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The
immigration bill before Congress has some of the most serious
consequences for the future of this country. Yet it is not
being discussed seriously by most politicians or most of the
media. Instead, it is being discussed in a series of glib
talking points that insult our intelligence.
Some of the most momentous consequences -- a major increase in
the number of immigrants admitted legally -- are not even
being discussed at all by those who wrote the Senate bill,
though Senator Jeff Sessions has uncovered those provisions in
the bill and brought them out into the light of day.
How
many times have we heard that illegal aliens are taking "jobs
that Americans won't do"? Just what specifically are those
jobs?
Even
in occupations where illegals are concentrated, such as
agriculture, cleaning, construction, and food preparation, the
great majority of the work is still being done by people who
are not illegal aliens.
The
highest concentration of illegals is in agriculture, where
they are 24 percent of the people employed. That means
three-quarters of the people are not illegal aliens. But when
will the glib phrase-mongers stop telling us that the illegals
are simply taking "jobs that Americans won't do"?
Another insult to our intelligence is that amnesty is not
amnesty if you call it something else. The fact that illegals
will have to fulfill certain requirements to become American
citizens is supposed to mean that this is not amnesty.
But
let's do what the spinmeisters hope we will never do -- stop
and think. Amnesty is overlooking ("forgetting," as in
amnesia) the violation of the law committed by those who have
crossed our borders illegally.
The
fact that there are requirements for getting American
citizenship is a separate issue entirely. Illegal aliens who
do not choose to seek American citizenship are under no more
jeopardy than before. They have de facto amnesty.
Yet
another insult to our intelligence is saying that, since we
cannot find and deport 12 million people, the only choice left
is to find some way to make them legal.
There is probably no category of law-breakers -- from
counterfeiters to burglars or from jay-walkers to murderers --
who can all be found and arrested. But no one suggests that we
must therefore make what they have done legal.
Such
an argument would suggest that there is nothing in between 100
percent effective law enforcement and zero percent effective
law enforcement.
The
reverse twist on this argument is that suddenly taking 12
million people out of the labor force would disrupt the
economy. No one has ever said -- or probably even dreamed --
that we could suddenly find all 12 million illegal immigrants
at once and send them all home immediately. This is another
straw man argument.
The
real question is what we do with whatever illegal aliens we do
find. Right now, there are various communities around the
country where local officials have a policy of forbidding the
police from reporting illegal immigrants to federal
authorities.
Why
are people who are so gung ho for punishing employers so
utterly silent about needing to punish government officials
who openly and deliberately violate federal laws?
Employers, after all, are not in the business of law
enforcement.
If
some guy who runs a hardware store or a dry cleaning business
hires someone who shows some forged documents, why should the
employer be fined for not being able to tell the difference,
when government officials who can tell the difference are not
doing anything -- or are even actively obstructing federal
laws?
Putting unarmed national guardsmen on the border is another
cosmetic move, a placebo instead of real medicine. The excuse
is that it is not possible to train more than 1,500 border
patrol agents a year. Meanwhile, we have trained well over
200,000 Iraqi security forces while guerilla warfare raged
around them.
You can put a
million people on the border and it will mean nothing if those
who are caught are simply turned loose and sent back to try
again tomorrow -- or perhaps later the same day.
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