The Illegal Immigrant Debate In the US
Unless you are a pure Native American you are here because someone in your line was an immigrant. Those parents who left their the old world, be it east or west, were the bold ones, the aggressive ones. The people who stayed behind were those who didn’t have the guts to risk it all by coming to the New World. Any fan of “Deadwood” understands that the winnowing process was a brutal one. Those that came and thrived or even survived were the best of their cultures. That still can be said of today’s immigrants and maybe more so for those who come here illegally.
Who among us is more determined or has more guts than the Jamaican who builds a raft of driftwood and inner tubes to float across shark infested waters to get a job as a dishwasher? I don’t know about you, but I want that person to stay here in our country. That is a genetic pool I want to see added to the population of the United States.
During the last immigrant “amnesty” my brother-in-law’s father-in-law was a special immigration officer in the Quad Cities. An eighty-one year old Mexican came into the office to apply for citizenship. He had been in the country sixty-one years as an illegal immigrant. When asked why he hadn’t come forward earlier he said he was busy. It seems he started from scratch and now owned the largest wholesale nursery in the Midwest. Today was the first break he had to stop in and see what could be done.
Mexico’s loss, our gain.
Statistics say that there are 12 million illegal immigrants in the US. Say that two-thirds of them are employed or 9 million people working in our economy. Who will take their jobs if we deport them? Who will do the work of deporting them? While we’re deporting them who will get stuck with the opportunity cost of deportation?
When I hear or read about people who want to eliminate illegal immigrants from our population I never hear them address those issues. When some gives me answers to those question then I may take them for something other than fools or the extremely naive.
The other argument is that we need to secure our boarders. Do you know who has the most secure boarders? North Korea. Look how successful their country is. I don’t know about you, but that is too high a price to pay for secure boarders.
What to do about immigration is a very important discussion to have. Let me know what you think.