I've been hearing quite a few voices in this debate since my own milquetoast post a few days ago. Everyone seems, for the most part to make some good points, but here's what I see:
- We have 11-12 million illegal immigrants in this country. We can't possibly find all of them and deport them to their country of origin. It's just silly to think you can do so (I'm looking at you Tancredo). The only thing close to a workable policy this way is for cops to stop every latino who speaks Spanish and ask them for ID. We've already established that a majority of the illegals in this country aren't from Mexico or Latin America, so this is just racist on the face of it.
- Bringing a guest worker program of some kind helps assimilate them into our culture instead of ostracizing them from it and forcing them underground. Then we all benefit from there being here. We get the labor that we so need to keep the economy humming, they get a path to citizenship if they want it.
The problem we're encountering now is that several people are thinking purely in ethnic and racist overtones. It is the dirty Mexicans and our broken southern border, while the real threat could come from anyone with forged papers or just about any cargo container in one of our nation's seaports. This shouldn't be as big an issue as first securing ourselves where we know we are most vulnerable to attack. Terrorists aren't going to risk life and limb to sneak across the Mexican border. They've got the resources to enter the exact same way that the 9/11 hijackers did, at the airport.
Any sensible, real policy is going to involve a guest worker program and dealing with the fact that many people want to come into this country. Getting bent out of shape everytime someone flies a Mexican flag or assuming the entirety of the problem can be solved by getting rid of the Latinos is stupid.
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