As all of you probably have heard in the last couple of months, illegal immigration has been a huge debate within our country and the profound signifigance it will have on November elections is paramount. It will make or break the parties. As a matter of fact, both parties are split right down the middle as to what should be the proper course of dealing with such a complex issue.
Without getting to detailed, let me just brief you on the two bills being proposed by our Senate and House of Reps. Both are extremely different in their approaches. The Senate Bill calls for a guest worker's program to help assimiliate the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants into our country and as a consequence, violators of federal immigration laws just pay a fine and work for a couple of years and they become citizens. There has been waves of opposition to this solution and it has been called amnesty from key movers in both the Republican and Democratic parties. No matter what the supporters of this bill might argue, this is purely amnesty. Amnesty as defined by Webster's dictionary means a pardon by the government for political offenses. Now if someone considers a small fine a "just" consequence for breaking laws that enforce national security a fair punishment. Then I personally think we should just hand this country over on a silver platter and make it another province of the Mexican Government. But wait, some think that is already what we are doing. The senate bill also proposes a small wall to be built in high trafficking areas on the 1200 mile long border we share with Mexico? What good would this do? If your going to build a wall, build it to enforce all boundaries, not to divert traffic to other open areas!
The bill proposed by the House is quite different. It calls for security of our borders to be under control before the debate for what to do with the current 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants even begins. It seeks to convict all 12 to 20 million violators as committing a felony. By doing this, it would automatically make all of them felons which means automatic deportation as written under federal law. I agree this is a harsh punishment. But what good does it do to have laws if we don't even enforce them? What does this tell the millions of other potential immigrants who wait in line and do it legally? Legal immigrants have claimed this amnesty and guest worker's program to be a slap in the face. I would have to agree with this. The house bill also proposes a 1200 mile wall to be built which would span the whole border we share with Mexico. Some consider a wall useless, but if you have necessary resources on the other side backing it such as border security agents and virtual barriers, it can be done. The house bill supporters are not opposed to a guest worker's program but what they would like to see addressed first is national security concerns before we have another influx of some 2 million illegal immigrants rushing the border who are trying to get on American soil in time for our lovely amensty plan that they think might pass. It makes sense! Why put the cart before the horse? I agree that deportation of some 20 million people would be difficult ( not impossible) and would impact our economy tremendously but do we want to go ahead and add another 5 to 10 million to that figure within the next few years? I recently saw some predictions on CNN Lou Dobbs tonight analyzing the impact that the senate bill would have on our demographics if it were to pass and some figures I saw almost brought discust to my mouth. By 2025, all illegal immigrants who get amnesty would be entitled to bring their children, parents, spouses, grandparents with them thus raising the U.S. population by 125 million people by the year 2025. That is almost half of the population we currently have in America right now. The population of Mexico itself is roughly around 100 million give or take. Like I said, lets just go ahead and annex the country into ours and rename ourselves the United States of Mexico. Is it just me but aren't we seeing a outsourcing of American jobs by the thousands to foreign countries like India, Mexico, and China?
Immigration is a crucial key to the prosperity of America and our economy. After all, it is what made this country so great. But we have a system that has failed us up to this point and we need to act quickly. It needs to be done gradually, legally, and safely. I shake my head in astonishment just how many people die just trying to get here.
I strongly oppose the senate proposal.
The solution to any major problem is tackling it at the source and the rest will fall into place.
Instead of rallying against the people who are trying to make better lives for themselves, lets punish the Americans employers who are violating laws such as employing people under the table and evading taxes, social security, medicare, and much more! If there is a system in place that would make jobs for illegal immigrants scarce or even non-existent, then they would not rush our borders. The outcome will be only one option, legal entry in order to obtain legal employment. This is another mess of itself but I get sick and tired of hearing Employers claim they can't find Americans to do the jobs. Maybe if they paid more then 6.45 an hour, you might have more people willing to accept employment. It is also cheaper for an employer to pay someone under the table and avoid the I.R.S. because then they don't have to pay into programs such as medicare, social security, and etc. If the typicaly legalized worker makes 9.00 an hour, the employer actually will end up paying a few dollars in addition to that. So no wonder why they will pay under the table when they can get away with it and save that much money. A solution, for every illegal immigrant they employee, tack on a 25 thousand dollar fine! You'll see them change their behavior real fast and then maybe we won't have an on average influx of 2 to 3 million illegal immigrants a year. I'm not not against immigration, I'm against people who manipulate our system.
Matthew Meadows
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3 comments:
You have a few logical fallacies in your post:
>"It will make or break the parties."
