Thread: "Illegal immigrants are here to stay" - Boston Glo

Illegal immigrants are here to stay

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | March 14, 2007

SUPPOSE YOU LEARN that a New England manufacturer is exploiting its employees, many of them illegal immigrants, with wretched working conditions. It fines them for talking on the job, refuses to pay overtime, and penalizes them for bathroom breaks of more than two minutes, all in addition to low wages, long hours, and squalid facilities. What do you do?
Well, if you're the United States government, you send armed agents to haul the workers off in shackles to a military base 100 miles away, then fly scores of them more than 2,000 miles to a holding pen in Texas. You provide the frightened detainees with little information and no access to lawyers. You act so rashly that many of those you seize are separated from their children and can't get word to spouses or babysitters. You display such ineptitude, in fact, that babies end up in the hospital, dehydrated, after their nursing mothers are taken away.

The company's owner and managers, meanwhile, you arrest, charge, and release on bail. They reopen for business the next day.

That pretty much sums up last week's federal immigration raid on Michael Bianco Inc., a leather-goods factory in New Bedford, which has been deservedly condemned as a humanitarian fiasco. But it is more than that. It is also an object lesson in the incoherence of American immigration policy, and in the harm being caused by the national obsession with, and hostility toward , illegal immigrants.

Immigration hardliners wax wroth at any suggestion that illegal aliens be given some way to come out of the shadows and legalize their status. Every such proposal they reject scornfully as "amnesty." Illegal aliens are criminals, they fume. Such people should be deported, not rewarded.
But no one this side of the fever swamps really believes that 12 million people -- the population of Pennsylvania -- can be rounded up and expelled. The raid in New Bedford involved just 361, and look what a botch was made of that. To deport 33,000 times that number would require the iron fist of a Stalin . No sane American would tolerate it.
Ah, but mass expulsions aren't necessary, some hardliners say. Cracking down on just a few thousand illegal immigrants, or maybe a few dozen thousand, would "persuade more and more of them to give up and deport themselves," claims Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies . He estimates that 6 million illegal immigrants would pick up and leave if only "the government summoned the gumption to stand up to the elite interests that support open borders."

But immigrants who braved daunting risks to be here, many of whom already live in perpetual fear of being caught and deported, will not pack their bags quite so readily. On the contrary, writes Manhattan Institute scholar Tamar Jacoby (no relation to me), stiffer enforcement of the immigration laws -- i.e., more New Bedfords -- will only "force them further underground -- further into the arms of smugglers, document forgers, and unscrupulous, exploitative employers."

We might as well face reality: Most illegal immigrants aren't going anywhere. They are here to stay -- working, raising families, living among us . Doesn't it behoove us to figure out a way to assimilate them into the national mainstream, instead of consigning them to a permanent limbo that does neither them nor us any good?

To say that, though, is to run smack into the chief impediment to sensible thought about illegal immigrants: the fixation on their status as violators of the law. "What part of 'illegal' don't you understand?" seal-the-border types demand in high dudgeon, as though the fact that many immigrants break the law to come here is all we need to know about them.
Is it? Or is it at least as important to know why they come? And how they act once they're here? And whether Americans benefit from their presence?

If tens of millions of drivers consistently break the interstate speed limit, do we assume that they are all criminals who should lose their licenses and be banned from the highways? No: A more plausible explanation is that the speed limit is too low for safe highway driving and ought to be raised. By the same token, if hundreds of thousands of immigrants come here illegally each year, is it realistic to conclude that we have a massive crime problem for which a ferocious crackdown is the only solution? Perhaps it is the case instead that America's immigration quotas are simply too low for the world's most dynamic economy. And perhaps the persistent influx of industrious workers is not a plague to be cursed, but a blessing to be better managed.

Next: The immigrants we need

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

http://link.toolbot.com/boston.com/69126

Is Jeff Jacoby any relation to the Open Borders radical Tamar Jacoby?

