A problem with the current anti-immigration debate is that we may have allowed some wannabe leaders to take the easy, popular road, much as they seized the American flag and patriotism in the 1960s and 1970s regarding the War in Vietnam.
No one is in favor of pardoning criminals; no one is in favor of amnesty. At least not in principle. It's like sin. It's always wrong. Except sometimes, when it is worse than the alternative. (I will not get sucked into comparisons with other "sins." That merely muddies the debate.)
Anyone who takes a position on immigration without a plan on what to do with the millions of people --”illegal,” “undocumented,” “immigrants” or “aliens”-- who are here already is defrauding the electorate.
So take your choice:
Plan A:
1. Require every single American business to immediately perform a check of name and SSN of every current employee in order to determine their legal status.
2. Impose on every single American business a fine of $1,000 per employ per day for anyone who fails the check and is still on the job the following and successive days.
3. Provide a government-issued travel voucher (funded by the fines in #2) for a one-way ticket out of the country for each fired employee, including spouse, significant other, and any children not born in this country.
4. Provide federal spending for state and local foster-care programs and adoption services for U.S.-born children whose parents abandon them here.
5. Create employment agencies in key countries around the world that will match existing jobs in the U.S. with people who are in those countries and are willing to buy their own round-trip tickets, with temporary work permits.
6. Build an impenetrable and militarized fence between San Diego, CA, and Brownsville, TX.
Plan B:
Some form of path to legality, permanency and citizenship, and a guest worker program --i.e., amnesty. Not because we necessarily like it. It's just "less bad" than Plan A.
NOTE: Plan B, plus the SSN-checks and fines of Plan A, #1 & 2, makes it unnecessary to build the wall of Plan A, #6.
A brief study of American history shows the following:
Abraham Lincoln declared a partial amnesty effecting some of those who participated in the rebellion in a proclamation of Dec 8, 1863.
Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation expanding on or clarifying that on May 29, 1865.
Congress passed (and the President signed) a near-total Amnesty Act in 1872.
Why? Was it because the U.S. Government had a change of heart about the traitors who had taken up arms against their country? Or was it because it was realized that the reconstruction of the South --let alone the healing of the nation’s wounds-- could not happen with hundreds of thousands of its residents in jail or executed for treason?
Search online for a history lesson. Do your homework. Then search your soul.
