We should provide them free air travel home.
Posted on 11/27/2005 9:57:27 AM PST by southernnorthcarolina
More than two decades ago, a friend invited my wife, Marylyn, and me and a few others to her family's tobacco farm to tour the place and see a tobacco auction.
The day of the auction, her father and I -- the two earliest risers in the group -- were drinking coffee at the kitchen table and talking about the tobacco business.
He described the work that goes into making a crop. I asked where he found laborers to do it.
Illegal aliens, he replied.
I stared at him for a minute. He didn't smile.
Look, I said, I'm a journalist. What if you tell me you're hiring illegal aliens and the Observer sends a bunch of reporters up here to look into it?
Go ahead, he said. If we didn't hire illegal aliens, there wouldn't be a tobacco crop. You think the government's going to shut down the tobacco industry?
I thought he might be kidding a city boy, but over time I kept an eye on our stories about illegal immigrants in seasonal farm work. I concluded he was pulling my leg only a little bit.
For decades the United States has all but ignored a flood of illegal immigration. The reason is simple: Illegal immigrants work hard and cheap and don't complain for fear of being sent home.
One result is occasional outrages such as a fatal collision on I-485 here a few days ago. A Mexican was charged with driving drunk on the wrong side of the road going 100 mph. Records show he had been caught in this country and sent back to Mexico 17 times since 1996.
The result of our porous borders? The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 11 million illegal immigrants are in the United States today, up from 8.4 million in 2000 -- a 30 percent increase in just five years.
Not all these illegal entrants come seeking work. In 2000, the CIA estimated that 50,000 women and children a year from Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America were smuggled into the United States to serve as prostitutes, servants or captive laborers.
Otis Graham Jr., an eminent historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, now living in retirement in Chapel Hill, explores the problem in a splendid overview titled "Unguarded Gates: A History of America's Immigration Crisis" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
He points out that virtually unrestricted immigration may meet with approval from elites and employers eager for cheap, compliant labor, but not from citizens who compete with them for jobs or better wages. He thinks public opinion is mounting against illegal immigration.
I see evidence of that shift in the interest of U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, a Charlotte Republican. I disagree with some of her immigration proposals, but in my three decades as an editor here I've seen few politicians better attuned to the public mood.
America is a nation of immigrants. They contribute immeasurably to our culture and well-being. I'm married to the daughter of an immigrant. It is not anti-immigrant bias that prompts my concern, but practical considerations such as these:
1. If our borders are open to foreigners sneaking in to work, they're also open to foreign terrorists with trouble in mind.
2. Illegal immigrants mock our laws and discourage foreigners seeking to come here legally.
3. Illegal immigrants are vulnerable to abuse by bosses and crooks because they fear if they seek the protection our laws provide they'll expose their status and risk deportation.
4. The fatal wreck I cited shows one way illegal immigrants burden our society: They don't get drivers licenses and therefore aren't required to pass driving tests or buy insurance. In some areas they strain legal, social and medical services.
5. Their presence casts a shadow on the millions of immigrants who are here legally.
To clean up this mess, Congress must take three steps:
• Create a guest worker program similar to the one President Bush has proposed. America isn't going to send 11 million people home. Identifying them and legalizing and limiting their stay in this country will enable authorities from that point on to determine who is here illegally.
• Once a workable ID system is in place, require employers to hire only workers here legally. Impose tough sanctions on those who hire illegal immigrants.
• Spend what's necessary to secure our borders. It won't be cheap, and it won't work perfectly, but it's necessary to make our immigration laws something other than an international joke.
When unemployment and welfare no longer exist, I'll agree to bringing in more workers.
Close the damned borders, and send the law breakers home.
"5. Their presence casts a shadow on the millions of immigrants who are here legally. "
"• Create a guest worker program similar to the one President Bush has proposed. America isn't going to send 11 million people home. Identifying them and legalizing and limiting their stay in this country will enable authorities from that point on to determine who is here illegally."
