Are all men created equal ... as long as they fill out the proper paperwork?
Legal immigrants like Nigel Stark may think it's a slap in the face that illegal immigrants didn't go through the proper application process. But is that a reason to be upset, or a reason to be grateful that legal immigrants were able to get in by filling out paperwork rather than crawling through deserts and rivers and working low paying difficult labor jobs for years just to, maybe, achieve the same privilege?
Bush's "amnesty," while an imperfect fantasy I don't fully support, wouldn't be a "free pass" but rather would be earning temporary citizenship through proven contributions to our country. Illegal immigrants just put in more sweat, less paperwork.
And somehow Chris Collins, no, I just can't feel too worried about illegal Mexicans working at McDonalds. What are they going to do, make the food high in cholesterol and salt? Steal our jobs? Most illegal immigrants only get the jobs nobody else wants or could live on, with no benefits or protections. Or were you trying to somehow hint that if they can get in, so can terrorists? Well, bad news -- short of some high-energy force-field bubble, there's no way to seal off an entire nation. Weren't you and Nigel the ones rightly mocking Pelosi's "check 100% of containers" remark post-State of the Union? Same idea here.
The reality is that it is simply impossible to stop illegal immigration. Acknowledging this isn't "shrugging your shoulders," just facing facts. Of course we should do our best to monitor and secure our borders. But bigger walls, more guards and looser applications would be a bandage, not a solution. The question isn't how do we stop them from getting in, because we can't. The question is how do we treat them once they are here? Taxing them would benefit us even as recognizing their contributions and treating them like humans, not indentured servants, benefits them.
Written by Randy Henderson, a regular contributor to NEXT.
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