naturalization Services who could probably have found their spiritual homes under Pot Pol, Stalin, or Andrew Johnson the majority are simply hard working Americans doing a job in a flawed system. What needs to be done is an overhaul of the agencies focus, and this top to bottom emphasis needs to cover directives from the President, Congress, and Supreme Court down to the newest police officer or under strength border patrol trainee.
