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Mitt Romney, the GOP, and America

May 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

I posted a blog entry on September 18th titled, “We Need A Hero,” and I thought I spotted one the other day. Newt Gingrich, you came forward and spoke your mind. You stood a moral ground and said you were “prepared to take heat” for it.

 

Well you got the heat.

 

Michelle Bachman and MItt Romney both took out their matches and tried to light fires under you so you would no longer be a threat to their nomination bids. Michelle Bachman called you, “The most liberal G.O.P. Candidate on immigration reform.” Which I guess was supposed to be an insult. Mitt Romney tried to put words in your mouth, overstating your position in an effort to make you vulnerable to an attack from your own party. We clearly see what he is made of.

 

Now we see you wavering a bit, stating you are not for amnesty, and 25 years should be the cut-off point for anyone who came here illegally to apply for a “Red Card” which would let them live here, but not as citizens. Excuse me, but 25 years ago was 1986, and anyone who was in the United States in 1986 was offered Amnesty back then. A  25 year cut-off really makes no sense.

 

Mr. Gingrich, you don’t need to back down. There is nothing morally wrong in what you said, and you know it– that’s why you said it.

 

What I am sure every American in this country believes to be true is that have all the politicians we need. What America needs right now is a Hero. We need someone to stand up for what is right, more than for what is popular.

 

At first this would seemingly fly in the face of what Politics is all about, but I beg to differ.  Our greatest statesmen stood on principle when it would have been easier to echo the popular view. Those who did and said what was popular at the moment, will not be remembered long, nor celebrated for their contribution to mediocrity, or immorality.

 

Help us take back that which we seem to lose more of every year–our National Pride. We have screwed up the world economy, we were embarrassingly wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we don’t know how to get out of Afghanistan, we keep people imprisoned indefinitely without charges at Guantanamo Bay, and we got busted shipping guns to Mexico. (Like we really needed that one.) Every time we go to sleep at night we wonder what new controversy we may find ourselves in the middle of tomorrow.

 

When you spoke up for a Nation that did not believe in breaking up families– I began to see amber waves of grain again. When you spoke up for a nation that values friends and neighbors instead of creating a cultural and social war zone; I caught a glimpse of a “brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” When you said you would take the heat for trying to give us back some National Pride, I clearly saw someone “Who more than self their country loved. And mercy more than life!” .

 

America does not shed her grace on the lazy, or the timid, or the selfish. America needs a great leader now as much as any other time in our history. We are losing world confidence in our financial solvency. Our reputation as a bully to smaller countries goes unchecked despite our best intentions. And our inability to rise above ourselves and get out of our own way when it comes to welcoming “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is tragic. If these words mean nothing any more then they should be stricken from the monument, or forever be the yardstick by which our failure as a great and free country is measured.

 

Mr. Gingrich, I understand that you fear your own party is turning on you, as your opponents would like you to believe. I understand the fear you must be feeling when even your advisors tell you that your position on immigration could lose you the nomination.

 

That is real heat. But fear not; you are not alone. Your opponents feel it too or they would not have shot back with whatever foley was at their command. Don’t listen to the voice in the back of your mind telling you to step away from a position that is morally right.

 

Ten years from now and after, when we look back on this battle, as we have done each time we have fought to defend a moral idea against a false but popular position, you can be sure that you are in the company of other great men in our nation’s history.

 

It takes the heat of a mighty furnace to forge mere rock into steel, and a relentless battering to shape that steel into a sword. You are in a place right now where you can be that sword, a shining example of what is good about this country, and your political competition, which is made of softer, more malleable materials, will be reduced to ashes and relegated to the dustbin of history.

 

So Mr. Gingrich, when you are up late at night, and the day’s events play over and over again in your head, and you end the day with that one all-powerful question: How will the future see Newt Gingrich?” There really is an easier way to ask that question that should make the answer perfectly clear, “Are you a Lincoln or are you a Douglas?”

 

Mike J Quinn

 

Citizen,

The United States of America

 

Filed Under: Ethics, Immigration's effects on citizens, Politicians, Politics

American Children are NOT Anchors.