W

But immigrants who braved daunting risks to be here, many of whom already live in perpetual fear of being caught and deported

If this is the case, then these people are NOT immigrants.......they are, however, ILLEGAL ALIENS and should live in fear and should be deported!!
After all, they are CRIMINALS from the first step they took across a sovereign border.

On the contrary, writes Manhattan Institute scholar Tamar Jacoby (no relation to me),...

My response to him:

You said:

We might as well face reality: Most illegal immigrants aren't going anywhere. They are here to stay -- working, raising families, living among us . Doesn't it behoove us to figure out a way to assimilate them into the national mainstream, instead of consigning them to a permanent limbo that does neither them nor us any good?

That is tantamount to saying about my child “Face reality…. Most kids aren’t going to avoid drugs. Drugs are here to stay. Doesn’t it behoove us to figure out a way to assimilate them into the national mainstream, instead of consigning them to a permanent limbo that does neither them nor us any good?”

Illegal drugs and illegal immigrants are both against the US law. Why welcome one while enforce the other? There are good arguments for each side on both subjects.
But America is a place of laws for ALL to be enforced. If not we are a muddled mass of people.


As far as the illegals fear of deportation, drug dealers are in fear of the law as well.

I am soooo sick of these one sided stories. The illegal immigrants should blame themselves for putting their children in this situation. They have no right to be in OUR country and no legal right to be working.

As long as we keep rewarding this behaviour, the worse illegal immigration will become. Refusing to respect and obey the laws of OUR country must have consequences. Punishment, not reward.

Why does the media and OUR GOVERNMENT continue to plead the rights if illegal invaders while ignoring the rights of American citizens? I believe many Republicans were voted out because they serve the interests of big business over the average working citizen. The ironic thing is that Democrats serve the Special Interest and minority groups over the average taxpayer.

All OUR government has to do is tell the invaders they must leave. Give them 1 year to sell property and make arragements for their anchor babies or take them with them. Amnesty does not work, history has proven. Let's try a different approach- ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS MUST LEAVE OR THEY WILL BE SOUGHT OUT AND DEPORTED. STAYING IS NOT AN OPTION. ( of course OUR government would never treat non-citizens like they do citizens, and actually expect them to oney the law.)

I thought Jeff Jacoby was a conservative! He must be an OBL Republican and that was a silly, unconvincing article.

I sent this fool an e-mail. He is a pathetic individual and represents people who are out to destroy us. Who insist that we as Americans, as free individuals, as the cradle of Liberty can not protect ourselves or our country against invasion. We have NO say in the direction of, the make up of or control of our own lives. I've got news for him!

But no one this side of the fever swamps really believes that 12 million people -- the population of Pennsylvania -- can be rounded up and expelled.

Outside of certain politicians, their MSM mouthpieces and a few cretins on the internet. Everyone I know not only thinks it can be done but thinks it SHOULD be done. Attrition first but no way in hell do we reward law breakers. No way in hell do we acquiesce to a "last time" amnesty. No way in hell do we give up control of our country!

We might as well face reality: Most illegal immigrants aren't going anywhere. They are here to stay -- working, raising families, living among us . Doesn't it behoove us to figure out a way to assimilate them into the national mainstream, instead of consigning them to a permanent limbo that does neither them nor us any good?

We tried this in 86 and WE THE PEOPLE were promised more toughness along the border, and that this amnesty was a one time thing. And once again, we are being promised the same thing.
The old saying, 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.' holds true. Our officials tried this once and we the people got hosed! Not just once, more than once.
Americans deserve better from their elected officials than to just simply throw our hands in the air and say, "Oh well, we can't deport that many." blah blah blah.
The elected officials created this problem, and now its time to pay the piper.
So pay attention to this Dems and Reps, both of your parties created this mess, and now its time for you to clean it up. You don't get to sweep it under the rug again and tell us its the best thing for the country.WE THE PEOPLE DESERVE BETTER

Fired out a nasty email to this liberal idiot that I cannot print here. It is people like this that have no clue about illegal aliens and the detriment to this country that they are