PrintMay 24, 2007
Immigration: Solutions, Not Excuses
One frailty of man is that he is very adept at finding excuses to justify laziness and irresponsibility. There's no point helping people because everyone is just out for himself anyway. Why study or work? I mean, no one is going to give me a break. I won't take care of myself because you've got to die of something. We can't deport 12- 20 million illegal aliens.
I could point out that the word "can't" never used to be in the American vocabulary. I could mention that members of the "can't" set find it entirely possible to tax 100 million people and then transfer the money in hand-outs 80 million others. Some of them even aspire to control the health care of 300 million Americans through government. Why, their ambitions just seem to grow with the size of the big government scheme.
There are two truths here. First, if ancient Egyptians could build the pyramids, if ancient Chinese constructed the Great Wall, we can deport any number of invaders and keep them out.
The second truth is that we don't have to.
The answer is - and these ideas aren't original - we can get illegal aliens to deport themselves. All we need understand is that man operates based on incentive, on reward and consequence, and devise policy accordingly. I now propose a foolproof five-point plan that would put an end to the invasion of America.
1. Enact laws ensuring that employers who hire illegals will be punished harshly enough to deter the behavior; this will take the illegals' jobs away.
2. Enact laws prohibiting illegals from receiving any government benefits.
3. Eliminate the standard that confers citizenship on children born to illegals on our soil.
These three measures alone will eliminate the incentive to be here, causing most to return to where they belong. But this is just the removal of the carrot; now we need application of the stick.
4. Enact a law stating that any alien in violation of our laws caught on our soil beyond a certain date will be subject to severe criminal penalties.
5. Enact a law stating that, in addition, if they are found in the US after that time, they will forevermore be prohibited from entering our nation.
Understand that these measures will so greatly reduce the number of illegals (my guess is by 90%) that taking legal action against the lawbreakers who remain will simply be a matter of eliminating a few stragglers.
The beauty of this plan is that it eliminates another excuse: "We'll never stop illegals from coming here anyway." Once America has been transformed from a big carrot into a big stick, they'll stop picking on our vegetable. Border enforcement would still be necessary, but only for the purposes of keeping true miscreants out, people such as terrorists and criminal gangs.
Speaking of vegetables, on Monday I saw Senator Saxby Chambliss rendering another immigration excuse. What's a Saxby Chambliss, you ask? It's an illegal alien enabler who was recently trying to mollify some indignant true Americans by waxing fictional. Why, by golly, if we send these people packing, we won't have anyone to pick our produce, opined he. This will make us dependent on foreign imports, as we are with oil. Got that, stupid?
Well, I've got news for you, the Sax is playing us.
As I've said before, there are no jobs Americans won't do, there are only wages Americans won't work for. The law of supply and demand informs that flooding an economic system with great numbers of low-wage workers causes their value to decrease. If you purge the system of them, however, businesses won't go belly-up for want of labor. They will simply offer what the remaining, more valuable workers are now worth. I call that a healthy, natural, free market way of spreading the wealth around.
But this is only half the equation. Usually overlooked is that the agricultural industry need be wedded to manual labor no more than the automobile industry must, and this is demonstrated by the many countries that have introduced mechanized harvesting systems which in some measure take the place of human hands. Moreover, robotic systems serving this end have been developed as well, and, although, they're not perfect, with time and incentive greater sophistication will be achieved.
The bottom line is that the last thing that should worry the country with San Francisco and Greenwich Village is a possible inability to produce fruits and nuts. When the cost of labor exceeds that of mechanization, we'll go the latter route.
An old saying states, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." In 1965, Ted Kennedy and his enablers sold us a culture-rending immigration reform act. When lobbying for the bill, Kennedy said that America wouldn't be flooded with a million immigrants a year and the demographic composition of the country would not change. Both those assertions proved untrue. In 1986, Ted Kennedy and others promised that if we would just grant amnesty to the 3.4 million invaders on our soil, the borders would be secured and illegal immigration halted. This proved untrue.
Now they sing the same old song. Just be compassionate and reasonable, my fellow Americans, and grant amnesty to the 12-20 million invaders colonizing us, and, you guessed it, we'll secure the borders and get our house in order.
I don't know, would you buy a used immigration idea from these men? What do you say about being fooled a third time?
The immigration bill before the Senate, SB-1348, is a sham. The three million invaders in 1986 have become 12-20 million today and, if we repeat the mistakes of the past, will metastasize into perhaps forty million next time. Of course, by then our sense of national identity will be so eroded that we may not even call them illegal anymore. Why would we in Mexico North?
The plan we must pursue has been laid out in this piece. Politicians who won't embrace it aren't looking for solutions, only excuses. And excuses walk.
Tell the politicians: Deport the invaders or next election cycle we'll deport you. I'm sure we can find some real Americans to fill your very, very, very small shoes.