May 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

  • Anchor Babies  American Children

    12/12/11

    Mike J. Quinn- Author

    southoftheborderbook.com/wordpress

     

    To Fox News and Bob Dane, spokesman for F.A.I.R.

     

    There are few terms that engender more anger than racial ones. When spoken aloud, they fan the flames of the already bitter, disparage the character of whom they are directed towards, and enrage those who listen and do not approve. When spoken to one’s self, they are like cancer to the soul. When adults say them about children, it is  utterly without honor or defense.

     

    Bigots are people with a chronic personality disorder. They do not like something about a class of people that is different from them. Like alcoholics, they seek out each other’s company so they can feel normal while indulging themselves in their particular brand of self-destructive behavior.  They rationalize that if other people feel the same way, then they must be right.

     

    People who use the term Anchor Babies are no different. The term serves a distorted purpose for those who use it, and a dictionary was going to add credibility to the term by adding it to their list of new phrases. Unfortunately the widespread use of the term this past year hinted at it’s legitimacy, but when inspected more closely, a dark morality emerges.

     

    When using this term, people are de-humanizing young, innocent children and categorizing them as an undesirable object, much in the same way other races have been subjected to. With Anchor Babies, it is children we are picking on. How insensitive can we as human beings become? Much more, I’m afraid.

     

    The term came about when ignorant and hateful people tried to claim that parents of children born in the United States are using their children to gain access to citizenship for them and the rest of their family. The problem is there is not a single fact to back that assumption up, but there are hundreds of thousands of parents who have been deported while their children stayed behind. And it gets worse.

     

    According to a recent study done by the Applied Research Center there are over five thousand examples of American citizen children being put in foster care after deporting their parents. Now I ask you, is there anything more de-humanizing than to distribute children like so much junk left behind after someone has suddenly left the country?

     

    Luckily few of us ever have to experience the tragedy of separating a child from their parents first-hand. We all benefit from the perspective of distance. The lack of pictures and sound makes it all seem like it never really happened, while reducing the children to mere statistics on a piece of paper to be filed under Miscellaneous. The hate-mongers meanwhile are free to pick on children all they like.

     

    Our legal system seems to be able to clean up a mess just as quickly as it’s made,and once you deport the parents, the children don’t speak up for themselves, so few people will ever hear about it.

     

    These children are not anchors, and they are not furniture or cars or used clothing —they are children— American children. They are citizens of this country and because of their age they need to be treated with more care than an adult. They don’t understand how things work or what their options are, or even how to take care of their own basic necessities. These innocent children rely on adults to do that for them, and we are sadly letting them down in the most egregious way possible. Sure we are taking care of their immediate physical needs, and so it may appear on the outside that we are taking great care of them, but can we see inside their hearts and minds to measure and catalogue the emotional damage we have inflicted upon them when we crushed their worlds and cast them into a new and completely foreign one? Have we as a nation lost the ability to empathize with children? Have we completely forgotten that to a child, a family unit is their world?

     

    Many people will tell you that their whole lives changed when their parents got divorced, and they only left one parent behind– and even then there was visitation. Can you then imagine what it would have been like to have nothing of your old life to cling to for comfort and security when all the world stopped making sense?

     

    So remember, Bob Dane, and Fox News Inc. the next time you go to use this phrase, or hear someone else say it, that these are not things, they are children– American children, who got their citizenship the same way you and I did. Let us not emotionally devastate them, especially in the name of Law or Country, for there can never be a right way– or an American way– to abuse a child.

     

    We should stop this behavior immediately on the grounds of it being cruel and inhumane punishment. We need to figure out a less harmful way to do things.  If we think ourselves to be a great nation, then we should damn well be able to do much better than this.

