By now all y’all have probably seen Bush’s immigration proposals. I want to see the concrete plan first, but I’m generally in favor of an amnesty for illegal immigrants, so I’m always ready to at least consider policy changes that might make that more likely.
(pause)
We’re not all of a piece, you know. Even a Righty can grow up in a parish where half the masses were in Spanish and half the people you knew from church got very quiet and still when the letters INS were uttered. I should also note that my own ancestors didn’t exactly fill out all the proper paperwork when they came in – it’s for damn sure that they all didn’t use their own names – and at any rate I’m failing to see precisely how the Republic is in danger from a bunch of twenty-five year old guys working three jobs and sending their meager pay home to their families. I want an amnesty so that we can come up with a rational immigration system and put in some anti-exploitation laws with teeth to them (I regret that there’ll probably have to be an amnesty for that as well, but I can’t fix the world all at once); if that jacks up the price of a tomato, so be it. Besides, as I said over here anything immigrant-related that annoys John Derbyshire can’t be all that bad.
For the interested, Citizen Smash has a bunch of links up on this, from all over the blogosphere. Check ’em out.
Mark Kleiman seems to know more about this issue than most people….
http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/crime_control_/2004/01/the_bush_immigration_proposal.php
Okay and this is supposed to be a good idea why again?
How is encouraging illegal immigration (which is what amnesty programs invariably do) a good thing?
We already have problems trying to regulate immigration in order to keep out people who might be criminals, terrorists, or who carry deadly infectious diseases – problems that are made worse, not better by have an uncontrolled border.
Moreover we have a number of States on the border who are experiencing budget crunches largely (but not solely) due to the drain that illegal aliens place on tax-payer funded education, health care, and law enforcement services. I suppose some might try to argue that there would be some mitigation of the problem if illegal aliens paid taxes but considering that our more leftist two-thirds of O.W. are on record as favoring removing more lower income taxpayers from the tax rolls, this seems unlikely especially if this has the effect (as the last amnesty did) of encouraging even more illegal immigration thereby increasing the demand on finite resources.
There are a number of other problems as well such as the assimilation of non-English speaking persons and potential environmental/public health problems. On the balance though, while we certainly need reform of our immigration laws (or better yet, enforcement) it seems absurd to favor an amnesty program that would make these and other problems, worse not better.
Ah, Moe. This is a never-ending source of irritation to me: the fact that I have to qualify comments about right-wing scumbags and their attitude to illegal immigrants because, well, I know you exist and therefore I assume there must be other right-wingers out there who feel as you do.
I’m not totally serious with the proposition on my livejournal, but I do feel that those who complain about illegal immigrants “driving down wages” should direct their ire at the people more logically to blame: those who employ people whom they know to be illegal immigrants because they can pay them sh*t wages.