We have 11 million " guest-plunderers" why do we need more?
Close the borders!!
BTTT
We should provide them free air travel home.
I disagree with the concept of a guest worker program, but if we're forced to have one, we should limit the initial number of three-year passes to, say, 1 or 2 million. The next 3 or 4 million get a two-year pass, and the rest get a one-year pass.
This would motivate many to apply early, and would spread out the work that ICE has to do to find and process the ones who don't show up each year.
But it would be better to NOT have a guest worker program, to secure the entire length of the borders, and then to start rounding up as many illegals as possible. Let the roundups serve to strike fear in the hearts of the others.
My Grandfather was injured/disabled in the war by mustard gas. The family was put on public assistance.....but he was required to work a 40hr week doing SOMETHING for the county....in order to get his check. Not a bad idea....IMHO
There are more than enough guest visa-workers under the current system to handle the seasonal harvest of tobacco and all other American crops.
If this owner can't make it with what is legal, he should either raise his prices OR shut down and sell his tobacco growing land to developers.
I say secure the borders, don't close them entirely.
Let the Department of Labor set the immigration quotas based on job needs. Anybody that comes in gets photographed, fingerprinted, and leaves a DNA sample.
And remember, legal guest workers can demand enforcement of minimum wage, workplace safety, etc. (Hey Dems and Big Labor- you listening to this?)
Don't push me... LOL!
Businesses: Illegal immigrants work hard and cheap and don't complain for fear of being sent home. If we didn't hire illegal aliens, there wouldn't be a tobacco crop.
Once they are all nice and "legal", who is going to pick the tobacco on the cheap? Will new illegals now be needed by businesses who currently rely on illegal aliens?
Illegal immigrants are vulnerable to abuse by bosses and crooks because they fear if they seek the protection our laws provide they'll expose their status and risk deportation.
I don't have any pity for lawbreakers who bitch about other lawbreakers.
Identifying them and legalizing and limiting their stay in this country will enable authorities from that point on to determine who is here illegally.
That is one BIG pipe dream.
First, their were several agencies that effectively found and deported illegal aliens. They were too effective and because Marxist illegal alien lovers complained, they shut them down.
Two, NO ONE IS TRYING TO HUNT DOWN AND DEPORT ILLEGALS. If you don’t try something how can you say it does not work. Three, the USA does not have to deport all 11 plus million. Just make life tough for illegals and they will leave on their own.
Four, when the word gets out that we are no longer a haven for the illegal aliens, they will stop coming. In other words, get tough and stop the attraction and the illegals will slowly disappear.
in italy too!!!!
Ultimately, we need to close the borders and send the illegals home. By far the easiest of these two (politically and practically), it seems to me, is the first: close the borders. Build a wall. If we have to build a wall on the Canadian border, too, to assure everyone that we're not anti-Hispanic, well, do that, too.
If the water line to your kitchen sink springs a leak, what do you grab first -- a mop or a wrench? A wrench, of course: shut off the water first, then worry about cleanup. Otherwise, the cleanup process never ends.
After the borders are closed, then we can turn our attention to the 11 million (or more!) illegal immigrants already here. Deport them all? Offer some sort of amnesty under certain conditions? Implement a guest worker policy? The debate will rage a long time, with economic, practical, humanitarian, and ethical arguments raised. But in order to even get ready for the debate, we need to shut off the leak first.
That's a key point. There are enough anecdotals out there that indicate that even the ILLUSION, let alone the actuality of enforcement, sends the illegals packing. Systematically enforcing our laws immediately sends a message that the Gringos are waking up and are not going to be a doormat any longer. The chilling effect would be amazing. Then Mexico's corrupt rulers would have to begin to clean up their act or face yet another revolution.
Why? To increase overall healthcare costs? Why would you want to do that?
Why would you want to give them anything but?
A prime opportunity for aspiring movie directors, "The High Cost of Low Wages".
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