If they are allowed to stay in the United States, under any condition, isn’t the citizenship of every legal U.S. citizen devalued by that much?
By definition, illegal aliens are… illegal. Why should they receive a single right or benefit of citizenship? Countless aliens have earned legal citizenship and the rights and benefits that entails. Those who can’t or won’t should either get out or be deported.
Deported in whose interest? I don’t know about conditions there, but at home in Switzerland there was active connivance between the immigrants, the employers, the town authorities to let them stay. According to my father, who was an employer, immigrants even paid their taxes anonymously. The idea was that they were necessary for the industry, yet there were so many that it was better to keep them illegal, so that, if conditiones worsened, jobs got scarcer, they could be sent back out.
Meaning: the laws are placebos to pacify the voters. Years ago Time magazine presented the European immigration drama the same way.
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What you describe is almost exactly the way it is here. Our problem, though, is that there are now an estimated 12 -20 million illegals in the U.S. Granting amnesty, which we did in the ’80s, only encouraged more to come. Deporting 12 million people seems logistically impossible, yet a large part of the population opposes “rewarding” them with citizenship. It’s one of our most complicated and polarizing domestic problems.
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I won’t deny that the problem is difficult, but I don’t believe that the fault lies with the “illegals”. I find it rather difficult to blame anyone for doing what is necessary to feed their families. If you want to find fault with someone, I’d blame the people who employ them at virtual slave wages. The “illegals” certainly aren’t coming across the Rio Grande and holding the employers at gun point, demanding that they be hired.
The “illegal” is perhaps the most brutalized by the whole process. They pay all taxes except the income tax, which doesn’t mean much considering that they make virtually nothing. They rarely take advantage of services in the US, since doing so would place them at risk of being deported. They don’t vote, they don’t receive any legal protection from abuse or have any guarantee that they will actually get paid. Yet, after all is said and done, its still better than conditions in Mexico.
Most Americans actually benefit from this, as their cheap labor provides cheaper goods for Americans who have to contend with lower wages. The problem of running out of crap jobs is mainly a red herring, the bigger concern is the decline of wages and benefits for the majority on both sides of the border. At the end of the day, the immigrant and the low wage worker are the ones that get screwed, and then scapegoated to boot.
The solution is complicated indeed, but we have to stop blaming the victim. Economic conditions in both the US and Mexico have to be improved for a broad spectrum of individuals. As the economy becomes evermore internationalized, society will have to be as well. Dividing ourselves into races and nations ultimately screws most, and the minority who benefit will have to build stronger, larger walls to hold back those who have less. In the end, no fence will hold back the tide.
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Well said. Still, the so-called victims, the illegals, know they are in violation of our laws when they come here. They knowingly, intentionally, flout the law and come anyway. I have a problem with that. Nor do I see how they are “victims” if they come here of their own accord. Nobody made them come, and nobody is making them stay. Other nations protect their borders and know who is coming and going. Why shouldn’t we? Otherwise, why have designated borders at all?
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Here in Spain they are needed because the population is shrinking and won’t be able to maintain their immense social security services. Besides, immigrants may also be needed to keep the construction boom going as builders, tenants and even as buyers.
It can’t be understood as a moral problem. It’s economics and misused laws and mafias operating with all kinds of protection. Here (in Spain) they try to cross the straits in little inflatable rubber boats, ten at a time. No rudders, no oars. None knows how to swim, and a passage on a boat like that costs more than a plane ticket.
If the Mafia fear getting caught, they empty the cargo out into the water far away from the shore.
[I am not trying to spam your blog with this issue, and I would not mind at all if you erased this. I wanted to tell you about one more ugly facet of this problem.] The idea is that since Spain is so much smaller than the US, the paradox becomes more clearly visible, as the administration feels obliged to obstruct its own policies::
— The immigrant is told that he has to get papers. All immigrants have to get legal papers.
— The lines to get papers are each a mile long and getting longer.
— The Government offices announce that they will receive a maximum of 60 applications a day…..
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Your comments on this topic are enlightening (not spam). It had never occurred to me that Spain had an immigration problem… and in so many ways it sounds similar to the problem in the U.S. Your immigrants are coming across the strait from North Africa? That sounds even more perilous than walking across the desert from Mexico into the U.S.
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