Immigration!

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).

www.blogzu.blogspot.com

"We're a nation of immigrants" is a baldfaced lie.

True, every single American can trace his descent to people who didn't live here. So in that sense, sure, we're a "nation of immigrants." But by that token, every nation on Earth is a "nation of immigrants," except for Kenya and thereabouts, where our species originated.

It's also true that America permits more immigration than all other nations on Earth combined. Yet even with that stunning influx, 90% of Americans were born here.

How can a nation of 90% native-born people be a "nation of immigrants?"

It can't. So that trope is not only a lie--it represents a shameful attempt to win arguments about amnesty with bumper sticker slogans instead of actual reasons.

Never let anyone get away with saying it in your presence--even if you support amnesty for illegal immigrants. Because whatever our politics are, we should unite in opposing dirty politics--in assuming that the ends justify the means. As Emma Goldman said (look her up), the means reveal the ends.