My Immigration Rant
As someone who can trace his family history in North America back before 1650, I'm getting increasingly cranky listening to nativist blowhards out to lower the boom on families that got here marginally more recently than theirs. My message to you: grow up.
Look, our immigration system has been broken for a long time, and there is blame aplenty to go around for why, and why it hasn't been fixed. As a result, we are in a complicated situation that has been decades in the making. Simplistic solutions are not the answer, no matter how many Congressmen throw tantrums.
It's bewildering to me how the same party that wants to get all "free market" about solutions for environmental problems is so gung ho for draconian legal and regulatory solutions for the immigration "problem." Where are the people proposing economic incentives for people to stay home? Anyone looked at our foreign aid budget lately? (Bring your microscope.)
For a while some big corporations had a good con going with that maquiladora thing, making the nativists think we might keep 'em home and screw the unions at the same time. Too bad it only worked until it turned out that yellow people worked even cheaper than brown ones. Good thing the Chinese can only get here in cargo containers.
If you are really serious about immigration laws and following procedures, how about we fix the incredible problems with our immigration service? It's been understaffed and underfunded for years, with ridiculous competing missions, and the result is a system that doesn't work sensibly for anyone. Even highly educated, fiercely law-abiding folks who want to come here are confronted with disrespect and a bureaucracy like something from Gilliam's Brazil. Prove to me that you have a system that can get legal immigrants documents in a timely and robust fashion, and keep track of them while here, then come talk to me about undocumented workers.
And I get that the nativist wing of the Republican party is real mad that the corporatist wings of both parties have been behaving badly all these years and created a de facto system that bears no relation to the de jure one. But they did. Waving a magic legislative wand and creating 11 million felons won't make that better, just stupider. Those people are here because there was a place for them here, and many of the people who've been running your party, and even funding your campaigns, have gotten advantage from having an exploitable underclass. FOR DECADES. There have been a lot of nods and winks and complicity to get us to this point. So spare me the sanctimony.
As soon as you start talking about an effort to develop neighboring economies so that there isn't any motivation for people to cross the border (those damn Canucks!), take real action to rationalize our legal entry system, and figure out a humane way to cope with the thousands of mixed-citizenship families that the nod-and-wink system has created, I'll consider listening. Convince me that you'd be just as cranked up if Central and South America were populated by pretty blond, blue-eyed people who spoke lilting English, and I'll listen closer.
Until then, shut the hell up, and start figuring out how to get us home from Iraq, and how to pay off our debt.
Stop making me think my ancestors were right about the place going to hell when your folks showed up.
Look, our immigration system has been broken for a long time, and there is blame aplenty to go around for why, and why it hasn't been fixed. As a result, we are in a complicated situation that has been decades in the making. Simplistic solutions are not the answer, no matter how many Congressmen throw tantrums.
It's bewildering to me how the same party that wants to get all "free market" about solutions for environmental problems is so gung ho for draconian legal and regulatory solutions for the immigration "problem." Where are the people proposing economic incentives for people to stay home? Anyone looked at our foreign aid budget lately? (Bring your microscope.)
For a while some big corporations had a good con going with that maquiladora thing, making the nativists think we might keep 'em home and screw the unions at the same time. Too bad it only worked until it turned out that yellow people worked even cheaper than brown ones. Good thing the Chinese can only get here in cargo containers.
If you are really serious about immigration laws and following procedures, how about we fix the incredible problems with our immigration service? It's been understaffed and underfunded for years, with ridiculous competing missions, and the result is a system that doesn't work sensibly for anyone. Even highly educated, fiercely law-abiding folks who want to come here are confronted with disrespect and a bureaucracy like something from Gilliam's Brazil. Prove to me that you have a system that can get legal immigrants documents in a timely and robust fashion, and keep track of them while here, then come talk to me about undocumented workers.
And I get that the nativist wing of the Republican party is real mad that the corporatist wings of both parties have been behaving badly all these years and created a de facto system that bears no relation to the de jure one. But they did. Waving a magic legislative wand and creating 11 million felons won't make that better, just stupider. Those people are here because there was a place for them here, and many of the people who've been running your party, and even funding your campaigns, have gotten advantage from having an exploitable underclass. FOR DECADES. There have been a lot of nods and winks and complicity to get us to this point. So spare me the sanctimony.
As soon as you start talking about an effort to develop neighboring economies so that there isn't any motivation for people to cross the border (those damn Canucks!), take real action to rationalize our legal entry system, and figure out a humane way to cope with the thousands of mixed-citizenship families that the nod-and-wink system has created, I'll consider listening. Convince me that you'd be just as cranked up if Central and South America were populated by pretty blond, blue-eyed people who spoke lilting English, and I'll listen closer.
Until then, shut the hell up, and start figuring out how to get us home from Iraq, and how to pay off our debt.
Stop making me think my ancestors were right about the place going to hell when your folks showed up.
posted by Paul at 1:43 PM |
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