Thread: Amnesty realistic solution to immigration (Opinion)

This is certainly not the worst pro-amnesty piece that I've read, but the author still comes to the wrong conclusion about amnesty. I posted the article because there is an e-mail address at the bottom to send comments to the author should anyone want to do that. There are few illegal aliens in this/his area (so far), he may not be seeing the bigger picture.

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http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/article ... opin02.txt

John Tsitrian, 4-9: Amnesty realistic solution to immigration

By John Tsitrian, Journal columnist

I've got a fairly strong personal connection to the immigration issue that the country is trying to come to grips with. In 1950, my family and I arrived in New York harbor aboard the S.S. General Pershing, along with hundreds of other European DPs, which in immigration parlance stands for Displaced Persons, a bureaucratic designation for "refugees."

After the turmoil of WWII, my parents were saved from starvation and who-knows-what-else by an American-run DP camp in Rome, where I was born. We subsequently were transferred for further processing to a similar camp in Stuttgart, Germany, where my sister was born - and finally left for the United States during the winter of 1950.

You could say, literally, that we were "the wretched refuse from a teeming shore" (from that famous poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty), arriving in the United States with nothing but our clothes and some personal items. We were strictly legal and went through all the steps of obtaining our American citizenship in accordance with the law, finally achieving that status in the mid-1950s.

Though my parents had a meager formal education, neither of them getting past the fourth grade, they were quick to adopt the American work ethic, finding unskilled but reasonably steady work until enough money was amassed for my dad to buy a small restaurant in Los Angeles, in which he made a decent living until he retired.

As far as I know, we followed all the rules, paid all the taxes and did all our work in a legal and transparent environment.

I never had a single minute of instruction in English as a second language, having been expected to learn to read and write along with my fellow first graders in the local public school. I did reasonably well in high school, did a bit of college, joined the Marines, fought with the infantry in Vietnam for 13 months, then used the G.I. Bill to complete my formal education at the University of California.

I went on to become an independent businessman, have had my share of success and most certainly have paid a substantial amount of income and property taxes over the decades. Not bad for a "wretched" piece of "refuse," I guess.

And given this background, you can imagine that I've got very little patience with those who now insist that they have an inherent right to obtain and enjoy the benefits of American citizenship even though they've come into our country illegally, especially considering the drain on American social resources that so many of them have become.

Am I angry with them for wanting to come to this country? Of course not.

I know first-hand what the experience is all about - and I even admire their willingness to risk all, life included, when it comes to the "boat people" arriving from the Caribbean.

My frustration isn't with them; it's with a system that can't adjust to the fact that, in the first place, there is enough work in this country to accommodate their labor needs, and in the second, that keeping their wages in an "under the table" status is cheating rule-following Americans and forcing us to pay for social services that should be funded by taxes withheld from illegals.

It's especially frustrating for me, as an employer, because I know the forms and documentation I have to have at the ready in case I have to prove to the Immigration and Naturalization Service that all my employees are citizens or legally-recognized foreign nationals.

When I read that almost 10 million undocumented workers from foreign countries are employed in the United States, I realize that this is a problem of enforcement - and that nothing will really change unless the United States government makes a serious effort at getting some compliance from employers who apparently don't have the documentation that is routine for me when I make a new hire.

I believe this is the source for the sense of "entitlement" that seems to have become a part of the illegal immigrant ethos, and it's what has driven so many of them to make those public demonstrations of last week.

So what to do now? For starters, we could enforce the law. Next, we have to realize that you can't jail or deport these people en masse. Forgetting about the physical impracticality, their sudden disappearance would be an economic catastrophe.

An amnesty is the only realistic solution, giving them a chance to "get legal" and participate in the process - including paying into it. Employers who don't like the idea of paying prevailing wages can go out of business, and good riddance.

The very presence of all these illegal immigrants confirms that the American dream is alive and well, even if its current form looks more like a nightmare of exploitation and inadequate enforcement.

John Tsitrian is a Rapid City businessman, writer and commentator. Write to tsitrian@gwtc.net.




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Copyright © 2006 The Rapid City Journal
Rapid City, SD

I am WAY TOO ANGRY right now to write to this imbecile. What a load of BS.

People who support rights for illegal aliens should be deported right along with them!

That's how I see it.