This is from Mike Mcgarry OF CAIR (Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform)
March 7, 2006
CAIR Alert: Please write letter to the Aspen Times

Folks:

Please take a few minutes to write a letter to the editor regarding
the following dopey column. It would be helpful if letters come in
from all parts of the state. Send your comments to:

The Aspen Times
310 East Main Street · Aspen, CO 81611
Office: (970) 925-3414 · FAX: (970) 925-6240
News Tips: (970) 925-3414

Email: mail@aspentimes.com

Thanks,

Mike McGarry



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The article
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http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20060 ... /103030020

Illegal people are created by God

By Roger Marolt
March 3, 2006

There is something unsettling about the current movement to curb illegal
immigration into the United States. A buried nuance lies beneath the
discussion that leaves me tight in heart and contradictory in mind.
There appear to be broad solutions proposed to solve vaguely defined
problems narrowly associated with Mexicans.

We're enraged about the economics.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based group
advocating tougher immigration policy estimates that "illegal aliens
imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government
and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a $10.3 billion fiscal
deficit."

The American Resistance, an anti-immigration group, published an article
by Kathy McKee, the Arizona state coordinator of Citizens Against Illegal
Immigration. She argues: "Using minimum wage workers instead of illegal
aliens would (only) increase the cost of agricultural products by approximately
(3 to 4 percent) ... hardly the making of $10 heads of lettuce and
$25 hamburgers."

What is not said is that a 3.5 percent increase on the $200 billion
annual agricultural production in this country would amount to a $7
billion dollar increase in costs to you and me. What else is not said
is that only about 23 percent of illegal aliens are estimated to be
working in agriculture. If all illegal aliens are contributing to production
in other industries at the same rate, the annual savings to Americans
is more than $30 billion. Considering that many undocumented aliens
are working in more labor-intensive industries such as construction,
the total cost savings to us are likely much higher.

Migrant workers do not just tax the system. They provide backbreaking
services that few U.S. citizens will perform at the low wages necessary
to keep end products at prices we deem "fair."

Far from acknowledging this, we curse them for sending as much as $20
billion dollars of earnings back to their home countries each year.
The human side to this, which we fail to recognize, is that they do
it to support families and friends who are living in hopeless poverty.
It is a type of foreign aid in which we receive something in the bargain.


In reality, the effect is much the same as us sending our dollars overseas
to swell the flood of foreign goods and services here to slake our
seemingly insatiable consumption. We blame immigrants for taking jobs
from Americans. However, isn't it American industry, in homage to the
religion of economic efficiency, that continues to outsource truly
higher paying jobs?

We're frightened about national security. But, do we really believe
that tighter control over impoverished Mexicans entering our country
will bring us safety? If our focus is on thwarting vans full of poor,
migrant workers from crossing the border, hoping to inadvertently uncover
smuggled weapons of mass destruction in the process, our intentions
are misguided, resources wasted, and thinking unsound.

Yes, we need to have immigration laws. And yes, we need to enforce
them. But, no law is 100 percent effective in prevention. We can no
more stop 100 percent of illegal immigration than we can keep all drivers
under the posted speed limit or prevent all murders, for that matter.
We have to be realistic.

Even if we could seal our borders completely, would the extra expense
of that effort be less than the cost of illegal immigration? Even if
it were a straight dollar-for-dollar tradeoff, would we rather the
money feed another bloated federal bureaucracy rather than destitute
foreigners in desperate need of life's basic necessities?

Because they lack the pedigree, because they lack the proper paperwork,
we marginalize people and refuse to recognize them as fellow human
beings. In more palatable terminology, we withhold assistance simply
because "they" are not United States citizens.

Many barriers are already in place to keep poor, undocumented foreigners
out of the United States. Education and property ownership are the
true borders that most illegal aliens will never be able to cross.
I am not so naïve as to believe that this is a revealing insight. Is
it possible that among us are predisposed minds so conniving as to
attach themselves to an obviously futile and purposefully agitated
cause for the sole purpose of fueling their anger and justifying their
prejudices?

Illegal immigration is an issue that elicits bitter anger from proponents
of drastic changes in legislation and enforcement. Therein lies grave
danger. From anger sprouts hatred. From hatred, the thorns of racism
extend.

In researching this column, I read through a shocking number of websites
that are blatantly racist. They accept the mainstream arguments for
tighter laws and stricter policy prima facia. They espouse all of the
familiar arguments. Popular political sentiment, without modification
or embellishment, furthers the ugliness they are promoting.

We should be wary knowing that if we jump on this bandwagon, we are
joined by many people with evil in their hearts and malice on their
minds.

We know where malevolence lurks. Where is humanitarianism? Where are
the women's rights activists when we suggest that sending an undocumented
mother back to the darkness and filth of poverty to have her baby is
just? Is she not a woman? Where are the right to life advocates when
a foreign child dies of malnutrition simply because it was conceived
on the wrong side of the river? Is he not a child?

I don't pretend to have answers in this debate. I do know what is missing
from it, though: compassion. If discussing this issue gives us pause,
we need to take an honest look at our motivations in pursuing it. Is
it to make the world a better place? Is it to preserve this resource-rich
mass of real estate only for us? Or, is it something uglier than selfishness,
even?

Perhaps we could begin the discussion all over by referring to our
fellow human beings as something less coarse than "illegal immigrants"
or "undocumented aliens," keeping in mind that the true difference
that separates us is random luck of birthright and the proper filing
of paperwork.

We are talking about illegal people here; created by God and made into
outlaws by us.

This week Roger Marolt will read your comments publicly at mail@aspentimes.com


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Mike McGarry

Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR)
PO Box 151270, Lakewood, CO 80215
www.CAIRCO.org