Before we again tackle the controversial issue that failed in the General Assembly this year, we should have some hard facts, The Indianapolis Star says in an editorial:
Are bank robbers a drain on the state's economy, or a boon? Are public hospitals, as supporters' of Delph's bill asserted, overburdened by treating bank robbers? What is the net cost of bank robbing for taxpayers?
OK, I changed a couple of words, because I think it clarifies the issue. Go ahead an explain to me how we can encourage a respect for the rule of law while actively encouraging the wholesale breaking of one whole group of laws.
Comments
OK, Leo, let's take a look at the hard facts.
The immigration rate today INCLUDING illegal immigrants is less than HALF of what it was in 1900.
In some districts of the US, the average wait for a 6-month extension on a green card is 8 months. The immigration service is so screwed up that last year, they managed to admit only 5000 immigrants from Mexico.
Mexicans aren't coming here in order to blow up the Federal Courthouse in Oklahoma City. They aren't coming here to mail envelopes filled with anthrax spores. They aren't coming here to snipe people around the Washington beltway. We have homegrown terrorists for that. No, Mexicans are coming here to work.
Mexicans have a difficult time getting jobs, whether they are legal or not, and consequently, many of them are *making* jobs, instead of *taking* jobs. Small businesses, such as the ones they create, are responsible for most job growth in this country. Remember why Magnavox moved their consumer products business south? It was because they needed small businesses to subcontract to. Was it a boon to Fort Wayne when all those jobs moved south?
Mexicans are willing to work hard in order to support their families. We have two choices. If we admit them as legal residents, they buy or rent local housing, increasing property values. If we admit them as legal residents, they pay income taxes.
They pay Social Security taxes, too. The reason Social Security is in trouble is because the birth rate dropped, and there aren't enough of the next generations to support all the Baby Boomers. Well, this is a way to get more workers of the appropriate age. What's more, it costs government *far* less to import adult citizens from Mexico than it does to provide the services to grow our own adults. Doesn't that count as a boon?
The alternative is to export the jobs to Mexico, without those workers paying any taxes at all, and without them contributing to the economy at all. There are very few jobs that can't be exported. A century ago, a farmer needed a large family to handle a 160-acre farm. These days, a single farmer can handle a 2000-acre farm, because most of those jobs have been outsourced to people building tractors, to people refining petroleum, to men drilling for petroleum, to shipbuilders putting together oil tankers and sailors operating them, to workers making the steel needed for tractors and oil tankers, to miners digging the ore and coal that are needed to make the steel - and all of those jobs can be done in other countries as easily as they can be done here.
We need to encourage respect for the law by making it POSSIBLE for people to follow the law. It should be as easy for a Mexican to immigrate to the US as it is for a person born in Fort Wayne to get a driver's license.
If you recall, the Pilgrims didn't have immigration papers. And the Irish didn't even have to come up with the money to buy passage to the US - the British government subsidized their fares in order to dump them on us.
Is it all that unreasonable, that we should fix our broken immigration bureaucracy, instead of blaming the immigrants?
We don't screw with people's employment status because they break the speed limits.
Now, you have to do the hard work of showing that immigration violations belong on the nefarious end of the criminal spectrum, closer to robbery; and not on the bureaucratic side of the criminal spectrum, closer to speeding.
Harl sez: "Is it all that unreasonable, that we should fix our broken immigration bureaucracy, instead of blaming the immigrants?"
I think most people are in favor of "fixing" the immigration process, but with all due respect, it certainly has to be a little more difficult to become a citizen of the greatest nation on Earth than getting a drivers license.
As for "blaming" the illegal aliens (yes, that's the correct term),
they must shoulder responsibility and blame as well. You can't "just show up" in any OTHER country in the world illegally and go unnoticed, except this one of course, and they are fully aware what they are doing is ILLEGAL.
Gee, and here I thought we COULD fix our broken immigration system BY BLAMING the illegals leeching off the system here...what WAS I thinking?
Doug: I like the "spectrum" comparison...excellent.
Tim: Damn, you're right ..AGAIN!
B.G.