BOTH parties lie constantly about immigration--especially illegal--for electoral advantage. Republicans exaggerate crimes in the Southwest to fire up their Anglo working class base; Democrats accuse anyone who objects to unlimited immigration and amnesty as racists on behalf of American voters whose primary self-identification is still as Mexican, to get them to see all Republicans as The Enemy.
Neither party has the best interests of America at heart--at least where immigration is concerned.
If they did they'd approve the following measures:
1. Reform legal immigration laws so instead of "family reunification" of whole clans being the source of 2/3 of all legal immigration, only immediate family members are considered--and when someone applies for a visa, he/she has to list everyone he/she plans to apply to bring over eventually/ then consider the applicant according to how much they can contribute to the US--and require them to prove that they can care entirely for any dependents they want to bring over.
2. Make it easy for people with highly desirable skills to immigrate here (especially people just graduating from American universities), regardless of race/ethicity.
3. Close immigration to people whose work category has higher than 8% unemployment of citizens. That means closing immigration to all unskilled laborers / people without the equivalent of an American high school diploma, since unemployment in that category is probably over 25% right now.
4. Don't grant citizenship to anyone who can't understand a ballot written in English; and print ballots only in English, because polyglot ballots foster Balkanization and ethnocentric demagoguery, and anyone who can't understand ballot-level English isn't qualified to vote in an American election, since all their information will then only come from non-mainstream sources--mostly ethnic demagogues.
5. Require all immigrants to demonstrate an understanding of the differences between their home country's values and ours, and to explicitly accept adopting our values--ruling out, for example, things like honor kiling and female genital mutilation, or murdering people who insult your culture's religious figures.
6. Mandate e-Verity nationally, so only people who are here legally can work legally.
7. Develop a biometric ID database system to catch those who are working here illegally. We now have the technology to implement this at the level of all social services providers and should do so.
8. Make illegal re-entry after 1 expulsion a felony.
9. Finance a system of free Planned Parenthood clinics throughout Latin America, including abortion on demand without questions wherever abortion is legal, and predicate immigration from any country on that country implementing effective population control measures (Mexico's population exploded from 20 million in 1940 to over 100 million in 2000--providing the primary cause of illegal immigration here).
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2 comments:
Thanks for the interesting reply on the WaPo comments board. You started off well with your immigration post, but stumbled after that. So you want a second-offender placed in jail on felony charges. You want your tax money to pay for that? You seem so concerned about the fall of the English language. Our language dominates our society. Sure an adult can live in various places without having to learn the language, but the children learn English because they want to fit in with the dominant culture. Don't fear someone wanted to come here, even with low skills. I'll leave you with this: We have an open border with Puerto Rico. Has the mainland been overcome by Puerto Ricans? No.
1. Do I want my tax money to pay for jailing second offender illegal immigrants?
Yes, I do, not being a Tea Party nutcase about taxes.
Besides, it's not between paying tax money for jailing such folk vs. not having to pay tax money if you don't. Though the main harm is to working stiffs seeing their wages plummet from illegals' competition.
My own wages were never threatened by such competition, but, oddly enough, I actually care about people-who-are-not-me.
2. Do I fear America becoming a Spanish-speaking country?
It's a bit hyperbolic to assume I think English is doomed here--especially since it has become the world's lingua franca, and is highly unlikely to be supplanted in that role by any other tongue--especially Chinese, regardless of how China fares in the future.
But today not only are there large urban areas in the Southwest that are Spanish-language ethnic enclaves--but people who don't speak Spanish in these areas often fail to get public sector jobs in the Southwest and south Florida, because Spanish fluency has become de rigeur for so many. Again, not my problem personally, because I speak Spanish as it happens. But I do take it personally when people are discriminated against for numerous taxpayer-supported jobs having nothing to do with language instruction, because they either aren't Latino or fail to speak a particular foreign language.
3. As for the children learning English--why am I required to wait a generation or two? Why can't we simply require English fluency as a prerequisite to getting a visa here? It's not like we have a shortage of people who want to move here from all over the world.
You appear to be focused on the needs and desires of citizens of Mexico and parts south. I am focused on the needs and desires of citizens of this country. And one thing we have no need of is more unskilled laborers, much less ones who can't speak America's language.
4. As for "don't fear someone wanting to come here, even with low skills," that's quite condescending. I never said I was afraid. That's your inference, and since I said nothing of the sort, it's an inference informed by exactly the sort of stereotyping that advocates for Mexican illegals complain about the other side making. As if we're all knuckle-dragging xenophobes.
That would be news to my closer friends, who include 2 Belarussians, 2 Russian Jews, a Ukrainian, an Indian from Pune, 2 South Africans of Tamil extraction, and an immigrant from the former East Germany.
Just because I want America to remain recognizably American doesn't mean I fear or dislike other countries/cultures/languages, or the inputs of other countries' cultures and languages into American culture and language. In two months my spouse and I will be returning to Indonesia for several weeks of scuba diving and immersion in Indonesian culture, aided by the fact that we speak a tiny amount of Bahasa Indonesia--and by my Spanish, which has led to several conversations in Spanish in Indonesia with Latin tourists and with Spanish-speaking Indonesians.
What I object to is the replacement of multiculturally-informed America by large monocultural, multignerational Mexican enclaves.
5. As for Puerto Rice, it has a population of 3.7 million, and 41% of all Puerto Ricans--2.7 million of them--have moved here. Two out of five. That's pretty much a flood, I'd say. Just from a relatively small pond.
If that were Mexico, it would be the same as if 46 million Mexicans had moved here.
So--thanks for proving my point.
America doesn't have infinite resources. In fact our agriculture/ranching is currently being done unsustainably, due to both overpumping our porous aquifers and pesticide/fertilizer-based agripractices that are poisoning the water tables and oceans around river outlets.
And if we can only admit a finite number of immigrants, why not admit those we actually need?
And why do I even have to ask this?
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