Illegal Immigration Firestorm
Posted: Monday, May 24, 2010
by e
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
Look, there are three problem areas concerning Immigration. One involves concepts, one involves reality, and one involves logistics. . . .
Concepts:
We are a country of laws. We are also a country defined by geographical borders. Both establish what we call a nation, a group of people of like-minded principles that exist together as a social fabric. Without secure, established borders and without a rule of law, a country becomes nothing but a wild, open territory where anything goes and the most powerful rule whether they rule fairly or not.
In reality, however, our borders are porous. We have been trying every technological and military way that we can think of to seal our borders for scores of years and nothing has worked. All we've done is spent a lot of money for nothing. Surveillance towers are too far from enforcement officers and illegal's simply walk around them. The cameras shake in the wind and the radar malfunctions in the rain. We build massive walls that are easily tunneled under.
We hire more border patrol guards, but to man the entire 2,000 mile border every quarter mile, which is what would be needed with three shifts, would require as many as 24,000 people full time just to stand at the border, plus about 10% more for sick leave, vacations, and weekends. The manpower backing up these people - the office workers and the entire support staff would add thousands more, with equipment, vehicles, uniforms etc. on top of that. The tab for just payroll and benefits would be probably in the range of about $70,000 per person times 40,000 people or THREE TRILLION a year. (And hopefully not more than ten percent of these people would be susceptible to bribes!)
To give you a perspective on this, the entire U. S. military annual budget is about one trillion.
In reality also, some laws are impossible to enforce. Regardless of what kind of law is passed by the government, it comes down to the cop on the street and how or if he or she decides to, or is capable of enforcing that law.
When we have laws against marijuana but everyone and his brother are either growing the stuff or smoking it, it's apparent that the law has not kept pace with society's demands. In the case of law enforcement and marijuana, a fatigue sets in regarding treating pot smokers as criminals, and common sense dictates that we cannot afford the legal and criminal costs to prosecute and imprison so many people convicted of such a minor offense. So the cops look the other way, because cops are not machines. They go home every night and tell their spouses about their day, no different than you and I. They have feelings.
And this is where concept and reality parts company. Illegals are people with feelings, kids, hopes and dreams just like you and I and not merely some statistics on a computer screen. They are human beings. They are not inferior to U.S. citizens or substandard in any way. To think that they are is prejudiced and racist. They are just like you and I.
Logistics:
logistically there are estimated to be between 12 million to 20 million illegals here in the U. S. To give you a perspective of what would be involved in prosecuting all of these people and wading through the intricacies and paper work of their legal American born children, in 2008, in the entire U. S., there were 2.3 million people newly incarcerated. That means if we doubled our judicial system, we could only handle 2 million illegals a year, so it would take about 10 years to get them all back home. But with porous borders, it would be Sisyphus eternally rolling his rock up the hill.
And finally, when someone simplistically comes up with solutions to immigration which only address one or two of the above issues, we cannot take them seriously. Their solution is most probably based on emotion. Sealing the borders first would break the bank, and how could we then ever afford to process 20 million illegals? And anyway, about half of illegal immigrants came here legally on visas or crossing cards and stayed after their cards expired. How can a fence help that?
Any logical, thinking person can understand why nothing has been done regarding our illegal immigration problem with Mexico. Nothing can be done, realistically, even though we will go through the motions of trying to do something politically.
Until we can devise a foolproof, inexpensive force field along our 2,000 mile border, everything else will be for naught.
Scotty, beam me up!
This Article has been viewed 1,245 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (5 total)Just a thought, might be too humanitarian for a me first, me only, society to consider, however I'll take a shot.
How about something like we did in Europe after the war, the Marshall Plan.
I realize we would have to get some concessions from the government of Mexico on some changes on how business is being done down there, Otherwise it would be kind of like giving the bankers here 10 billion dollars to bail them out after they pocketed the first 10 billion, so they could pocket another 10 billion, but that's another story for another day.
Seems to me it would be a lot cheaper in the long run, maybe even the short run, if your figures are anywhere near accurate, to help stabilize their economy, so they wouldn't be so inclined to want to come over here.
I know it would be hard for them to give up the taunts and belittlement that they get from us over here, but they might be able to learn to live with it.
To me it would almost be worth it to give the haters one less thing to hate about, and help stem the civil unrest here that is surely yet to come.
I don't know, just my two cents, but as long as these people are coming over here so that they can feed their children, that's an awful powerful force to overcome. I don't think any amount of hate or building of walls can stem that tide.I think that all plans and ideas should be put on the table, and hopefully the cure will not be any worse than the malady!Thank you.
I'm sorry Mr. Rock, guess I should have signed in before making the above comment so people would know who to throw their rocks at, huh?Hah! It's easy to do that. Maybe Bruce can come up with a little "Did you sign in?" reminder.
Yeah e, we should open all of our borders to all who want to begin a new life. We are known as "united states of America" not divided states of America. However Mexico should also try to feed their citizens, then maybe they will have a chance live in their own country.You have a great big heart David. Thank you! Your solution is insightful; the prosperous countries helping the developing countries. Genius! But try to tell that to some and they will call you Marxist. Small minds, fearful minds.
Hello E. Raymond, Illegal immigration is also a problem both emotionally and logically. If they can come to US and stay forever, what was the sum of money and uncomfortable time spent by a legal immigrants to US authority? On the other hand, I understand legal or illegal is not equal to right or wrong. Whenever I come across this issue, I have a mixed feeling. But this is an issue we should continue to think as you pointed out in this article. Thank you for your share.Thanks Shaw, maybe we should look at that "sum of money and uncomfortable time spent by a legal immigrants." That could be what drives illegal immigrants underground. Why not make it easy? They will come in anyway, and being legal helps everyone and discourages the slave trade now going on.Thank you, E. Raymond, for your suggestion. It would help improving the situation.
I was visiting Arizona with my friend Raul Salinas and we got lost but found the grand canyon, with my last name Montes de Oca which is Spanish, it was crazy!
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.