Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 2:47:15 PM
“You want to round up entire communities and deport them!”
“You blame all our problems on immigrants – it’s scapegoating!”
“You just don’t like brown people.”
Are you as tired of hearing these as I am? Illegal alien activists and certain Democrats should stop using them. I’ll discuss all three below.
1) We seek to round up all illegal aliens and forcibly deport them. I don’t doubt that there have to be a few people out there who want to do this, but this is not the position of an overwhelming majority of people who demand enforcement of immigration laws. What we want is law enforcement. A) As long as we have employment regulations and payroll taxes, employers here should be punished for hiring people who are not authorized to work in the U.S., severely enough that it discourages them from repeating the violation. B) Identity thieves, through their fraud, wreak havoc on the lives of others, and should be punished and, if possible, made to provide restitution. Yes, people who commit serious crimes within our communities who are not citizens should be returned to their country of citizenship. C) We have a system that is very generous to people in need, whether they are citizens, legal immigrants, or legal visitors. That system invites fraud and attracts illegal aliens, very few of whom are in a position to contribute as much to our society as they take. If we had a more libertarian society, this would be different.
There is no need for mass deportation. There is also no need for amnesty. We simply need effective border enforcement, and the problem will take care of itself over time. People will even self-deport if we do serious workplace enforcement and get rid of public hand-outs.
2) We blame all our problems on immigrants. Nope. First of all, “immigrants” are people who come here legally, usually with the intention of becoming citizens. I welcome them with open arms. People who come here or stay here illegally are, by legal definition, illegal aliens. But we do not blame all our problems on illegal aliens. We blame illegal aliens only for the problems they cause, or for their share of contributing to a problem. It is ridiculous to ignore the impact that millions of mostly unskilled, uneducated, dependent criminals have on our infrastructure, in our schools, our criminal justice system, and our public welfare systems. When our jails and prisons are overcrowded, it is folly to ignore that a significant percentage of the inmates are illegal aliens. Same goes for the students in our schools, the patients in our emergency rooms, the drivers on our freeways, etc.
3) We don’t like brown people. This is ridiculous. From what I’ve read, avowed racists do oppose welcoming illegal aliens (they probably like their pets, too), but most people on our side are not racists. I’m certainly not. I don’t want white Canadians here illegally, either. However, I do resent demands that we conform to the culture of illegal aliens, including their language. Sorry, we shouldn’t have to bow to Canadian French or Spanish. Our language here is English. We expect immigrants to adapt – we certainly should not go out of our way to accommodate illegal aliens. Ultimately, though, whether or not someone is racist is a different issue from whether or not we should have immigration enforcement.