We need an above board way to allow the apparent millions of illegals to work legally and pay taxes and be controlled by the law, and we also need a far more restricted citizenship program that encourages most of these people to ultimately return back home rather than assuming everyone who jumps ship or swins the Rio Grande wants and deserves citizenship.
Back in the 1800's, something like 30-45% of immigrants in any given year ultimately sailed back across the ocean for Europe.
The United States does have a culture. It’s a culture that has afforded the world a rather decent existance. Do we just turn that culture into the culture of Mexico?
In the current political environment, the US is not going to go back before 1952 and the McCarran Act and restrict citizenship to white European immigrants only. So your desire here is politically unrealistic.
Do you want to see a bidding war that sees the two political parties promising the Mexican immigrants more goodies than the other?
I don't think the Republicans won the Italian and Polish vote in that manner. I know the Democrats did win the Irish that way though.
And if limits are going to be set, what is wrong with the limits we have already set?
Well very clearly they don't work. That's why we have millions of illegals here, people constantly coming across the border, and hundreds of thousands at least who fly into the country from overseas and simply overstay their visa. To accomplish what you want, you need police registration of living arrangements, as in Europe, so that everyone can be tracked and found. And if you know of 10+ million American citizens eager to go work construction labor and pick farm crops, then you know something few other Americans do. The economic dislocation of sending them all packing would be tremendous at this point.
If the current system doesn't work, and is demonstrably inhumane given the hundreds who die crossing the border illegally or who get caught up in human trafficing rings from China and Mexico, decent people should try to think of alternatives that do work.
The thing I would like to see the least is a fast-tracking of illegals to citizenship as in the amnesty proposals. I have no problem with proposals to allow them to work above board and be controlled by the legal system.
Thanks for your honest reply Andrew.
I have not recommended that we limit our immigration to people from Europe. What I have recommended is a moratorium on all immigration for ten to twenty years.
I don’t have a problem with the immigration laws on our books. I do have a problem with not enforcing them.
Once those here either returned to the nation of origion, through strict enforcement of our laws, or had fully assimilated, I’d approve of turning on the spiggot again with normal levels that would be achieved today if we adhered to our laws.
The one caviot I would add, is that we refuse any immigration or visas from terrorist states. If a nation has been proven to harbor, supply or fund terrorists or terrorism, their citizens could not enter the United States period.
I have also called for a program that would see $500,000 paid to families from the Middle-East that would repatriate back home. That amount could be tinkered with. $250,000 might be more appropriate.
I do not want to round up illegals and give them the boot. However, if they did come into contact with the police, other than reporting a crime, they should be sent back to the nation of their origion.
If businesses were prosecuted for hiring illegals, and services were refused to them, they would repatriate themselves. I think that is optimal.