This is a slippery slope fallacy. The parties have been around four hundreds of years and through much bigger issues than this one. If the Civil War didn't break them, I doubt this will. At most, you'll see a handful of members of Congress lose their seats. But it is likely to balance out, since some people from each party are likely to lose. I can't see this having any real impact on the makeup of Congress.
>"Then I personally think we should just hand this country over on a silver platter and make it another province of the Mexican Government."
Another slippery slope. It makes little sense to suggest that allowing 1% of the Mexican population to become 1/3% of the American population will lead to us becoming part of Mexico. If anything, such a trend would lead in the opposite direction -- Mexico becoming more a part of America. That isn't going to happen either, but it's more logical than the opposite.
>"By 2025, all illegal immigrants who get amnesty would be entitled to bring their children, parents, spouses, grandparents with them thus raising the U.S. population by 125 million people by the year 2025."
Another slippery slope and a "does not follow" fallacy as well. Look at the numbers you quote. You are actually saying that more people are going to immigrate to the U.S. by 2025 than actually live in Mexico. Are you really suggesting that the entire country is going to move to the U.S.?
>"But we have a system that has failed us up to this point and we need to act quickly. It needs to be done gradually, legally, and safely."
This one is borderline inconsistent. If we act quickly, how can we act gradually? I think I know what you are trying to say, but your wording makes it a little unclear.
Those numbers are still way off and still a slippery slope. The 1% figure is based on actual numbers, not on slippery slope projections. Furthermore, the Senate bill does not guarantee citizenship for anyone. People still have to apply for it and go through the regular citizenship process.
There is absolutely no way that 10 percent of Mexico's current population becomes American citizens in the next year or two. That is impossible under the Senate bill. The process is one that is longer than a year and not everyone can apply for citizenship and get approved at the same time. The law also would not allow them to bring "their whole extended family" either, just spouse and children. All of them would have to go through regular channels at that point. That's assuming that Mexicans want to move their families here. Most of the research I've seen suggests that most do not want to do that.
Even including other immigrants, there is no way that we'll have 125 million immigrants by 2025. That's just not realistic under current law or the proposed law. The law does not deal with increased immigration from countries like China or the Eastern European countries. You cannot assume that those countries will get expanded immigration quotas. We have always had various quotas based on country and this bill does not change that and you can't assume that just because this bill passes, one changing other immigration laws would pass. Immigration laws have never applied the same to every country and this bill would not do that. Whether that is morally right or not is beside the point, since no one is proposing it. Laws don't come up spontaneously, someone has to propose them.
125 million will always seem far-fetched to me. We've inhabited this land since the 1500s and we've just gotten to 300 million. All of a sudden we're supposed to increase that by 50% in 20 years? No way.
Similarly, there is no way that 4 million illegal immigrants come into the country every year. We would have a lot higher total than 12-20 million if that were the case. That projection would mean that all illegal immigrants came here in the last 3-5 years. That is certainly not true. Assuming 4 million a year is a bad assumption. Similarly, you cannot take one year and multiply it out like that. That is the anecdotal evidence fallacy. Numbers always fluctuate.
Suggesting that most Mexicans have 20-30 family members is another fallacy. There is absolutely no evidence to back up such a thing and the Senate law would not allow 20-30 people to get in just because one person did.
Besides, at that point, those people would be coming in legally, which undercuts the whole original argument.
Clearly there are problems with our current immigration law. But to arrive at good solutions to the problem, we need to accurately state the problem. Slippery slope arguments and false data do not help us do that.
That being said, there is little chance that either the House or the Senate bill will ever pass. The only realistic options are a compromise bill that is somewhere in between or nothing happens. I'm almost completely certain nothing will happen before the election. Afterwards, who knows.
I'm not sure you can blame DHS for illegal immigration since most of the illegal immigrants in the U.S. came before that department was even created.
General rule of thumb, extreme projections, even moderately extreme, never come true in the real world. People have been making them as long as they could talk and there are only a handful of cases (Hitler, Stalin) where extreme predictions have come true.
There is a real heavy burden of proof question on a claim that suggests that a number equivalent to the entire population of a country would cross the border. Similarly, to suggest that we'll get 10 times as many immigrants in the next 20 years as all of our history combined. It might be possible, but more evidence that the projections you made would have to be shown.
The biggest reason why would be the law of diminishing returns. The more people come, the less valuable coming to the U.S. becomes. The number of jobs decreases and eventually disappears and the more people come, the more likely an enforcement strategy will be endorsed by congress.
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