Border Patrol: Meet me in the MIDDLE

Soooo - I usually like to keep my blogs lighthearted and/or entertainment focused.  

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!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War

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? 

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…