Immigration

It’s a huge topic. Huge. I have wanted to cover it in some form here for quite some time but it’s so gigantic that I have hesitated. I have been intimidated. I admit it. What is the first step to understanding immigration? Where do I begin? Well, I live in Texas, so it's fairly obvious that I should probably begin with Mexico. And because it’s just my nature, I think I should probably begin at a very basic level. I’m going to start small. I’m going to start by simply bringing it up. This is me bringing it up: Immigration.

Please think about immigration. If you don’t already think about it often, please start thinking about it. Think about what you think about it.

Do you have a strong opinion? Any opinion?

What do you think about border control? Should we increase security personnel? Increase technology at the borders? Increase our military presence? Build a really big fence?

What do you think about immigrants who are working here illegally? What do you think about the employers who hire these immigrants? Do you or someone you know employ illegal laborers? I don’t want to make accusations or false presumptions, but I think a significant number of Texans would be hard-pressed to say no to this question.

How do you think the U.S. government should react to employers who hire undocumented immigrants? How do you think the U.S.government should react to immigrants who are in good standing in our country?

Do you have an opinion about English and Spanish and how they are used in the U.S.? Do you think we should be a bilingual country? Are you put off by those who don’t speak English?

What do you think the U.S.government should do, if anything, to promote economic development in Mexico?

What do you think Mexico should do to decrease illegal immigration? How do you think we should react to the children of immigrants in this country?

Do you know when and how your own relatives came to this country?

If you don't know what you think, you have time to do some research and make up your mind. Then, before you cast your vote this fall, make sure your ideas are in line with your candidate’s ideas. See the following links to find out more about the major candidates and where they stand on immigration:

Where Hillary stands

Where Barack stands

Where McCain stands

I have read the statements at each of these three links, and unfortunately, in my opinion, there are a lot of broad generalizations about what needs to be improved and not a whole lot of how exactly those improvements will be implemented. But it’s still well worth the read. We need to know where these candidates stand. And this is after all, only the first step…

Comments

[Tim]

I think we as a nation should start small too: like say having a rational policy on immigration. The U.S. economy depends critically on illegal workers in many regions and economic sectors, yet those workers are... illegal. They are breaking the law by being here. But we need them. So we could start with that.

Assuming that discussion happens and a rational policy ensues, we can then have other discussions like how many (now legal) immigrant worker we should allow in, how we should track them, etc... The current situation is irrational, stupid and unfair to all involved, not least of which are the illegals themselves.

[Lisse]

This topic has so many layers, it IS hard to know where to start.

I think a "wall" is an unworkable overly-contentious waste of money. But the use of the National Guard to patrol our borders makes sense to me.

Human traffickers (sp?) should be imprisoned.

As for the people who are already here, Tim is right, our economy works off of them. This is tough because we know many of them are not making a decent wage, yet, what would happen to the cost of food if they were?

No easy answers, but I would like to see a decipherable immigration policy. My biggest problem with the whole issue is that nobody seems to really know what it takes to become a citizen. We can't really handle this rationally until we fix that.