     

     

     

    For the entire report by the Applied Research center see  http://bit.ly/vdPhQr

Filed Under: Hate, Immigration's effects on citizens

Hate and Immigration in the United States

May 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

So, another day, and another immigration story. Today many families are leaving Alabama for Arkansas or back to Mexico due to a strict immigration bill being signed into law there. As usual, below in the comments was another story. Reading about a hundred of the almost three thousand comments I am struck by a couple of things:

1)  An overwhelming majority of comments are sympathetic to the law and approve the direction it is going in.

2)  The comments also reflect the voice of hate, and overwhelmingly drown out the few rational arguments crying out for the repair of a broken system.

3)  They are overwhelmingly selfish and self-righteous.

4)  Few of them even consider themselves to have ever come from the same situation, and the few who do acknowledge the similarities in their heritage but use “Might is Right” as their justification.

 

So, why are the overwhelming majority of these posters hateful and bigoted?

Where is the rational voice of a compassionate nation struggling with a difficult issue?

Where is America, the country that fights for other countries rights to be governed by it’s people (all it’s people) and be governed by a democratic process?

 

It appears that either the majority actually is speaking and America is not the righteous defender of the people of the free world, or there is a silent majority sitting on the sidelines.

 

But why would that be?

 

Don’t they realize that these comments are what lots of people the world over look towards to find how the people view something? If there is a majority sitting this debate out, then they are in fact being spoken for as far as the world see it, whether they like it or not.

 

Bombs are pretty loud, and they spoke for us in Iraq, when we overthrew an unstable dictator who killed all voices of opposition and supposedly harbored weapons of mass destruction. A large vocal majority approved that at the time.  Are these the same voices in the comments below the story today?

Granted, posting a comment in opposition of the majority in these arguments is often as profitable as spitting into the wind, but that doesn’t explain why the voice of reason isn’t the majority.

 

Where is the logical debate about the issues without the racial name calling and hate mongering that we as a nation are now viewed as being. This is making us look quite hypocritical.

 

We will fight and spend billions of dollars to defend another nations rights to live free and self-govern, yet we are denying a minority their rights as human beings ourselves. Remember the Kurds of Iraq, who were being killed by their nations leader because they were viewed as a worthless minority? We established a safe haven for them in their country, but we are refusing a discriminated minority safe haven in our own back yard.

 

Such hypocrisy does not make it easy for us to justify making other countries abide by our morals of  right and wrong, when we ourselves cannot live by them. This does not sit well with the world community.

 

How would you feel if another country saw what we were doing to our latin population and invaded us to protect them and create a safe haven for them? Yep, we’d shout and protest and disrupt them as much as possible, not trusting anything they said and counting the minutes until they went home.

 

Sound familiar?

 

We need to wake up and realize we are not the world’s morality protectors and underdog defenders that we think we are.

 

Those who live in glass houses should not carry around a pocket full of rocks.

 

Then what would we do? Stop forcing others to live like we ourselves wished we lived, or will the silent and strong stand up and try to take back which the loud and the oppressive are taking from us every day we do not defend what is right.

 

This is exactly what Edmund Burke once said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

 

So America, the voice of hate is the loudest today. There are more racial slurs and hateful innuendos in the comments below the immigration stories than anything else. Is this the voice of the majority? Is this who you want the world to see us as being?

 

We need to debate this issue in order to come up with logical and workable solutions to our problems that we as a country can live by. But we need to keep the hate out, or  it will consume us.

 

The whole world is free to look at the comments below the news articles to see what the people themselves think of  any article. This is what they’re reading.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/us/immigration-one-family/index.html

Is this representative of you? If it isn’t and you do nothing, then it for all intents and purposes, it really is.

 

 

Filed Under: Hate, Immigration's effects on citizens

The United States Immigration Debacle, Part 5: The Conclusion

May 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

Part 5 of 5

 

There is plenty more to be said about the role that immigrants who entered our country without inspection have played in our society, but the main points I hope I established in this series are:

 

Immigrants have been here forever.

We asked the immigrants to come.

The immigration system does not meet our labor needs.

Waiting 25 years to come here is not realistic.

 

We never boycotted a company that gave us a good price and used immigrant labor.

Sending them all home now would make our broken visa system worse.

