Immigration

I have dreaded posting about the messy ILLEGAL immigration situation. I capitalize illegal because no one is against legal immigration, that I know anyway. Most of us had family come through NY or some other place and value being a U.S. legal immigrant or one of her sons or daughters.

This is the latest Senate News via Fox News.
MSNBC discusses the Guest Worker program.
CBS covers the Protests that drew over 500,000 people/illegal immigrants.

This photo says it all doesn't it? Yay for Mexico! While the U.S. benefits from Mexican illegal immigrants sweat, it also pays for them without receiving any tax dollars in return. Mexico benefits from their citizens that set up shop in the U.S., too--without paying for them. Billions get sent home to the motherland. Mexico avoids health care costs, welfare costs, and social costs that a high unemployment rate and governmental corruption from stem to stern breed. How nice for them. How not nice for the American taxpayer.

In some parts of America (fewer and fewer every day) this issue is theoretical. In Texas, this issue is real. While people in this area tend to be fairly tolerant (80% of whites view Mexican immigration as a good thing--and I can't find the article right now, but I think this is the guy who did the research) and view the Mexican immigrants favorably, the number of under-educated immigrants from Mexico has risen and does not bode well for the future.

More than any social service, hospitals bear the brunt of uninsured soon-to-be-called "Guest Workers" in their Emergency Departments. The taxpayer foots this bill.

An illegal immigrant argues that they do work that people here don't want to do, get paid less to do it, don't get benefits or insurance and Americans get cheaper products. You don't get nothin' for nothin'. So taxpayers should be willing to pay for their emergencies when the taxpayer benefits from the Mexican illegal immigrant's hard work.

Americans want cheap consumer goods and services kinda like drug addicts want drugs. The demand fuels the supply. The only shortcoming to this analogy is that the drug addict buys and snorts all the coke he buys. When an illegal immigrant comes, he or she usually brings his family with him--the kids go to school (free education), the grandma uses the emergency department (free healthcare), the unwed sister receives foodstamps (free food). The illegal immigrant's work in no way balances out these economic realities. It is a net loss for America especially since first generation immigrants don't pay taxes (it goes up for the future generations). It is a HUGE gain for Mexico.

Mexico's economic benefit from their unemployed coming to American is multi-fold. Mexico's government is corrupt from bottom all the way to Vicente Fox's jet-black, well-coifed hair. Everyone is on the take. Crime is rampant. Unemployment is high. In Mexico, there are the haves and the have nots. Some of the more industrious or desperate have-nots make the trek to the U.S. This takes a tremendous amount of economic pressure off of the Haves in Mexico.

Should a wall be built to keep the industrious and desperate in Mexico, Mexico will have to come to terms with corruption and the economic imbalance or face Civil War. No one wants this, but power to the people is never going to happen at the hands of Mexican leadership. Those who run the country have too much to gain by staying rich and powerful and keeping the masses poor and stupid. No leaders in America want a Civil War on our border, we have great interests in their relative stability even if society is unfair.

Economic pressures in the U.S. have increased for the same industrious and desperate, ironically enough. Because so many Mexicans now call the U.S. their "temporary" dwelling, wage deflation has occurred. The new workers are working harder and for less money. I know this personally. A middle class person here in the Houston area can have someone clean their house for $30. (I don't pay this little, btw, because I think the work is worth more than $30--much more.) That's nothing. It makes no sense to clean your house. This fee has declined since five years ago. Landscapers face the same pricing pressure.

You would think that this situation would stop people from coming. It hasn't and won't. Why? Why would workers from Mexico keep coming when they work hard for next to nothing? Because next to nothing is better than what they are coming from and bad living conditions are better than no living conditions. It's a matter of scale. Also, for those who don't want to work, benefits here are better--a pain to get, but better.

My main concern with illegal immigration besides the obvious--it's illegal, the crime committed by illegals gums up the system and consumes tax dollars, and the economic costs--is that at a certain point the economic benefit (cheap stuff and services) becomes outweighed by the economic cost. What do I mean?

