I’ve been browsing and got caught up again in the illegal immigration issue. I haven’t been there in a while. The subject didn’t get a lot of attention during last year’s campaign and President Obama seems to be concentrating primarily on the economy, as he should be. As a result, the issue seems to be smoldering at about the same temperature as before — not going away, not getting any better.
The pro-immigrant camp still ignores the not-so-subtle distinction between “immigrant” and “illegal immigrant.” They argue that immigrants are human beings with “civil rights” that are being violated by US law enforcement, that they are being discriminated against by racists, etc. Nothing new there.
Anyone (not just Latinos) in this country in violation of US immigration law is here illegally and therefore subject to arrest, detention, and deportation. That’s not racist. That doesn’t violate anyone’s civil rights (one has to be a US citizen in order to have civil rights here). If families are split up because our government enforces its law, you don’t blame the government; you blame whoever broke the law.
I’m getting all wound up over this again, partly because Colorado has been considering a new law that would grant in-state tuition to illegals who have been here a certain number of years and graduated from high school. As an Oklahoma resident back in the Stone Age, I had to pay hefty out-of-state tuition for the privilege of attending the University of Colorado. And now they want to use my tax dollars to underwrite in-state tuition for illegals? (Have you ever seen a fat white grandmother go ballistic?)
Mumble, mutter, #&*(^!!
For me, it keeps boiling down to one question. Just one. And I still haven’t found the answer.
Where’s the logic in giving all the rights and privileges of citizenship
to someone who is here illegally?
I could expand on that question in a million ways, but I think it represents the bottom line. Everything seems to boil down to that. I try to be reasonable and keep an open mind about things. I keep trying to understand how so many people in this country can be so convinced that illegal immigrants somehow deserve to come here, be here, and stay here in violation of our laws.
I’m not entirely comfortable with my black-or-white interpretation of the issue. Few important things in life are that simple. But I’ll be damned if I can find the gray in this issue.
The gray surfaces when the government is the one dragging its butt on the paperwork that immigrants have filled out and submitted in good faith. Happens a lot to Mexicans. My sister’s husband filled out his paperwork years and years ago–I believe she said 10. Moot point now, but still.
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Ah yes, bureaucracy. Thank you for the reminder. I’ve heard of the paperwork taking a long time, but 10 years is … pretty incomprehensible, even for the most notoriously screwed up government agencies. Does that include required waiting periods, or time in-country or something by the applicant, or is it actually the time it takes to push the paper from one desk to another? Does the applicant get some sort of temporary permit saying they have an app pending (putting the onus on the govt. to get the lead out), or does the applicant just get told to go back to Mexico until his number is called?
My impression, quite honestly, has been that most of the illegal immigrants in this country came in illegally with the intention of quickly blending into the population and no intention of ever filing for any sort of permit, visa, or citizenship. I don’t understand how anyone can condone or support this, much less throw in free education and medical care.
I think it’s a matter of quotas, to be honest with you. The government might deny that, but if it were a matter of numbers alone, then Germans, Australians, Italians, and Canadians wouldn’t have the wait that Mexicans do. It’s like “only x number of immigrants from each country, please.” That’s my impression of it, at any rate. I don’t know how accurate it is, as it’s based on my sister’s explanation and she’s not known to be objective or thorough in researching something before forming an opinion on it, heh.
I suppose you could say I support at least free medical care in that I support universal health care across the board. I have a friend who married a Scot, and before they were married, she had to go to the ER. Even though she was not a citizen, they still gave her care. I think that’s the way it should be run, but I guess that makes me a socialist. 😉
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Oh, crap! I just spent 30 minutes composing some little piece of deep-think, went to look up something, and accidentally deleted everything I’d written. I was saying I didn’t know if supporting “universal” health care makes you a socialist, or if it has to be “national” health care to do that.
Quotas. Yes, that figures. We’ve had them before. I wouldn’t expect total objectivity from your sis, as close as she is to the issue, but her personal experience and resulting insight more than make up for it. Think what I could learn from knowing her and her huz!
Answer: Children born here don’t need to be “given” the rights of citizenship. They are given that by our own laws. They are born on US soil. Like Michelle Malkin, for one. Why is she given rights and citizenship? Her parents were here on a school or work visa. She was born here at that point. That’s the way it works. My question would be “Why are we going to deny children born here who’ve only know this nation as their home and love it and want to contribute and work here from being able to do that?”
It does no good to punish young minds and hearts who want to work and live and love just like the rest of us born here do. It is not a sum zero game where we lose out if they are also afforded the rights to be taxed and drive and be free from workplace exploitation, which is what happens when you don’t legalize them.
As a result, the issue seems to be smoldering at about the same temperature as before — not going away, not getting any better.