None of this is their fault.

They are not going to take over our country.

 

 

Once you stand back and take a look at the larger picture, it becomes clear that the immigration debacle is our own creation and the players in this game are only reacting in logical free market ways to work with the dysfunctional system that has not kept up with our growing labor needs.

 

Undocumented Immigrants are here, they have always been here, and they are very much a part of the intricate fabric that is the United States of America. Immigrants are not going to take over America and make it some other country as the most paranoid of us would like you to believe. Right wing extremists have been saying this since the 1700’s. and it still hasn’t happened. We are what we are because of who we are, and it is for this very reason that we have been so successful.

 

Immigrants have been coming here from every country on the planet in search of their American Dream. Whenever we have fallen and gone back on our promise of a better life to any particular immigrant population, we seem to eventually get over it and accept them into our society, but invariably at the cost of a new group of immigrant, who then become the new focus of our phobias and problems.

 

We are a nation of people who are always looking for a better price for a product or service. Brand loyalty comes in a distant second to our loyalty of the dollar, and whenever times get tough and the dollars get thin, our aggression to any perceived threat to our economic sustenance gets bolder. Immigrants, have always shouldered the brunt of our misguided anger through our well meaning, but highly ineffective immigration policies. What we tend to forget is that immigration is a function of our economy, not the cause of it.

 

We need to focus our energies on with the process of rebuilding our economy and stop vilifying on the people who came here to help. To send them all home now would add to inflation, shrink our economy and hamstring the very engines we need running smoothly to get us out of this recession.

So what do you think America?

 

 

Filed Under: Economy, Employment, Immigration's effects on citizens, Laws, The US Immigration Debacle

The United States Immigration Debacle, Part 3: The Politicians

May 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Now there has been a rumbling of discontent around the issue of our United States immigration debacle. Some talk has been made by a few vocal minorities about sending all the undocumented immigrants home so they can stand in line like the rest and do things right. I don’t know who or when or how some of us Americans decided that the arrangement we had going all these years wasn’t quite working out for them any more, but this is where we are today.

 

New State laws and political stumping are ample evidence that the government is pretending to get involved again. This kind of elevated rhetoric usually only happens at election time. What is painfully obvious is the amount of effort that government has put into avoiding this issue. Why? Don’t the politicians want to be hero’s and have the respect and admiration (and votes) of a grateful nation?

 

Of course they do. And I think they are getting it. Here’s what I mean:

 

If the politicians really wanted to fix this situation, they could have done so at any time along the last fifty years or more years. They are the ones that have been chosen to make the laws after all are they not?

 

And what motivates politicians to take action? Money and public opinion. Let’s take a look at each of these and explore what would happen, beginning with public opinion.

 

There are three possible scenarios that public opinion can be categorized in our situation: A majority anti-immigrant sentiment; a majority pro-immigrant sentiment; or an equally distributed public sentiment.

 

Scenario #1 If the majority of the people are anti-immigrant:

All the politicians would have to do is write up a bill condemning undocumented workers, punish the employers, expel the immigrants and let them know if they are caught in our borders again, they will go to prison for a long time. The specifics can vary, but anything along these lines would satisfy the majority of the public, and their approval rating and chances for re-election are greatly improved.

 

Scenario #2  The majority of the people are pro-immigrant:

All they would have to do is pass a bill and give them amnesty, open up the borders and the majority will have been satisfied. Again, the specifics can vary, but the outcome will be the same. Improved public opinion and an increased chance for re-election.

 

Scenario #3  The nation is equally split among the two different opinions:

No problem here either once you stand back and look at this objectively and keep your eyes on a positive outcome. Propose a bill giving those that can prove employment and residency for the past five years can stay, keeping the productive people here, and everyone else, must leave or face deportation and banishment for ten years. You can argue other possibilities as well, but no matter the specifics, if you give both sides something, then everyone is equally pacified and perturbed, but having half of something is better than nothing.

