Illegal Immigration
Thursday, September 20th, 2007
Photo: stock.xpert
Do you know the position on immigration your members of congress have? How about your favorite presidential candidate? Most people don’t.
Why?
It is way to easy for a politician’s position on immigration to be attacked. It is such a divisive issue, and an issue that cuts to the core of a core group of future voters. Politicians make a living from appearing to please everybody, the last thing they want to do is upset a group of the population (Mexican immigrants) whose votes they will eventually need.
Where do I stand? I’m not sure yet.
Immigration is a tough issue to have a stance on. I have been friends with illegal immigrants, and friends with people who think that they should all be deported. On one side of the argument being here illegally is (ahheemmm) illegal, and technically they should be deported. On the other side, they (mostly) do the tough jobs that need to get done that nobody wants to do, and they DO pay taxes.
Farming is the number one production in California. In the words of one farm owner I spoke with, “without the help of our Latin American friends California would fall apart.” He said that the cost of anything that comes from a farm would go up as much as 3 times without the work of immigrants. The work that is being done by an (illegal/undocumented) immigrant for $8 an hour would have to be done by someone for $25 an hour. Imagine the effects on other goods and services if an apple cost $5.
Our need for immigrants is the reason why we don’t enforce illegal immigration laws to the extent that most people think we should.
Should we build a wall, or open the borders? Wrong question…let’s get to the root.
If we want to fix the illegal immigration problem we need to start at the source of the problem…Mexico. The conditions are bad enough in Mexico to make people want to leave their families and risk death to come here to work in fields so they can send money back home. Mexico needs to work on their government to make it possible for people to earn a living there. In order for this to happen the US would have to help them, will they?
What I think is the best solution is to relax the restrictions to come to the US. It is not the US that has the most stringent qualifications to come here, it is Mexico. I have known Mexican citizens who had to apply to come on vacation here years in advance, and in the mean time had to jump through a serious of ridiculous hoops just for the opportunity to come on VACATION here! It is absurd. On top of that they have to deal with the restrictions that the US has for immigration; no wonder people swim and jump their way here!
There are many solutions, but does our government think the wheel is broken?