Well, consumer products and services become cheap for those who can afford them, but the wages at the low end are so low that they can't afford anything except social services. If the economy goes south and workers are let go, they are uneducated, don't speak the language and they consume more services and inevitably commit crimes to fill the time and their pocketbooks.

I'm not saying that illegal Mexican workers are generally criminals and parasites. They are hard-working diligent people with a strong family ethic and usually devoted Christians. These are good things. In fact, I love the culture and people though I hate with a passion the corruption, crime and inequity that is part of the Mexican citizen's daily life in Mexico. I'm proud that they view the U.S. as a great alternative because it truly is, much as liberals like to downplay this fact or deny it altogether.

Here's my solution:

1. Seal the border.
2. Increase legal immigration and make them U.S. citizens faster.
   
3. Make a Southern version of Ellis Island and start processing these people, but like Ellis Island make sure the people are sponsored, are healthy, have clean records, have jobs on this side and a place to live.
4. Stop incursions by the Mexican Army who are in cahoots with drug and people smugglers. Give Vicente Fox a warning and then blast away. Our border has to mean something. We cease to be a soveign nation without a solid border.
5. No one already here gets citizenship if they are here illegally. They can go back to Mexico and go through the proper channels to get citizenship. Maybe a certain number of years working, a child whose a citizen, etc. mitigate the factors, but illegal behavior CANNOT be reinforced or it will breed more bad behavior.
6. Cut off all social services to illegal aliens. This is ruthless, true. Life is really tough in a capitalistic society for Legal citizens nevermind illegals. And well it should be. Socialism sucks the will and removes the dignity of people one hand-out at a time. Socialism is ruthless, heartless and designed to get the masses sated so they will go along with the Beloved Leader's pet projects. As for the people outside the American system, we have experience with how this manifests. My husband saw a guy who fell two stories onto his head, saw a guy who flew out of the back of a pick-up and come to his office uninsured. The lawyers were all over both cases and would get the poor dudes a settlement from the "rich" small businessmen employing these uninsured people (hit life's lottery by getting dumped on your head like the guy from Office Space.) We love Workers Comp! (I'm being sarcastic--it's a haven for criminals--criminal doctors, criminal lawyers. I don't feel bad at all for indulging in some schadenfreude now that the scumbag doctors and lawyers we knew when my husband worked for a nere-do-well doctor all lost their shirts when the Comp laws changed in Texas. Serves them right for exploiting workers and the employers.) Back to the issue: Someone not paying taxes shouldn't get benefits.
7. When someone is stopped by the Cops and they are illegal, back they go. Escort them home to round up their families and give them plane tickets. Have them take proof of their work, their homes, etc. and if they have a record of good, clean living expedite their paperwork to make them real citizens.
8. Anyone fighting for the U.S. in the military gets citizenship fast-tracked. They get high honors for service? They get to bring a family member.
   

Ideas that are stupid: amnesty, Guest Worker Cards (um, have these people heard of the black market? anyone can get papers now), another Homeland Security agency, almost anything Ted Kennedy comes up with.

The problem with illegal immigration comes down to unfairness to all the people who are working their asses off to get family members here legally. My nail guy saved $7,000 per family member and sponsored both his mother and father from Vietnam and his sister. He works hard, absolutely loves America, speaks the language and though he lives in a Vietnamese community is an American down to his toe-nails.

Same goes for my hair guy from Lebanon. He is Muslim, named Mohommed and the best colorist besides my dear Wayne from Lansing, Michigan. He sponsored his wife to come here. He knows the language. He knows the culture. He is American. Legally.

Illegal immigration must stop. But for the strength of America, legal immigration must continue. We need the workers, we need the ideas and we need to be the place everyone longs to live. Pandering to people who don't vote, don't pay taxes and whose allegience lays south of the border is ridiculous. Our congressmen need to remember who they work for.