The problem with persons immigrating, illegally, to the US, mostly from Mexico, is on the hearts and minds of most Americans today. I myself also see that there are many problems with those who are crossing our southern boarder illegally. The Primary problems that I see happening as a result of this are:
A) Identity Theft by illegal immigrants to obtain employment.
B) Illegal immigrants working for “cash under the table” and not paying taxes
on their income.
C) Their willingness to work for substandard wages bring down the general wage
paid to persons doing the type of work they are doing.
D) Use of health care that many natural born citizens are not able to obtain.
E) Women giving birth to their young here to allow the child to be a citizen.
F) Their lack of using the English language.
G) Spending the money they earn from work in Mexico.
I am sure that others could add to this list. I am only mentioning the ones I tend to hear about the most. I honestly do not know what the best solution to this problem is. I have some general ideas, but want to focus this post on how immigration on the land we call the USA has occurred over the last 300 years. In light of how immigration has happened here might spur some new ideas for finding a solution on the problems of today.
First, I would like us all to take a good look at the way Americans treated the Native People here in America. The first settlers on the east coast as well as our country grew and moved west. The methods that our ancestors used to take possession of this land we call the USA was less than admirable.
Next, look at the history of the state of Texas. Please feel free to see this for yourself at WIKIPEDIA.
Lastly, remember how we treated the masses from Europe. They were not sent back across the Atlantic Ocean. Does the Statue of Liberty and everything it stands for still have meaning for native born Americans?
I am not suggesting that this is not a problem that needs to be addressed. Only wanting to remind us all; our history has been less than the best. We should consider this when dealing with illegal immigration today.
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7 comments:
All good and valid points. Most of the people kicking up a stink about illegal immigration are decendants of immigrants.
While I don't agree with breaking the law, our country has so badly clamped down on immigration that people have few choices. What people seem to miss is that adding new populations to the U.S. increases diversity and makes us stronger.
We must not forget that these immegrants are human beings who want what most people want: Home, food, shelter, healthcare and a decent way to make a living. Yes, our country did turn away boatloads of Jewish people trying to escape WWII. Our US history is plagued with illegal immoral conquests of land and people. One might hope that as a collective we could better remember our history and try to compensate for our past folly. Human beings need to be treated like human beings, not as some nameless "other" or "them." Anyway, just my 2 cents...
-Amanda
P.S. Thanks for blog marking my blog!
Illegal immigration has been a political firebrand for so long, many administrations of both parties have run it up the flagpole. Along with flag-burning and gay marriage, these side issues are good for energizing the base (of both parties), but are really very minor in the overall picture of things.
I don't hear much being said about the estimated 800,000 homeless we currently have, for one example.
Prior to the agreements that led to the founding of the United States, there was no such thing as "immigration" nor was there ever an "immigrant." The term "immigrant" was coined by an early US Cartographer in about 1787 and became widely used by American citizens to define a distinction between those who came before this nation was founded and those who had not taken part in the struggle for independence. To be perfectly accurate rather than semantically expedient, those who were here before independence was won were "Colonists." They were citizens of Great Britain and this land was part of that nation.
Thus, this nation's first citizens were not "immigrants" or even "descendants of immigrants." They were "descendants of British colonists" or British colonists themselves. These colonists brought with them the artifacts and rituals of British culture that, thanks to the distance and isolation, gradually became distinct from mother England between 1608 and 1789. During the colonial period, the world was in a rapid state of change. Feudal and tribal means of bonding people into cultures were giving way to the concept of "nation" that in time would supercede tribe and clan for the higher source of allegiance. The native tribes that existed in the Americas were not static, nor were they somehow more "romantic" than any other cultural group on earth. They fought wars amongst each other. They killed, often indiscriminately, and enslaved their vanquished foes. They were just like the rest of the human race. Their dispossession here by colonists was not one bit different or more violent than their previous displacement of those who came before them on this land. The "native Americans" our colonists came upon were merely the most recent conquerors of it. In the end, it was Americans who founded a nation, built a modern infrastructure and became an ever more distinct and unique culture. To consider things that happened before the nation as somehow permanently pertinent to us after we became a nation is only slightly more ignorant than it is arrogant.
Cultures that underpin nations have an interest in maintaining traditions and folkways that have worked over time. It is this concept of carrying forth tradition that led to the first laws pertaining to US naturalization in 1790. Our government has, supposedly, been responsible for maintaining national sovereignty, including the enactment and enforcement of immigration law, ever since. Contrary to popular myth, having never had a foreign-born population that made up as much as 15% of its residents, this nation has not ever been "a nation of immigrants."
