RK ARCHIVE - Navigating the subject of immigration

I have never expressed my views on comprehensive immigration reform until a recent post regarding the xenophobia expressed by Virgil Goode in regards to Muslim immigrants surfaced. I am going to reprint that post, as I believe the general topic needs to be debated amongst progressives.

Immigration is one of my pet topics. It is also one of the most difficult topics to navigate if you base your beliefs on emotion, and especially on fear. The views expressed by Virgil Goode are based upon fear of Muslims. Classic xenophobia.

That said, we do have an immigration crises in our country. We should not base our decisions on how to resolve it using fear. We should base solutions on measurable economic factors.

Answer: Alot. The past has proven this. However, we cannot sustain the current levels of illegal immigration. Also, legal immigration is currently concentrated in several occupations; this places higher pressures on American workers in these occupations. Immigration should be balanced across the occupations and not concentrated in a few.

Answer: There is no simple answer to this question. I can tell you what not to do. Do not allow corporations to drive decisions regarding immigration. Because American labor is the most impacted, allow American labor groups to help draft fair legislation.

Immigration should not be about subsidizing corporations with cheap and exploitable labor, but about creating a stronger nation. I would suggest using economic indicators, such as job creation and unemployment, to determine the numbers. Use independent sources for these numbers such as the BLS.

Question: An even more provocative question is WHOM we should allow to immigrate to our nation. ??

Answer: I would not base this on religion, as Virgil Goode seems to do. I would look at factors such as education, experience, financial stability, political stability, and so forth.

Our immigration program should not have the goal of helping the impoverished. There are simply too many people in poverty around the world for us to help. Yes it sounds selfish and nationalistic - but quite frankly our immigration laws should consider only one thing: the well being of the United States and her citizens.

Can there be some cases of "charitable" immigration? Yes, in the case of people escaping attrocities or seeking political asylum. As an example, anyone escaping mass murder (as the Jews were in WWII) should be welcome. For political asylum, the individual circumstances should be evaluated - there is no recipe for that as it is a judgement call.

The vast majority of our immigrants should come here with one goal in mind: become hard working Americans and build a better America for their families.

Question: The final question is what do we do about illegal immigrants currently here and how do we prevent this from occuring again?

Answer: You could write a book on this topic. No matter what side you take, you will irritate a large group of people. From a pragmatic point of view, we simply cannot deport 12 million people. We don't have the resources. We have no choice but to provide them with some means of becoming legal - but we should also make sure they own up for breaking the law. How we do that is very much in debate. Looking forward our priority should be preventing this from occuring again. The best way I can think of doing this is workplace enforcement.

I have watched too many Lou Dobbs episodes where ICE goes into the business and brings out hoards of illegals who will face deportation. The people noticably absent are corporate executives. These are the people fueling the fire, and the people we need to target.

We can't possibly put 12 million illegals in jails or on busses to Mexico. I think we can quite easily make room for these criminal minded business owners and their managers. If you make it dangerous and unprofitable to hire illegal labor, the practice will stop. Let's put more heat on the businesses to obey the law.

Navigating the subject of immigration

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