A Slice of Life



11:57 a.m.

Immigration debate manages to avoid any hint of logic

Monday, May 14, 2007

Early this month three illegal immigrants along with one U.S. citizen were charged with terrorist activities in New Jersey. None of them were born in Mexico. All of them were gainfully employed with 7-Eleven, construction work and cab driving.
Those are the illegal immigrants we should be obsessing about. Instead, we are driving ourselves crazy trying to figure out what to do with the .04 percent of our population considered illegal immigrants who’ve predominately originated from Mexico and have found a way to make more money here than there.
For years we’ve allowed immigrants to cross the Mexican border illegally and not rallied a call for immigration reform. We were content to have help in our homes with laundry, kids, leaf blowing, painting, lawn care, construction projects, and, yes, seasonal agriculture to bring fresh fruits and vegetables to our supermarkets.
We want to blame someone else, perhaps the employer or the illegal immigrant themselves. But in truth, pretty much most run-of-the-mill citizens have benefited from the labor of illegal immigrants in the food they’ve purchased but never grown, and in jobs they don’t know how to do and really don’t want to learn how to do (roofing comes to mind).
And so, because we care so much for ourselves, we set up health-care systems that provide care to everyone who needs it and schools who teach everyone who walks through the doors. When illegal immigrants came to deliver babies, we humanely did not turn them away. When children registered for school, we did not ask to see their Social Security cards.
But now we’re worried we don’t have enough resources to carry on. Today kids come home from school, complaining they don’t understand what they’re peers are saying because they don’t speak Spanish. The same kids get bored because a teacher has to stop teaching to translate. Health care providers must pay for translators, which further drives up all of our health care costs.
We are feeling burdened and the food isn’t that cheap anymore. The benefits that run-of-the- mill citizens received from the labor of illegal immigrants is paling in comparison with perceived burden they place on 99.06 percent of the population. Never has .04 percent felt as heavy as it does today.
We want justice, or do we? Are we willing to back-pay for all the cheap labor we’ve received as a result of illegal immigrants’ labor in exchange for their fees to immigrant legally? Are we willing to fully fund immigration agencies to quickly and efficiently sort out illegal immigrants like those terrorists from New Jersey from immigrants who are benefiting our companies and, in turn, ourselves?
Or would a little bit of grace be cheaper and more effective? Today we have .04 percent of the population here illegally. Traditionally we’ve had routes for the rich and famous from Communist countries and dictatorship states to come to the U.S. as a safe harbor. Rarely has our country done this for ordinary, persecuted, foreign-born citizens.
Why not extend an invitation for safe harbor for a limited period of time to illegal immigrants if they agree to provide the names of their employers, consent to background checks, and respect the fact accommodations for language were not made to the generations of Americans who immigrated here years ago and most Americans do not feel it is there responsibility to pay and provide this level of accommodation to today’s immigrants?
Perhaps this solution would quickly lead us to those employers conducting illegal employment practices and those illegal immigrants who are terrorists.

posted by Jeanine

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pb ... 46/OPINION