I don't equate each law on a moral basis, and walking across the border to get a job doesn't bother me like breaking into my home, or a bank, or dealing drugs. I can see a difference. It seems some Freepers cannot. I'm sure this will confuse some people but US law is not the same as morality. I'm a criminal every time I drive without my seatbelt but I can legally kill my unborn child...sometimes US laws just don't make sense. I believe we should follow the laws that make sense and change the laws that do not. On immigration the law is wrong and it should be changed, just as slavery was changed. Thankfully Dubya is working to fix the problem.
Immigration is regulated, no matter which country it comes from.
Immigration can be called unregulated if there is no entity to regulate it. That has been true for most of American history. Only since the 1900s has there been any restrictions on immigration in the US. The first Federal restriction was on people with mental or physical defects and children without parents in 1907. The first literacy test was introduced in 1917 and it was a test for the reading in the immigrants own language. The first immigration quota ban was signed in 1921. It wasn't until the widespread use of SS numbers by employers that there could even be anyway to tell who is in the country illegally. That is why we still don't have accurate numbers of illegal immigrants because many jobs are paid in cash under the table. That was my point. The only difference between the waves of illegal immigration from Mexico today and the waves of Polish immigration in the early 1900s or the waves of Chinese immigration 20 years earlier is the existence of the INS. Immigration from Italy, Germany, and Ireland didn't doom us to failure in the past. Ergo I'm not worried about Mexican immigration. I believe if someone wants to get in they are going to get in unless American's choose to live in a police state. They will not choose that today.
When 9-11 happened many "patriots" screamed bloody murder that the Government was going to be allowed the tools to seek out and apprehend terrorists. They made some good points. We have seen our government fail to stop alcohol from entering the country during Prohibition. We have seen failure on the war on drugs. Do you want to give the same government the power and authorization needed to remove 20 million people? Do you think that average people will yawn at the prospect of black leather clad ATF type stormtroopers ripping families out of communities and shipping them back to Mexico? All for the joy of cleaning your own toilets, mowing your own lawn, picking your own beans, and paying a snot nosed long haired teenager to spit on your food while he flips your Big Mac which will now run $10 due to increased labor costs. I can't even comprehend the disastrous results to our economy because of the increased cost of cleaning office buildings, production of food, labor shortages...and if the government slaps penalties on business who employ legal and illegal workers and businesses start closing...I could see real trouble.
I see no advantage in expending a lot of resources trying to eliminating illegal immigration. I don't think my government is up to the task and I don't want to give them the money or authority to do it. I would rather work on eliminating/reducing government welfare through faith based initiatives, eliminating/reducing government involvement in health-care with private competition of medicare and medical savings accounts, and eliminating/reducing government involvement in education with tax vouchers for private schools. Costs of illegal immigrants using education health-care and welfare are a small fraction of the total used by legal Americans. Anybody selling something else is ignorant or lying. I see the fight against illegal immigration as a distraction.
Here is what I think makes sense:
1. Lock up illegals who break laws like robbing banks and dealing drugs. We do that already.
2. Let people who want to work pay into the system. Dubya is working on that.
3. Where politically possible create ways for government to reduce redistribution of wealth through social programs. We have started to do this with welfare. It will take time for the American people to be weaned off the "safety net" of SS, unemployment insurance, and disability...but I like some of what Dubya has proposed with faith based initiatives and private medical savings accounts. Education is an "entitlement" that may always be the responsibility of government in the eyes of the American people. It will take longer to change but at least the standards and testing Dubya has proposed make it an easier pill to swallow.
Some people look at the expanding federal budget and fret. It is easy to point the finger at illegals but it will not solve the real problem. The problem is the government does too much and too many people, legal and illegal, expect a government handout, and that will not get fixed quickly. It will not get fixed at all by a politician who says "I know you want a hand out but the Constitution says I can't give it to you." That politician will be replaced with a less Constitution friendly politician. This makes it hard to find some solutions. A smart politician has to think outside the box and ignore simplistic bumper-sticker sloganeering. Illegal immigration is not a simple issue with a simple solution. If it was simple it would have been tried and solved. Illegal immigration is a difficult problem with no easy solution and lots of dangerous consequences for the illegals, their employers and the rest of the local economy that relies on that business, the people who rent to them and sell them goods, their legal friends and family, and the politician who wants to change their lives. We are talking about as many as 20 million illegals. We could be talking about disrupting the lives of 100 million people or more. How can anybody be so dense to think "it is no problem...just send 'em back home?"
When Governor Thompson first introduced welfare reform to Wisconsin, people complained that we were not seeing a reduction in cost. We did see a 90% reduction in the welfare rolls. People were working but the W2 program helped them with childcare and health-care. It may take a generation before the real saving are seen because the children of these new workers will be used to the idea of adults working instead of seeing mom sitting around the tv collecting a welfare check - the same welfare check that forced dad to have to leave the home in order to receive it. The W2 program cost more than continuing the old welfare, but it is helping keep families together and that is good for society and tax revenues. Including the additional spending was the only way the people of Wisconsin would accept the welfare reform. The people of Wisconsin are compassionate human beings and would not tolerate poor people being kicked out of their home. Shocking the system by telling the poor "your on your own buddy" makes a nice bumper-sticker but it ignores human nature. The far right fringe doesn't understand this but the people of Wisconsin are very much like the people of America. They are not going to tolerate human suffering with a Pat Buchanan smile. Dubya understands this, because he is a compassionate human being too. That is why there is more spending for education mixed with the standards and testing. That is why he proposed the worker amnesty, even though it would mean that the 2% right fringe wouldn't vote for him...just as they didn't vote for him in 2000. Heck it might be 3% now.
I've expanded the discussion beyond immigration but I did "actually participate in the discussion."