Immigration

The immigration issue has gotten a lot of attention recently as a compromise bill is being debated and tweaked in the Senate. As with any compromise, there are things to love and hate about the bill.

My position on immigration is clear. I am in favor of it. I would support an amnesty bill for the 12 million illegals already here except that I would scrap the $5000 fine and back taxes obligations. I oppose building a fence on the southern border or an increased military presence there.

The opponents of my unpopular position marshall two arguments against me. They are the economic argument and the social argument. I'll demolish the economic argument first.

People claim that Mexcian immigrants hurt our economy. Ironically, they never say this about Canadian, English, Australian, Austrian, or German immigrants. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. The fact is that these immigrants do not hurt our economy at all but actually help it. By providing cheap labor, farms and businesses are able to produce goods and provide services at a lower cost. This helps bring down the prices for these goods and services which we buy. In addition, these people require goods and services which we can then provide to them. Mexicans take jobs, but they also help to create jobs as well.

Opponents are deluded by their own economic illiteracy that sees the economy as a pie that gets no bigger. It is merely sliced with each person getting a smaller and smaller slice as more people partake of the pie. This simply isn't the case. Granted, if you are an American fruit picker making the minimum wage, you will probably lose your job to these Mexican fruit pickers working off the books. My advice is to upgrade your skills or lower the price of your labor. This may seem harsh, but you make the same choice when you tell Wal-Mart, Sony, Microsoft, or whatnot to lower their prices or improve the quality of the shit you buy from them. This is where economic growth comes from.

The other side of the economic argument is the fact that many immigrants take advantage of taxpayer funded social services better known as the Welfare State. This isn't a problem of immigration but a problem of welfare. If you want immigrants to stop getting welfare, stop signing the checks instead of putting up a damn fence on the border. This will be cheaper and will strengthen our society as well as eliminate a lure for lazy Mexicans to come here.

This leads us to the social argument that immigrants are bad for our society because they are a bunch of lazy dirty criminals. I find this ironic considering how hard they work and the threat that they pose for the American workforce. Someone said I worked like a Mexican, and I took it as a compliment. The reality is that I don't work nearly as hard as they do.

Stats show that the immigrant population has a lower crime rate than our own population. Granted, Mexican drug dealers are a problem, but this is largely a result of our idiotic War on Drugs. Legalize the drugs, and this problem will disappear. But even with the current idiocy, Mexicans are still less criminally inclined than the rest of the US population.

The fundamental reason people are against these Mexican immigrants are because they are brown and don't speak English. They run into these people in the grocery store or Wal-Mart and hear them speaking their gibberish and dressed and acting differently. Paranoia overwhelms them leading to xenophobia and racial bigotry and delusions of a Mexican takeover. In short, they hate these dirty brown wetbacks and want to send them back south of the border. I don't go along with this hatred.

I'm not asking these bigots to love these Mexicans. What I am asking of them is to respect the life, liberty, and property of these people. Most of these people want to come here and work and make a better life for themselves and their families. They're not stealing from anyone when they do this. They are working. This is what America is supposed to be about.

Before the Mexicans, it was the Italians. Before the Italians, it was the Irish. They were all dirty, smelled bad, were criminals, etc. But history shows that America benefitted greatly from these immigrants. They got the fair shake here that they didn't get in their countries of origin, and they prospered. They were just different.

The majority of the American public is against me on this, but I think history will show the ugliness of this irrational xenophobia. I support making immigration to the USA as easy as possible. Our borders should be as open as they can possibly be. The result will be mutual benefit, and these people you hate will become as beloved as a Kennedy, a Giuliani, a Dimaggio, or even, *gulp*, Bill O'Reilly.

America is not defined by race. It is defined by shared values of liberty, respect for human rights, and a belief in hard work. Anyone who shares these values should be welcome in our country.

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