Immigration amnesty makes America safer
To be clear: I still think Bush is Nuts, but I do agree with the shrubman on the guestworker issue. For different reasons, but I do agree with removing millions of hardworking immigrants from the legal twilight zone of being “undocumented” or “illegal” aliens. On this issue, the racist, anti-immigration wingnuts are the real nutcases. Build a frigging wall along the border to Mexico? These people are crazy. Before you know it they’ll want to invade countries in the Middle East to secure access to oil … uh, never mind …
The immoral system of quasi-slavery and exploitation under which so many immigrants suffer is one of the great human rights crises on this continent. The only way to deal with it is to give everyone who wants to come to this place to work a reasonable way to do so legally. That’ll put the coyotes out of business, and it’ll make it much harder to smuggle drugs into the US via the southern border.
AMNESTY MAKES AMERICA SAFER because it reduces the incentive for crime along the southern border. Authorities will KNOW who comes into the country and where they are. A guest worker program will make it possible to control smuggling, because the existing resources can be focused on what illicit activity is left along the border.
AMNESTY MAKES AMERICA SAFER because law enforcement can concentrate on fighting the real bad guys when police officers and sheriff’s deputies don’t have to fill in for the alien chasers from the DHS. I mean, do our law enforcement folks need yet another unfunded, and possibly unconstitutional, mandate? Besides terrorism watch, disaster preparedness, now also immigration enforcement? No, I want them to fight crime and enforce traffic laws.
If you care about the quality of life in America and reducing crime in this country, and if you care just the slightest bit about tradition and the “American Way” then you really have to support amnesty for all immigrants. Because their struggle to make a difference, to take care of their families, and to better themselves is the same struggle that brought all those Irish, German, Russian, Polish and — uh … Swiss — immigrants over here. That struggle is a big part of America, and if you are of European extraction, you better shut up about “those illegals” because chances are, some of your ancestors came over here with nothing but their clothes on their backs in the bowels of a ship. If your ancestors came here as economic refugees, you are in no position to turn around and slam the door on the new arrivals today.
(crossposted on my other blog …)