 

Any of these scenarios could have taken place and the outcomes would have been appreciated by the country. Scenario 3 granted is the most difficult, but give them both something to be happy about, and get on with it. If our country is heavily in one camp or the other, (just look at the data from one of the thousands of opinion polls they take each year) it is that much easier. Give the people what they want and be the hero. Done. Public opinion can be addressed, and should be, by the politicians wanting to keep their jobs another year. Do nothing and now you have a lot of work come election time trying to persuade the voters you did a great job last term and will continue to do a great job next term. So why have we just ignored this situation all these years?

 

If you believe government understands those two basic things, Money and opinion (They take more opinion polls than any company in the world.) then any time you want to understand the government, just follow public opinion or money. Since we just looked at the three possible public opinion scenarios and we can’t explain their inaction, we should therefore follow the money.

 

I think politicians know that businesses really don’t want to elevate the undocumented workers to a legal status because it would cost many businesses more. Lots more. If businesses can pay much less to undocumented workers and get away with it because they are undocumented and unlikely to stand up for their rights, they will. If immigrants become legal, they will get minimum wage, regular breaks and benefits like vacation days, personal time off and overtime, medical and dental insurance, and maybe even 401k retirement plans, as well as understand their rights as workers much more and are more liable to file employment grievances with the EEOC. Prices are going to go up to compensate for the rising costs and their ability to compete with companies from other countries will diminish considerably, threatening their very existence.

 

And us? Some of us think we pay way too much for social and health services for the undocumented now, but wait until they become legal and the products we buy steadily rise in price until acceptable profit margins are made to sustain the companies livelihood. This will put them at risk for being undersold by outside companies whose labor prices are much much cheaper, and I believe the demand for undocumented workers will be on the rise once again.

 

Politicians really are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. They may act like clowns during election years, and some of them have been known to be full-time comics the rest of the year too, but they all know that as much as we like to blow off steam and beat our chests about how much more moral we are than the criminal undocumented worker, we really don’t want anything to change. Neither does business.

 

But we still have one more group of people involved in this situation to be discussed: the immigrant. Having a national debate about what to do about undocumented immigrants without even bringing them into discussion would be quite impossible. Even today we discuss their needs, desires, customs and personal habits to a great extent. Next week we’ll take a look at the immigrant, and where they fit into all of this.

 

Do you have an opinion about this article? Your feedback is welcome, but please let’s be civil. When we lose our composure, we lose the ability to influence others as well.

 

Filed Under: Immigration's effects on citizens, Laws, Politicians, Politics, Republicans, The US Immigration Debacle

The United States Immigration Debacle, Part 2: The Role of Businesses

May 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

 

There has been a large group of Americans who have encouraged immigrants to come into the United States a little sooner than our foreign visa and immigration system permits: Business owners and managers, but are they criminals or victims?

 

Many businesses around the country have employed undocumented workers and paid them less, denied them benefits, and made them pay taxes, and anything else they could get away with for decades. Being illegal, you can’t really complain much can you?

 

We all knew this was going on.  All those millions of undocumented immigrants had to work for somebody, and at most times of the day in just about every town in the U.S. you will have seen a great many of them. And of course they worked cheaper than an American would — and harder.

 

They do all the heavy lifting, bending and picking, sewing, cooking, gardening, car washing . . . All the stuff we are now privileged not to have to do any more because we have a sub-class of citizen that will do it for us.

 

As business owners and managers we encouraged every undocumented worker we employed to tell their friends, cousins, aunts and uncles to come here and work for us.  This promotion of illegal behavior for the benefit of business is the reason there are so many of them here.

 

The reason owners and managers do this is quite logical: If you run a business and pay your employees the same wages a competitor pays theirs, you can offer similar services at similar prices. If all of the sudden your competition pays their employees lower wages and less benefits, then they would be able to charge less for the same service and still make the same amount of money. Your company would be in trouble when your customers found out and started contracting with the other guy, because they charge less, and we are always looking to save a buck. You would have to charge the same as your competition or go out of business, and suggesting to drop an employees wages has never been a popular course for any business manager. You will often lose your best employees that way.  Of course you could keep your prices the same and advertise that you are the Apple Computer of service companies, but that business model works for a very limited number of businesses, and many highly successful American companies export most of their production to countries with cheaper labor than can be found in the U.S., legal or otherwise!

