Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Clarity - Illegal Aliens

For once, I believe there is a reasonably bipartisan issue on the table... illegal aliens...however, both major political parties have their heads in the sand on the issue, and, of course, the Libertarians believe in open borders anyway.

The deafening mantra from many business leaders and the uninformed is, "They take jobs that no one else wants, anyway." This is an extremely naive way of looking at the matter for the following reasons:

1. THEY ARE HERE ILLEGALLY AND IT IS A SLAP IN THE FACE TO ALL THOSE IMMIGRANTS THAT FOLLOWED THE LEGAL PATH. This bears repeating... THEY ARE HERE ILLEGALLY!!! THEY ARE BREAKING THE LAW!!!

2. Who knows what low level of humanity is coming in this porous border flood, including persons with mass murder on their minds.

For many, many years there was an orderly flow of migrant farm workers. Little-by-little, this started to move to ditch digging and other hard labor. Now, it has permeated nearly every type of non-desk service job nationwide, with the crowd of itinerate laborers in front of Home Depot everyday.

Why is this happening? They do a very good job very inexpensively.

What is the effect?

Coupled with the tidal wave of outsourcing white collar jobs overseas, this is having a tremendous downward pull on overall wages and the resulting drop in our standard of living. Heaven knows we are still suffering a hangover from the roaring '90's and recent political events, but the lack of clarity in real trends and the up and down of the stock market is distressing to say the least. What about all those entry level jobs we used to have for our children? Kid's now jump from college to the workplace with little or no work experience of any kind.

I am not against such outsourcing moves, nor am I against business' attempt to keep wage growth under control.. I have long thought that the C++ programmers working in coding sweat shops, better known as the hi-tech industry, should have made a transition long ago. The problem lies with the relative size of the flow and industry's under-whelming inability to come up with the next "killer app" to spur the next flood of technological innovation, productivity and upward mobility. Moreover, loving this country as I do, I cannot tolerate it slipping backwards toward some mediocre "2nd world" standard of living...for our shrinking middle class.

What to do?

1. Get control of our northern and southern borders...especially the southern border immediately.

2. DO NOT allow our government to give these law breakers drivers licenses. The prime reasons are that this is the key identification to gain access to many public services OF RESIDENT ALIENS AND CITIZENS AND it allows them to get on airplanes. The airplane issue should be well understood, however I've attached a link on my web site to a report about...

The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Californians

This does not even touch the horrible situation in our sister states of Arizona and New Mexico.

3. Make strict penalties on ANY business hiring illegal aliens. Make the penalties high enough that it will not be worth the risk to hire these aliens.

4. Etc. etc. (I have to say this as this is not simple issue and the list is long)
To many, Vincente Fox, the ACLU, La Raza, etc. this may seem like cruel and unusual punishment, but too, too many Hospital ER's are closing due to bankruptcy or non-recoverable expenses. What other statistics are being buried by local weak bureaucrats. Furthermore, I am sorry to say, President Bush appears to be quite deaf to this matter with his own amnesty plan pushing forward. Certainly the opposition isn't a fountain of ideas and proposals either.
As with any human situation, implementation cannot be overnight, except the border control issue. I am mainly referring to the proper way to deal with 10-12 million individuals that are integrated into our economy. All actions related to those individuals already here must be phased in over a 1-2 year period giving all parties time to adjust their affairs and then strict "0" tolerance implementation thereafter.

Somebody has to bite the bullet and the sooner the better.

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