Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Real Immigration Reform

I despise the Republican Party. I believe that it’s dominated by the disgustingly greedy and the hypocritically religious. I know that if any Republicans see this, they will call me a raving liberal who’s speaking nonsense, but what I’m saying is true no matter what they call me. Republicans as a whole want to grab and keep everything they can for themselves and let the rest of us “eat cake,” or they espouse primitive religion whose principles they don’t even begin to follow for the most part. And these same Republicans are now using illegal immigrants as scapegoats in a Machiavellian ploy to rally people around their embattled party.

So, it pains me, it really pains me to say this, but I commend the Republican led campaign for immigration reform. I don’t believe for a moment that they’re really serious about it, because too many of their number exploit cheap illegal immigrant labor to want to do away with it. But even if what they’re REALLY doing is just putting on a show to strengthen their appeal to mainstream voters, I commend them for it, because it’s about time that somebody do something against the swelling tide of illegal immigration into this country and the sense among illegal immigrants, as they have made only too clear in their recent demonstrations, that they are entitled remain here and reap the rewards of legal residence without being legal residents.

I say issue every verifiably legal resident a national ID card, deport everybody who doesn’t have one, and jail everybody caught employing anybody without one. And then let’s pay livable wages and provide decent health insurance to American citizens and other LEGAL residents who do the jobs that illegal immigrants have been doing and see if they really won’t do those jobs as illegal immigrants allege. And then humanely let people continue to come here in controlled numbers from other countries by going through LEGAL channels the same way that my wife did from Thailand.

I am really pissed off over illegal immigrants and those they have duped into misguided sympathy for them demonstrating here in Sacramento, LA, and elsewhere for their “right” to thumb their noses at our nation’s immigration laws. If they want to live here, let them go back to Mexico or wherever they came from and then petition like my wife to come, stay, and work here legally.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well you know some of my feeling on this because we had a little discussion about it on a public board. I thought about it a little more and I think another solution might be to have the people on welfare encouraged to work these jobs so that they are just not "sitting around" waiting for a government check to arrive. I just find it hard to believe that American's don't want these jobs as it is portrayed in the media.
I am with you though, come here through the proper channels or get the heck out of here. In my opinion, businesses want them here for the profit it adds to their business. They could start by fining those businesses that hire them and see where that gets them.
The one other thing that is really troubling to me in all these protests is the Mexican flag flying and how they are saying it is to show pride in their ancestory. Last time I checked we are in America not Mexico. It is almost as if we have been occupied by a foreign army without a gunshot being fired, if that makes any sense.

Steve said...

I was angry when I wrote what I did. So, my words sounded harsher than I feel deep in my heart. Rightly or wrongly, people came here illegally to work very hard at often unglamorous and even dangerous jobs for lousy pay to make a better life for themselves and their families. I can understand that and even respect it, and I don't agree with the House bill that would turn into felons these individuals or those who help them secure medical care and other needed services.

However, I DO believe that something needs to be done to discourage if not outright stop illegal immigration. And I believe that the best way to do this is probably to take away the reason why most people come here illegally--to find work. If we do what we must to prevent undocumented aliens from getting ANY kind of work, they aren't likely to continue coming here. I suggested requiring all applicants for employment to produce national ID cards and jailing employers who hire those without these cards. Maybe there's a better way. I'll leave that to the experts to determine. But, again, I think we need to do something to prevent a growing problem from growing even worse, and to make a basic point that our immigration laws are not the joke they now appear to be.