Thread: Immigration failure comes at a high price

Lib-idiot Bleeding Heart balderdash:

Immigration failure comes at a high price

OUR OPINION
http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pb ... 62/Opinion

The more one observes the consequences of illegal immigration, the more evident it is that all pay a high price for Congress' repeated failure to reform the law. Reports Aug. 5 and Aug. 12 by Tribune staff writers Joseph Dits and Pablo Ros offered some recent examples.

One raised the question of whether local police should attempt to enforce immigration laws. The answer seems to be an unequivocal "no."

The nuances, multiple exceptions and complexities of immigration laws make enforcement a challenge even for the federal agents in whose jurisdiction they fall. It would be difficult to justify time spent to adequately prepare local officers to do the job.

Furthermore, police officers are busy enough dealing with property crimes, acts of violence, neighborhood disturbances, quality-of-life issues and traffic control. Time spent rounding up illegal immigrants would necessarily be at the expense of other duties.

Add to that the fact that searching out illegal immigrants very likely would involve racial and ethnic profiling. And that's wrong. It also is counterproductive. The public good is far better served when residents -- those here legally and illegally -- have trust in police.

All that being said, it would be difficult for county jails to not notify the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement when a suspected illegal immigrant is brought into custody. So they do -- realizing, too, that their cooperation with the immigration enforcement arm does serve the cause of homeland security.

Under an agreement between ICE and local jails (including those in Elkhart and St. Joseph counties), ICE is regularly given names of all foreign-born inmates. ICE has 48 hours (excluding holidays and weekends) to separate the legal from the illegal and take into custody those who are here against the law.

These agreements between jails and ICE, when properly carried out, do not put too much of a burden on police and jail personnel. Still, they come with a cost.

Only those who find their way into the county jail need fear a tip to ICE. But there is no question that the fact the agreements exist deter residents from making themselves known to police -- and possibly from calling police when help is needed. That's bad for everyone.

It's bad, too, that ICE sometimes gets it wrong. Advocates for immigrants say it's common for U.S. citizens to be deported to their country of birth. In some cases they don't know themselves that they are citizens, so complex and changing are the immigration laws in this country.

The accounts of personal dramas -- and tragedies -- recently reported in The Tribune are a few among thousands. Or millions. Can there be any doubt that Congress' failure to effectively address the issue of illegal immigration is a burden at all levels of society?

Congress must act. To do so effectively, it must achieve four objectives:

-Establish an ironclad documentation process that encourages otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants to identify themselves.

-Establish a way for the immigrants who have submitted to the identification process to work legally.

-Secure U.S. borders and enforce visa time limits.

-Create an effective system so that employers cannot get away with hiring (and possibly exploiting) undocumented workers.

We also believe that illegal immigrants who submit to documentation, and who otherwise have been law-abiding, should be allowed to seek citizenship through some easily understood process.

This is Congress' problem to solve, try as it may to sidestep the issue. The need for humane, enforceable, sensible immigration laws grows daily. It parallels the daily growth of the illegal immigrant population.

No, Bush's open borders policies and the ILLEGAL alien invasion come at a high price -- broken shools, bankrupt hospitals and illegal alien gangs terrorizing neighborhoods are just a few glaring examples.

To solve this open borders-created mess, we need to build the fence, go after employers who hire illegals and cut off benefits to illegals. Providing another amnesty would only exacerbate the problem and would be the worst thing we can do.