Cognitive dissonance, bad editing, or pissing on my shoes and telling me it's raining?
While reading a story entitled "Groundswell of Protests Back Illegal Immigrants" in Monday's New York Times, I came across this nugget, spread across two pages. First, the last paragraph on page one:
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of more than 11 million illegal immigrants, 78 percent are from Mexico or other Latin American countries. Many have children and other relatives who are United States citizens. Under the House measure, family members of illegal immigrants — as well as clergy members, social workers and lawyers — would risk up to five years in prison if they helped an illegal immigrant remain in the United States.
OK, fine, sez me - that sounds harsh. I've read and heard news stories making it clear that the authors of the legislation have no intention of criminalizing the actions of anyone simply "helping" an illegal immigrant to stay in the US, but I can understand why the Catholic Church, the illegals' families, and other aid organizations would be jumpy about the matter. So I clicked on to see page two, and its first paragraph looked like this:
(Page 2 of 2)"Imagine turning more than 11 million people into criminals, and anyone who helps them," said Angela Sanbrano, executive director of the Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles, one of the organizers of Saturday's rally there. "It's outrageous. We needed to send a strong and clear message to Congress and to President Bush that the immigrant community will not allow the criminalization of our people — and it needed to be very strong because of the anti-immigrant environment that we are experiencing in Congress."
With no disrespect to immigrants, and no actual malice toward illegal immigrants, I find myself wondering what part of illegal does Angela Sanbrano not understand?
Those 11 million folks she's worried about are already criminals. Whether they should be or not is an issue best left to another forum, but could we drop the charade that they're not already criminals? And if the issue is immigrants' rights, the matter is pretty simple, according to present laws - as illegal immigrants they have a right to be treated fairly, humanely, and then to be transported back to wherever they came from at the earliest feasible date, absent some mitigating factor, of which there are none related to Mexican immigrants. Shitty government isn't one of the exceptions, you see.
Those that wish to have open borders, with free entry for all, can make excellent points in favor of their positions, as can those against. I find, however, that the arguments of those against purely open borders are more believable on at least one level - they don't generally seem to start their arguments with a bald-faced misstatement of fact.
Where the Times fits into all this is actually moot - the placement of the visual head-fake is probably just an accident. But anyone who read just the first page and moved on might not notice the duplicity of the arguments in favor of what is, today, still a clearly illegal activity. That would be unfortunate, and runs the risk of simply kicking the can down the road rather than addressing the issue once and for all.
For what it might be worth, if the government were to decide to lock the borders tight and properly and then to offer a one-time amnesty to all who've been so fortunate to evade the law to-date, I'd be fine with that, unlike some (many?) to the right of me on the political polarization scale.
Doing one without the other, however, would just be another act of stupidity, and doing neither would be just as bad.
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Well that's their whole shtick. The only way they can be successful in the debate, so successful politically, is to hijack the terms.
Consider for example that there are no illegal immigrants anymore, but "undocumented workers". Even that small turn of phrase is an attempt to deflect the simple, unalterable fact that anyone who has snuck into the country is a criminal.
This topic is a very sore spot with me, as I have had many, many dealings with The Agency Formerly Known as INS, most of them quite unpleasant, in order to do what had to be done and keep my marriage on the up-and-up.
I don't favor amnesty either, as we tried that once and to punish our sins our illegal population exploded afterward.
I don't have the solution to the problem, but I think one would have to be either purposely obtuse or flat-out retarded not to recognize that there is, in fact, a tremendous problem with illegal immigration.
All by itself, amnesty would
All by itself, amnesty would be a sign of profound retardation, for all the obvious reasons. Given a bit of time, I'd probably be able to come up with a reason that no form of amnesty would be workable, and that they'd all have to exit and come back in via the front door.
So perhaps my view has been tinged by the constant drumbeat of "But think of the children!" coming from the more virulent of these serial liars.
Sadly, we've allowed ourselves as a country to be maneuvered into a corner where the options are dumb and dumber.
Illegal, yes. But to what
Illegal, yes. But to what extent? Does removing the immigrant from the country (deportation) remedy the problem? A small segment of these immigrants enter the country illegally, work, and then return to their place of origin. Are they still criminals, and do we pursue them? Is it a matter of misdemeanors and fines? Or a felonious matter requiring incarceration? I break the law every time I speed (and I do so almost every day I drive), but it is not appropriate to make me a criminal and jail me for it. Regardless of the rhetoric, there must be a balance between the offense and the policy to deal with it, and in this case, policy must take into account the basic migratory character of humanity. If border security must be more stringent, so be it (although America would be better served by placing more emphasis on the Canadian border, given that almost all terrorists have tried to enter from the north.)
There has to be a way to
There has to be a way to allow a couple of things to happen:
There must be an application process to enter the country. Of course there already are several legal means to enter, but they are inadequate to process the gazillions who are trying to sneak in every year. Besides, why bother with all the trouble and expense and paper shuffle of doing it on the up-and-up when you can just sneak in without repercussion? We need to find a way to discourage illegal entry and encourage legal means of entry, if in fact we need a gazillion lawn tenders and nannies.
We can create a new H1B status for agriculture or other unskilled labor, for example. OK, so long as someone somewhere along the line screened applicants for felony arrests, etc. And they have a place to work. Unless the applicant has a verifiable place to work (a company tax #, address, etc), they don't get in.
Those visas ought to be good only for x-years, but more importantly than their duration they need to be enforced. Come the expiration of the visa, there may be circumstances for extension, but at least someone needs to be able to look and find out that it's expiring in the first place.
A significant obstacle of course is the cretins who impede efforts to actually solve the problem.
Would you support a return of
Would you support a return of the Bracero Program?
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Well, I have to read about that first to know whether I agree. I'll have to get back to you