However, I'm sick and tired of people's damn border rants on my Facebook/Twitter feeds with no actual plan of action to speak of. I am so sick and tired of our elected officials - BOTH SIDES - using immigration as some grudge match/voter popularity tool with absolutely zero regard to the millions of human beings it effects both within and outside of our borders.
I'm fine if you agree to disagree with my thoughts - but I just need to say my piece and put my ideas out into the ether... Thank you!
Okay Border Patrol – TIME OUT!!!
Left, Right – I’m looking at both of you. Can we behave like adults capable of logical
thought and rational thinking for just the next five minutes?
Great!
“Close Our Border” people – in the absence of Star Trek
technology capable of generating an impenetrable force field around the
geographic boundaries of the US – kindly shut the fuck up!
Amnesty Lovers, Money Grubbing Planless Liberals and Pedophiles willing to essentially abduct
foreign children into the country and re-assign them to loving ethnocentric “superior?”
US families – you also – shut the fuck up!
There is a middle ground and it is where we now MUST meet
because we’ve reached critical mass and neither one of your mantras makes any
fucking sense.
(Yes – I’m swearing cause I’m sick of all your bullshit
clogging my Facebook and Twitter feeds.)
Fellow US citizens, some of you have this irrational fear spawned by
idiot elected officials that we’re being invaded by foreign people hell bent on
taking our jobs, stealing our welfare checks, selling us drugs and having kinky
Latin sex with our daughters.
In truth, the bulk of our under-the-radar guests are probably only interested in seasonal work before returning home to their families, starting a small family business and giving their kids better educational opportunities and yes – having kinky Latin sex with our daughters – can’t help it – our ladies are FIIIIINE.
Here’s the thing – we’ve made crossing the border so hard to
do legally, that no one to our South is bothering with the procedure any
more. Why should they? There are miles and miles of unguarded border
and it’s really easy to disappear into a population of over 315,000,000 people. That’s a lot of fucking people – third
largest single country population in the world. FACT. (Another fact? Number one
ranked China has 1,000,000,000 more!)
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| Fun fact - In 1829 Mexico closed ITS border to the US - but we crossed - illegally! |
We do not need to grant citizenship to every person who has
entered the country illegally. That
would not be wise. It would also give
absolutely no impetus to people to come through borders at proper checkpoints
and become documented.
But deportation? Come the fuck on! We don’t have the money or manpower to make
that happen and it’s essentially the equivalent of telling a kid that she
can’t sit at your lunch table because she isn't part of your clique.
And unilaterally turning people away obviously isn’t having
the desired effect. It just makes everyone
want to hang out with the cool kids
all the more.
We do need to DOCUMENT all of our workers and foreign residents. That needs to happen. That way, they can travel freely between our
borders and visit their families and pay taxes and participate in police
investigations without fear of losing everything they’ve worked so hard for –
and yes – the lion share of our resident aliens are working.
You wanna place punitive restrictions on those who came here
without following procedure by making them wait longer for citizenship or hit
them with some graded tax penalties – that’s fair.
But we need to make those borders easier for people to cross legally. We need to welcome guest workers. We need to offer our neighbors the chance to
start legal businesses on our soil. They
are driven workers and ambitious dreamers – you know – the kind your
grandparents were when they risked everything to come here.
You’re afraid of them “taking” your jobs?
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| Okay - so my grandparents immigrated to the States in the 1960's - but you get he idea... |
Well, a more measured approach to immigration would increase
job demand in the public sector for immigration officers and social workers
helping our newest members of the legal labor force become assimilated to US
life. Also – we’d need more educators,
since US couples are having fewer children, but our southern neighbors are
still procreating and growing that vital younger demographic that will pay into
social security while you sit on your retired ass and collect a check.
Immigrants are great at starting businesses. In no time flat, they’ll be hiring your kids
to work at their shops and restaurants.
No – they absolutely should not be granted voting privileges until they meet all the
requirements of US Citizenship. Yes –
they should be deported for violent
crimes and drug or human trafficking.
But those assholes are the ones that will probably keep trying to fly
under the radar – so they’ll be much easier to spot.
As for the unaccompanied minors?
That’s a nasty can of worms.
No one is going to like my answer, but no one else even has a proposal
at this point – so here goes.
You would NEVER kick a child out of an amusement park just
because you found him wandering around inside without a ticket or his
parents. You would escort him to an
office, and contact his parents and keep him there until someone came to get
him.
That’s why we need to work with Mexico to establish literal
refugee camps on the border to house the unaccompanied minors. Divide the males from the females. Give them three squares, a clean, secure
place to sleep and play, school lessons and for children 15 and older, some
trade school training. Meanwhile, caseworkers
from both sides of the border work to contact relatives for each child. Nobody gets out until a parent/legal guardian
comes to claim them, or they turn 18 and we can either return them safely to
their home country, or offer them the opportunity to enter the US as a
documented foreign national – with job skills and an assigned case worker.
This will cost money – but create jobs. This shows humanitarian compassion, but does
not encourage families to send their children on this dangerous journey
alone. But mostly, if we make documented
worker opportunities easily accessible at our border crossings, we will
encourage families to stay together and strengthen our nation the same way our
grandparents did.
There’s more than enough here. With an influx of foreign workers we will be
able to increase our tax base. And those workers who only want seasonal
temporary work will be able to come and go freely without wondering if they’ll
ever see their families again. We work
up some new standard issue photo ID cards for every man, woman and child
entering the country with the intent to work.
We pass them out at the border.
We give them a specified amount of time to find housing and
employment. We assign them a caseworker to
check in and help them transition.
We follow up with them biannually as they meet their
residency/citizenship goals and make sure they are paying taxes, obeying laws
and enrolling their children in school.
We track them as they come and go across the border to visit family over
holidays.
We have a working idea of how many people are living in our
country, working, going to school and paying taxes. We have a general idea about how many people
should be legally registered to vote and eligible for government assistance. And our residents – both foreign nationals
and citizens enjoy protection under the laws of the states they live in and
educational and employment opportunities.
Why are we making this so hard and being so stupid?
I really just don’t get it…
