That's like me offering a standing ovation to someone breaking into your home and stealing your belongings because "at least they're showing initiative".
(Admit it. You've been drinking President Bush's "special" Margarita Mix haven't you, amigo?)
That's like me offering a standing ovation to someone breaking into your home and stealing your belongings because "at least they're showing initiative".
(Admit it. You've been drinking President Bush's "special" Margarita Mix haven't you, amigo?)
OK, she could apply for one of those special new “36-DD” visas. Not guilty!
}:-)4
Tragically, I have not drunk his “Margarita mix” but if it involved that girl, I would like to very much. Pity I can’t stand alcohol but I might make an exception for that girl :-).
More than anything, I think illegals are being enterprising, trying to improve life for themselves and their families, and I think that’s something worth admiring. I think there’s a huge difference between defying our borders and committing a crime of significance.
I think of illegals defying the borders as being comparable to Americans disobeying speed limits. On the highway I travel to work, the speed limit is 50 and if I obeyed the limit I would be honked at by angry drivers who all want to go 70. So I go 70 like everyone else.
Should I go 50 and obey the law, because it’s the right thing to do?
Shouldn’t it be the right thing to do what the people on the ground want, and not what distant highway authorities and legislators want?
I believe that for things like speed limits, the consensus of people on the ground is the real law and it should control. I think speed limits should be adjusted to fit that consensus.
But I know I have about as much likelihood of changing that law as I do of going to the moon.
There is a delicate political balance here because there are people who like low speed limits and yet the overwhelming majority of the population doesn’t want to see them enforced. Why do I know this? Because less than one in ten drivers obey. They vote with their accelerators.
Likewise, I think most people benefit from having illegals and yet there is a small number of people feeling bitter hatred towards them. Politics is about the tension between the two groups.
Some people have mentioned that they will consider issues surrounding poorly run health care, lousy schools, etc when the borders are sealed.
I don’t think sealing the borders is possible or cost-effective. Why not spend that money that could be spent on the fence on better law enforcement, which would help against all bad people, instead of concentrating on a group of people who are mostly not guilty?
Our schools and hospitals were poorly run and shoddy long before illegals came and so blaming their problems on illegals seems to be putting blame in the wrong place.
Moose4, I thank you for your thoughtful comment. Why not just beef up law enforcement, throw out the bad ones and let the honest ones stay? What’s the point in making them go back to their native country only to return? That sounds like a big waste to me. If they’re welcome here, they should be welcome.
Has it occured to you that maybe one reason they don’t assimilate is that people like you and those in this thread are not friendly to them? Of course they wind up in their enclaves because that’s how they can find friends and not be exposed to people hostile to them.
There was an older, hospitable America, that really believed in welcoming people from other countries if they worked hard and did well. I liked that world a lot better than the “Deport them all!” world we have now. It seems so negative.
Ronald Reagan believed in being positive, in looking at the bright side, and I think when we think of illegals so negatively we lose what Reagan taught us. Why not consider the upside?
A bigger population means more opportunities, more jobs being done, growth and dynamism. These are values we should support, and that’s my point. I’d like to see someone address that section of my argument instead of narrow mindedly saying that they’ve defied our laws, since with speed limits most of us do that every single day of the year.
I am saddened by the fact that we can’t discuss this issue without getting personal. A lot of people here have told me I’m the worst thing since moldy bread because I don’t support the Free Republic consensus on this subject. I hope you will notice that I don’t stoop to personal attacks in my responses, because I think the issue is important, interesting and deserves to be debated fairly on its own terms.
D