 

So it sounds like a no-brainer; hire undocumented laborers like everyone else and stay in business, but there is one drawback to hiring undocumented workers: it is illegal. There are penalties for knowingly hiring undocumented workers. You can get fined and possibly even closed down for a period of time. Also, if the employee got picked up by any agency that bothers to check their legal status,  you could be out an employee that day, and have to make emergency arrangements for a replacement. If they can’t come back quickly, you may even have to interview and hire a new employee, which costs time and money.

 

I actually experienced something like this when I was joining the workforce. I was demoted from busboy back to dishwasher when one of the other dishwashers suddenly quit. It took several weeks before we were able to find a replacement, and get him trained. Companies lose good employees this way. I was not going to stay a dishwasher forever, nor sacrifice the additional income I received from tips.

 

The whole reason we are at this particular juncture in our country’s history is because we could not get our politicians to stop arguing long enough to fix our immigration quota system. We noticed it was not keeping up with the demand for cheap labor many decades ago, but somehow we constantly manage to stumble over our own feet.

 

The world’s demand for cheaper products has pushed a lot of production overseas where their workers get paid even less than our undocumented friends get here. Much less. Competing with them is extremely difficult, if not impossible for many businesses. The companies that are able to compete in the world marketplace have probably been outsourcing their production and even some services overseas for years. Importing cheap labor, exporting labor to cheaper countries, it’s all an issue of commerce. There is no escaping it.

 

So why don’t we change our laws to reflect the current state of affairs here at home and abroad?  Who are the people that have the power to change the laws, but have consistently kicked that can down the road a ways so someone else will have to deal with it some other time? That’s what we’ll talk about next week.

Filed Under: Economy, Employment, Immigration's effects on citizens, The US Immigration Debacle, Uncategorized

The United States Immigration Debacle, Part 1: How did we get here and who is responsible.

May 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The United States Immigration policies and our border with Mexico has garnered a lot of press recently, especially with the GOP primary coming up. Politicians are threatening to veto legislation aimed at helping undocumented students, the President is under attack for trying to allow United States Citizens to keep their families together while applying for legal status for their undocumented family members, and many people are expressing outrage that there are around  eleven million undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States today. Nobody however, is really talking about how we got here in the first place, whose the major players are, and who should be responsible for correcting this situation and prevent it from happening again.

 

I will examine these topics in depth in a five part series called, “The United States Immigration Debacle.” Hopefully by the end, we will have a clearer understanding of how this situation came to be and move on from a paralyzing national outrage, to an intelligent , humane, and workable solution to this problem.

 

First off we need to recognize that there are millions of undocumented people here in the United States, and this is an intolerable situation. Unless you lived in cave five, on hill six, and under a rock, you would have been aware of  our illegal immigration problem for most, if not all of your life. Undocumented immigrants are here and we’ve known about it for many decades. Eleven million people did not just show up last year.

 

Secondly, we need to own up to the fact that while we knew they were, none of us went out of our way and avoided them like criminals or boycotted anyone who employed them so that we actually could stand on principle and demand their eviction without looking ridiculous.  I happen to know a few Americans, and I don’t know anyone who has even tried to boycott a company that uses undocumented labor — not one. And that’s not surprising since it has been virtually impossible for quite some time to live a day without using or consuming a product or service in this country that has not passed through the calloused hands of the undocumented worker.

 

I find it especially humorous when I hear Presidential candidates trying to appear like they employ only 100% U.S. Grade A  American Labor. I realize we hold them to a higher standard than we do ourselves, but to go around putting on airs of piety, and even attacking the ones who are found to have accidentally hired an undocumented person, when we all know politicians eat more than a few meals in restaurants, which are known to be a large employer of undocumented workers in this country.

