Connor’s Conundrums » Illegal Immigration

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Illegal Immigration

Posted by Connor on June 21st, 2006

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One of the most hotly-debated items in the USA right now is illegal immigration. There have been good arguments made on both sides of the aisle, which is why we really haven’t gotten anywhere in this problem.

As I see it, the debacle of illegal immigration is somewhat of a catch-22.

First, our capitalistic society has long since taken advantage of cheap, illegal labor. While here in my hotel in San Francisco, it’s been interesting to note all of the (most likely) illegal immigrants doing the menial jobs that middle class white America would rather not do. Housekeeping, cooks, janitors… I’d be willing to bet that a great majority of them are not legal.

So let’s say we have a mass deportation of all illegal immigrants. Now, corporate America will have to offer higher wages for the same jobs so that people will take them, they’ll have to pay insurance, taxes, worker’s compensation… and every other associated cost will be passed onto us, the consumers.

I am absolutely in favor of obeying the law, and since illegal immigration is against the law, there is no room or tolerance for amnesty for people breaking the law. So, we deport them. And then prices go up. Is there a solution?

While watching Hannity and Colmes last month, I heard an interesting statistic. It was calculated that the average tax-paying, American family pays nearly $3,000 per year to support costs incurred by illegal immigrants. Medicare, education, school meals, law enforcement, etc., it all gets throw into the mix. You pay (roughly) $3,000 every year because of illegal immigrants.

So if we deport all the illegal immigrants, that means we can reduce taxes, right? The federal government won’t be burdened by all these extraneous expenses!

Think again. Given the government’s shining track record for insane spending, I’m sure they’d welcome the extra cash flow so they can upgrade the $640 toilet seats to bidets.

Then again, the cost and effort of deporting all illegal immigrants isn’t feasible, so that will never happen. Besides, no politican wants to upset that many people, because they would lose the latino block of constituents for the next election. The main reason, I think, that Bush sent the National Guard to the border is to save face and satisy the conservatives. That’s all politics has boiled down to these days.

So is amnesty the solution? Heck no. Is mass deportation the solution? No.

What, then, is the solution? Your guess is as good as mine.

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One courageous individual has opined already. Care to pontificate as well?

I’ve had the same thoughts on the ilegal imigrants The whole issue seems to revolve around money. That is what drives America. We don’t want prices to increase because all the cheap labor is gone and we don’t want to pay to deport them. If we granted amnesty then they would all pay taxes right? Not likely. They wouldn’t even come close to paying enough taxes to outweigh the burden on the social services they use. We as American’s find it our moral obligation to provide these social services to illegal immigrants. I would propose to not offer these services. More than likely they didn’t have such services before and for that reason they came to the land of hand outs. Conner is right it is a catch 22. It is too little to late. If something was done 20 years ago to limit/stop illegal immigration it would be less of a beast than it is now. Perhaps we should require military service of those illegal immigrants. Bring all of us troops home and let them fight for the freedoms that they enjoy while our 150,000 men and women are deployed over seas. Just a random though that just came to me. I usually think on my feet pretty well.

#1 Trent on July 2nd, 2006