A nation has a right and its government an obligation to define itself in many ways. Among the things most vital to our Republic is the fact that citizens -not aliens - have the right to decide who gets to come here, who gets to stay here, who is compatible, who is deemed assimilable and who is not. It is government's responsibility as a steward of the consent given to it by the governed to enact laws that fall in line with things to which citizens consent. More importantly, it is government's job to enforce the laws once they are on the books. In the case of immigration, the enforcement side of the equation has been a task left undone since about 1970. Thanks to this dereliction of duty by our "leaders," we today have a large segment of the general public grown ignorant to this nation's history, the importance of its cultural traditions, with many having bought into the notion that America has always been "multicultural" when it most certainly has not.
The fact of the matter is this: We are in the midst of an unprecedented increase in our nation's foreign-born population both as a percentage of the population and the percentage that arrives from a single source. Mexicans and other Latin Americans are not the product of comparatively similar folkways as past waves of immigrant groups have been. Prior to 1970, all of our significant increases in population from immigration were sourced from the nations of Europe; historically, immigrants to America were those with whom the source nation of our culture, Great Britain, had been "rubbing elbows" with for a couple thousand years. There is no reasonable similarity between the indigenous people or mestizos from Mexico and any prior migrant group that we have managed to assimilate.
Therefore we just don't know what might happen over the long term if we keep the faucet on full-blast. The early signs, such as educational attainment, escape from poverty and avoidance of prison, are not encouraging.
So, for those who insist that America can easily assimilate 20 million Latin Americans and their extended families (perhaps 80 million more), I have a few questions: How do you know this? How can you be sure? What does it mean for my children if you are wrong? What sort of America will you create when you force my children to share the franchise with their children? Is gambling with the cultural cohesiveness of this nation a prudent risk?
If there are no rational and reasonable forthcoming answers to these questions that indicate clearly that the path we find ourselves on will not leave for our descendants diminished standards of living and increased inter-cultural strife, then we must not continue the way we are headed.
Obviously there can be no such assurances!
The current mass-immigrationist regime is taking us down a very dark and foreboding alley from which I fear we will not survive this onslaught being brought to us by those with covert agendas. Some whisper in Republican ears that they need cheap labor as they fiddle in record profits while failing to invest and develop new means of production and labor-saving devices. Others whisper in Democrat ears that these people will be more compliant, more government-dependent. They are happy that the replacements might also be less likely to discern the key differences between a checked-and-balanced Republic and the chaos of direct Democracy: "Oh yes! Let's import new constituencies as replacements for these nagging freedom-lovers!"
No, Lisa. We should not "consider" that our history has been less than the "best" in regard to our handling of immigration, unless you are writing about the recent history of government neglect that has gotten us in this mess. This is not a time for reminiscing about false memes and errant indoctrination about who we are and what got us here.
Instead, it is high time that American citizens step up to beat the snot out of the whispering classes (figuratively or literally -whichever works best and fastest), take back our nation and restore the primacy of the rule of law.
katie's dad --
Interesting view...
Thanks for the link :)
A great post...but I will take issue with one of your points (actually, I guess it was simply a point that you hear people complain about).
I would guess that you - as well as myself - often hear the media spew the line that illegal immigrants drive down wages.
I'm just not buying it. I've worked in several fields...finance, insurance, construction, electrical and now journalism...and I've seen my benefits cut, pensions thrown out the window, health insurance costs pushed entirely on me, and extremely low working wages. In no circumstance have I ever worked with, alongside, or in the same vicinity as an illegal immigrant.
But I don't wish to give the impression that my experience is indicative of the whole nation - far from it. So instead I look to other instances.
Take, for example, Delta Airlines cutting pensions and lowering pilots wages by 50%. Do we have that many illegal immigrants that are flying planes that they are lowering wages?
I read stories about airports across the country wanting to lay off air traffic controllers and lower wages...again, is there that many illegal immigrants?
The fact is, no one is forcing these companies to pay lower wages and cut pensions, benefits, health insurance, etc. They are doing this of their own accord. When a union threatens to fight it, the company simply demonstrates that they can move their operations overseas and pay even less, taking all the jobs.
It is capitalism - more explicitly, the unrestrained free market ideology - that is responsible for low wages, lack of benefits, no health insurance, etc. Corporations look to cut costs in order to raise stock prices for shareholders...and when they cut jobs and wages they reward the CEO by increasing his bonus from $4 million a year to $5 million.
Your site has some great observations...I came across it on a comment you made on the Peace Tree. I look forward to reading more...keep up the good writing.
...I'll vote for you. Heck, I'll vote for anyone that isn't entrenched in the Washington plutocracy.
I'm surprised that nobody addresses the business that hire illegals. Why is that?
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