 

When you stand back and look at the whole situation, it is quite ironic that any of us can claim to be living undocumented Laborer-free, while passing the salad around the dinner table.

 

We all have known undocumented laborers are here, and we all have benefited from their labor. We all live a far richer, easier life because they work so hard for so little.  We are able to eat cheaper, have cheaper clothes, cheaper appliances, cheaper home services, cheaper hotel rooms. . . And that really is the heart of the matter; our strong desire to have something for the lowest possible price.

 

Demand is what fuels the machine we call commerce, and we demand our products and services to be affordable.  There is nothing wrong with that, especially in today’s economy, but whether we like it or not, when we purchase goods and services from an illegal source, we are condoning that illegal activity as well.

 

Not only are we condoning illegal immigration, we are also responsible for creating it. Our demand for affordable goods outstripped the labor supply the businesses could legally employ in order to provide us those affordable goods. If they couldn’t obtain affordable labor legally, they would have to get it illegally, or risk being forced out of business.  We knew this was happening. We didn’t like it, but we didn’t stop wanting cheaper goods and services either. Where businesses got their labor was not our concern. Just get us the discount.

 

So here we are. We have known about the immigrant situation all along, and have participated in it, thereby giving it our tacit approval. To be angry about this now and to try to deport all the people we used to give us what we wanted, would be like reneging on a contract. It would dishonor us as much as it would punish them, and our demand for an affordable lifestyle would only force employers to seek an alternative supplier of cheap labor, setting the stage for this to happen all over again. Getting rid of undocumented immigrants will not change our demand for affordable goods. We need to either change our priorities as to what to expect things to cost, or we need to change the supply method that the employers of these workers use to get their labor, so it is legal, humane, accountable and enforceable.

 

Speaking of employers, next week I’ll discuss the creators of our unspoken agreement with our friends from south of the border. They have a big hand in this, and to leave them out of this discussion would be the same as trying to end the drug trade while completely ignoring the producers.

 

Have a different view? Let’s hear it.

Filed Under: Immigration's effects on citizens, Laws, The US Immigration Debacle

Marrying a foreign citizen is not a crime

May 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It so happens that before 1997, spouses and parents could file the paperwork, pay a thousand dollar fee and the documents for their family member would be in the mail. All President Obama is trying to do is repeal this last little amendment to the immigration policies. The current immigration policy doesn’t just punish the immigrant, it punishes the American citizens that our laws are designed to protect as well.

There is no law against marrying anyone we choose, so we should not go around breaking families up because one of them committed a civil infraction. We would be a nation of single people if we did. Imagine not being able to marry someone because they got a parking ticket a few years ago. Sounds ridiculous right? Not for some of us. We now need to check the immigration status of our potential mates, because if they are here without proper paperwork, our family could get broken up and lives destroyed. Sounds romantic doesn’t it?

If we all just take a breath and relax a moment, we will see that the sky is not falling and America will not go “down the toilet” if we allow our fellow citizens who found themselves in love with someone who entered without inspection to keep their families together, just like they had so easily done before 1997. President Obama isn’t trying to destroy our country, he’s trying to protect our families.

The Civil Code by Findlaw.com can be found here

 

http://bit.ly/xSiYCd

Filed Under: Ethics, immigrants, Immigration's effects on citizens, Laws

My American Tale

May 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

 

I am a U.S. Citizen. I was born here, educated here, and I am a productive member of society. Yet my country may soon be denying me a family.

Over seven years ago I married a beautiful woman who has three great kids. They, and my own two children are what makes my world turn. Unfortunately, my wife is an undocumented immigrant. She has lived and worked here for many years, and two of her three children were born here, but when her visa is up in 2013, I have no idea what is to become of my family. Currently there is no path to uniting my family in the United States outside of her leaving the country.

According to our laws she must return to Mexico, file her paperwork, pay her fees and wait to be called. She may or may not be given preferred status as the spouse of a U.S. citizen. We have been given no guarantees. She may or may not be barred from entering the U.S. for ten years as a result of her stay here without proper paperwork. There are a lot of maybes in our future. One thing is certain; if she is not permitted to stay here after 2013 my family is doomed.

