More on immigration...
While advancing the policies outlined in previous blogs and below, it is important that business are provided with the means to realistically decipher whether or not their workers are legally in the United States. Currently our government seeks to hold employers responsible for hiring illegal workers. Yet when these same employers ask the government for assistance in determining the status of their workers, they are stonewalled. If we are serious about retaining jobs for American workers, it is lunacy to deprive businesses of the means with which to accomplish this.
It is vital that we provide a quicker and easier path to citizenship for people that are established in this country. No good can come out tearing families apart and forcing good, otherwise law-abiding, people into prison and back across the border. Some of the major talking points of those proclaiming the evils of illegal immigration is that these people do not pay taxes and they work jobs for lower pay, pricing Americans out of the labor market. If we fast track those that are established here already into citizenship they will then begin paying taxes on the income earned (which is more than can be said for numerous large corporations) and force companies to pay them the legal minimum wage, thereby alleviating these concerns.
We stand at a crossroads when it comes to those people that have come here through illegal channels in order to establish a better life for themselves and their families. We can either turn them into felons, necessitating a huge expenditure of money to round them up and house them in already overcrowded federal prisons bloated with some 2,000,000 nonviolent offenders, and forcing them further into the shadows of society, a placement that only leads to further problems for society as a whole. Such an approach is baffling when one realizes that immigrants, even those here illegally, are less likely to commit violent crime that American citizens. Or, we can accept that they can be productive members of society, that these families and communities are a positive influence on our culture, and that they become unabashedly American by the second or third generation. We can force them into becoming a drain on society as a prisoner, or we can place them in a position to contribute fully to society. We reject the first option and choose the later. We choose to accept the humanity of my neighbor that has risked everything for the hope that accompanies a promise of freedom and opportunity.
It is this choice that guides our belief that it would be horribly counterproductive to deny education and medicine to immigrants, regardless their status. Some espouse the need for individual responsibility, yet propose to hold children accountable for the actions of their parents. They decry the lack of desire of immigrants to "assimilate" and become productive members of society, and then attempt to deny them the means with which to accomplish these goals. If we truly want immigrant populations to become a strength of this country, we must provide them with the tools to better their position. Not only will this create a better situation for those wishing to gain a foothold in America, but it will lead to a betterment of the whole of our society in the long-term and create strong bonds between newcomers and their new home.
The idea of building a fence on the border is a gross perversion of the ideals with which this nation was founded. One cannot help but remember a time when a wall was erected to prevent people from escaping to freedom, prosperity and a better life. As children we watched as the German people danced on the remains of that wall. I never imagined members of the United States Congress would propose the turning back the clock and utilizing tactics of oppression which it struggled so long to topple. This country should be embracing freedom seeking peoples of the world, not erect concrete and barbed wire in their path.
It is vital that we provide a quicker and easier path to citizenship for people that are established in this country. No good can come out tearing families apart and forcing good, otherwise law-abiding, people into prison and back across the border. Some of the major talking points of those proclaiming the evils of illegal immigration is that these people do not pay taxes and they work jobs for lower pay, pricing Americans out of the labor market. If we fast track those that are established here already into citizenship they will then begin paying taxes on the income earned (which is more than can be said for numerous large corporations) and force companies to pay them the legal minimum wage, thereby alleviating these concerns.
We stand at a crossroads when it comes to those people that have come here through illegal channels in order to establish a better life for themselves and their families. We can either turn them into felons, necessitating a huge expenditure of money to round them up and house them in already overcrowded federal prisons bloated with some 2,000,000 nonviolent offenders, and forcing them further into the shadows of society, a placement that only leads to further problems for society as a whole. Such an approach is baffling when one realizes that immigrants, even those here illegally, are less likely to commit violent crime that American citizens. Or, we can accept that they can be productive members of society, that these families and communities are a positive influence on our culture, and that they become unabashedly American by the second or third generation. We can force them into becoming a drain on society as a prisoner, or we can place them in a position to contribute fully to society. We reject the first option and choose the later. We choose to accept the humanity of my neighbor that has risked everything for the hope that accompanies a promise of freedom and opportunity.
It is this choice that guides our belief that it would be horribly counterproductive to deny education and medicine to immigrants, regardless their status. Some espouse the need for individual responsibility, yet propose to hold children accountable for the actions of their parents. They decry the lack of desire of immigrants to "assimilate" and become productive members of society, and then attempt to deny them the means with which to accomplish these goals. If we truly want immigrant populations to become a strength of this country, we must provide them with the tools to better their position. Not only will this create a better situation for those wishing to gain a foothold in America, but it will lead to a betterment of the whole of our society in the long-term and create strong bonds between newcomers and their new home.
The idea of building a fence on the border is a gross perversion of the ideals with which this nation was founded. One cannot help but remember a time when a wall was erected to prevent people from escaping to freedom, prosperity and a better life. As children we watched as the German people danced on the remains of that wall. I never imagined members of the United States Congress would propose the turning back the clock and utilizing tactics of oppression which it struggled so long to topple. This country should be embracing freedom seeking peoples of the world, not erect concrete and barbed wire in their path.
posted by H.C.I.C. - New Whig Chairman at 10:18 AM
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