It is getting worse. Raids are going on and they don’t just “break up families” and you don’t just write that off. Not when children are suffering. How can you write that off so easily? You say you are a grandmother? Seems pretty callous to me for a Grandmother to be all “blame the parents for breaking the law.” Makes me feel like you don’t know about Hutto and the children drawing pictures of American flags and sneaking notes into visitors hands that say “help me.” I guess you would write that all of with a scoff about lawbreaking. Even though ICE is cheating the law itself in many cases to keep them there. Rushing migrants through proceedings they dont understand, to lever them into criminal preceedings even though all they’ve done is violate a civil law. But you want to just shrug off any empathy for fellow humans by saying “blame the parents.” Even though 90 deaths have now occurred in detention and records are being fudged by ICE to hide the real numbers. Most of those are deaths that came about from medical neglect. This is where human and civil rights comes into play. As well as the workplace exploitation and health protections that are not in place in so many meatpacking plants and other workplaces where regulation falls way under par because the immigrant community is used in so many ways. LAW as you so love, is not there to protect them. Is this just? Is this acceptable to you? Are you up on all these facts? They are well documented. Or are you just blogging from the belly because you read about some bill that you fear may take something from you and give it to someone else?
The law is being violated by the US (DHS specificially, ICE) in so many cases when it comes to immigrants, and why? In order to fill the jails and pull in cash and justify the expanding budgets for the prison industry, which is what these raids are about. This is to now justified in plain writing by some local communities because of their ailing economy! So who is taking from who now?
And Obama is not just focusing on the economy. He said it’s all tied together, so he needs to address all of it together. But right now he is basically rehashing Plan Colombia tactics via Mérida and thinks he can address a social ill with punitive measures, which is what most anti’s think. Its a very limited and coldhearted view of the world, which is…legal, but alien.
PS, you DO blame the government when the government falls short. As a grandmother, are you concerned with what Bush did to insurance? What he tried to do to seniors with his privatization gambit? Do you like that? Who do blame for that? The government. What I want to know is how do you live long enough to be a grandmother and not understand how naive it is to swallow whatever the Government puts out as rule? Maybe its easy to do when you’re white and so many laws and systems benefit you most of the time.
As per your linked article:
Which kind of destroys your complaint, eh? There is no extra cost to the state under this proposed legislation.
And this talk about YOUR tax money going to pay for ILLEGULZ is greedy, senseless, racist, banter. Do you have any idea how much our economy and your own life is propped up by all the cheap cheap labor done by ILLEGULZ? Clearly not, you are not well versed in the doings of this nation, nor its history, nor the economy. You’re just a scared person blogging on free software about the hordes come to steal away your monies.
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Yes, I know children born on US soil are natural born US citizens. Please read the question again. I’m talking about anyone who is here illegally, who came into the country and stayed without any of the proper papers or authorization, and is therefore in violation of current US law.
The problems begin if the parents of those kids (the kids who are born here) are here illegally. They, the parents, are subject to arrest and deportation. If that happens, somebody has to decide if those minor kids, even though they are US citizens, are going to leave the country with their parents, or stay here with relatives or friends and pursue their lives and educations, away from their parents.
It’s a terrible decision to have to make, but I still see the parents as the responsible party, not US law enforcement; the parents knew this was a possible result of coming here illegally.
You’re right. I didn’t know about Hutto, but I went and looked it up. I think it’s despicable that they jailed those kids. Who puts kids in a prison!? I’d read about raids where the concern was what happens when the kids come home from school and there’s no one there because the parents were caught in a raid during the day. Seems like somebody would be smart enough to figure out something. Social services? Call friends, relatives, neighbors? Something. And the something is definitely not throwing the kids in jail with the parents. Some really stupid bureaucrat reasoned, “yeah, but it keeps the family together.” I don’t know how the attendant legal proceedings are conducted, and but I’m sure they’d be confusing to most people, with or without language differences.
As for the privately operated prisons, it’s my understanding that they are springing up because private companies do most things better than the government. The prisons are for-profit, but it’s the government that pays the private operator to house prisoners, so throwing more people into those prisons only makes more money for the private operators.
So, why does ICE exist at all? Why are there raids and deportations and Hutto and kids in jail and all of that? Because people (not just Mexicans) keep choosing to come into the country illegally, even though most of them know that doing so is against the law and can have serious consequences. It doesn’t help that the Mexican government would rather give its poor citizens maps to the US than encourage them to stay home and help build their own economy.
I have little sympathy for ICE or most other US government agencies. Our politicians lie and misrepresent things all the time. George Bush is a warmongering buffoon who belongs in jail and Obama, although a vast improvement, seems to be trying to do too much too fast. Ours is a screwed up, corrupt, greed-driven, bloated system that can’t seem to get much of anything right. But it’s still better than the alternatives.
As for the education bill, it beats me how Romer can say there’s no net cost to the state. Some fancy bureaucratic bookkeeping, no doubt. Tuition, already high and continuing to climb, only covers part of a public education; the rest is underwritten with tax dollars.
As for your last sentence, you nailed it there. I’m scared as hell about virtually everything. I’m scared as hell I’ll run out of money before I die. I’m scared as hell my Social Security and Medicare are going to get botched up by an incompetent government and I suddenly won’t have what I’ve spent all my adult life building. I’m scared as hell I’ll end up sick, and penniless, and alone. I’m scared as hell my 16-year-old car will die and I won’t be able to afford another one. And yeah, I’m blogging on free software. So what?