Right now according to I.C.E. they are processing the applications of people who filed before April, 1993. That’s right– 1993. That is a 19 year lag in the application to approval process.

I am a United States citizen and according to our Constitution I am endowed by our Creator certain unalienable rights, “and among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” yet it appears that our immigration laws are alienating my freedom to pursue the happiness of my family.

Why is it impossible for me to gain citizenship or even a visa for my family? Is this not America: land of the free? Am I not free to make my own family, or is the government going to put restrictions on us all, like they are doing with the same-sex marriage fiasco. If this is how we want to make up our families, we should have the freedom to do so, or we have no freedom at all, because at the heart of every civilization, at the core of any society, and the one thing each and every person on this planet desires most is to be a part of a family, and no one should be able to tell anyone else who can or cannot be a part of our own family.

For years we have permitted undocumented workers who made it to our doors to work inexpensively so that we may live more richly. Now, all of a sudden some people want them all to leave. They are acting like they never knew we had millions of undocumented workers in our country and are now raging mad because they find there are millions of them here.

Our system has been terribly broken for decades and we all have known it. There have been people working and living here without documentation for decades and not one of us can se we never knew. We all knew. We just didn’t really care. We were getting our meals cooked and our lawns cut and our cars washed very cheaply. It was good for us. Now, all of a sudden, it’s not?

This is our fault and It is our responsibility to fix it. We shouldn’t put the blame and the punishment on the people who were just working with what little we would give them. I shouldn’t be denied my family because of our inability to fix the immigration processes. I pay my taxes every year, and I vote in all the elections. Didn’t I pay the people I voted for to take care of these types of things?

If you take a step back and look at this situation dispassionately you will see that this whole problem stems from our government’s inabilities to fix this problem. All we needed was to change our laws and to institute the procedures to allow these people to come and do the work we so desperately needed. But they were too scared to do anything, so they kicked the can down the road a but further so someone else would have to deal with the problem and the resulting backlash that any solution is guaranteed to come packaged with.

Our Declaration of Independance states, “ That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

It is my right to alter or abolish the government that threatens my family. I think it’s high time we did, and not just because my family is dependent upon whomever we elect to fix this situation, but because if we don’t–they won’t.

If I don’t do what I am paid to do, I will lose my job. Why is it that we permit our elected officials to remain employed when they do not do what we pay them for? And with all the posturing and strategizing the politicians are doing right now to get elected it becomes obvious that they are wanting to tell us what sounds popular, and what we want to hear. Unfortunately if we get distracted by all this hoopla, we will lose sight of a very important question: What have they done to deserve our vote? This is a much more convincing way of figuring out what they are going to do after they get elected. It really doesn’t matter what they may promise, they are going to do what they always have done anyway.

It is the job of our elected officials work to come up with solutions to the problems that vex our nation. For too long they have rested upon promises while taking lobbyist’s money for pork barrel lunches.  No longer should we elect people who we think are better than the others. We should make them show us why they are the better lawmaker.  And if they don’t live up to their promises, we just won’t elect them again. That is sure to send a message that no lobbyist can counter. Our votes will speak louder than their money. This is the way it always was supposed to work, but somehow we got lost in the sound-bites, news cycles and all the hype and glamour that comes with political election-year posturing. They need to be reminded they derive their power from us, not the corporations and lobbyists.

I am not going to vote for any incumbent until this situation gets resolved. If the economy or taxes or whatever issue that weighs the heaviest on your mind doesn’t get dealt with during the term of that politician, they should lose their jobs, just like we would. It shouldn’t take but one or two elections to figure out how this new system works, and we will be getting much more of the government that we have been paying for.

If you want a government that works for the people, it’s time for us to stop listening to why they can’t do what we elected them for, and time to make them prove they can.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/11/new-immigration-rules-are-cynical-political-move

an article about how people vote. Makes good point for this article.

Filed Under: Immigration's effects on citizens
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