Immigration
Has anyone else noticed the immigration reform effort is a solution looking for a problem? Watching the debates,Democratic and Republican,it seems to me the end product desired is vague. If the end is unclear, no bill will make sense.
As I see it, there are several key issues: national security,mostly Republican,and compassion for the individuals involved,mostly Democratic. A third should be the self-interest of our country. Here are some thoughts on how we could proceed.
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National security:
In light of the Fort Dix and JFK plots, we can’t have an insecure border. To solve this, build the fence that has been approved and funded.
During construction, post our military on the border in sufficient numbers to ensure our security isn’t compromised, and afterward, measure the results and decide what other steps are needed.
This would help with immigration and with the drug traffic. Remember the war on drugs?
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Compassion:
By focusing on legalized status, amnesty-like provisions, etc., we’re pushing a string uphill.
If we examine what the people involved want, they absolutely would rather be in their home in Mexico with their families and culture. Unfortunately, we’re paying the price for having a failed state as a neighbor that can’t provide jobs and education for its people.
My suggestion is we implement a Marshall Plan for Mexico, using the billions we’re currently spending for healthcare, welfare, education, etc. (About $10 billion in 2002 from the federal government, plus several billion dollars more at the state and local levels per the Center for Immigration Studies, or $20 billion per year in 1996 from the Federation for American Immigration Reform,pick your own number).
This has multiple benefits. Costs in Mexico are much lower so we can provide schools, healthcare, etc., less expensively than here. We reduce the demand for immigration to the U.S., help our own people get jobs, and reduce the overcrowding in our schools and hospitals, etc.
This can also involve the nonprofit sector, including people like Carlos Slim Helu in Mexico. He’s the third richest man in the world, has donated $4 billion for education and would be a great partner in the effort (a job for Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush to recruit him?).
Many of our social services agencies are dealing with this population here and might be willing to provide expertise in Mexico to help this work. We should encourage entrepreneurship through micro-loans and training, teach vocations that are needed and help provide the infrastructure to support business activity.
An important part of the plan should be to help Mexico deal with the drug cartels, providing military aid and assistance as appropriate.
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Our self interest:
It’s in our self-interest to encourage legal immigration of skilled individuals, so we should significantly increase the number of H visas for engineers and scientists.
As far as a “guest worker” program, this should be the last step, not the first. Only after we’ve done all we can for our own citizens should we consider bringing others here.
Robert J. Greenberg, CFP, principal
Greenberg|Graham Advisors LLC
Irvine
Most of you would think that with our alleged “leaders” of the executive branch, 100 senators, 435 representatives, a rare wise judge and the passage of scores of years, we could have treated the affliction that now passes for the American healthcare and immigration systems.
Recent events have demonstrated that Congress is capable of fixing neither. The system is shattered.
So how did things get so bollixed up?
The standard governmental progression,start with a small post-World War II system, then let it expand like crazy and make sure that attempts at reform, such as the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform Act, just make the problem worse. It also helps the madness when the government refuses to enforce the laws.
There are endless parallels to government healthcare. The same “nothing succeeds like the right kind of failure” approach.
Advocates of state medicine, like advocates of unrestricted immigration, not only don’t care how much harm they do,they positively intend it as a way of generating crises that the government can “fix.”
America has never been a “nation of immigrants.” The original settlers were colonists, not immigrants. At the Constitutional Convention and for decades thereafter, the general attitude toward immigrants was welcoming, provided they had skills useful on the frontier. Apparently, few expected large waves, just a steady trickle.
From the 1820s to World War I, immigration came in waves. The first wave was German, from the ’20s through the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, and they were generally literate, skilled and accepted. During this same period, the Irish flooded in, both to the U.S. and via Canada.
This raised the first question of whether the U.S. would become a haven for the unskilled, illiterate and desperate.
The same questions were asked with the late 19th and early 20th century waves of Italians, southeastern Europeans, Russians and Jews. The arguments in favor of immigration stressed the need for industrial workers and farmers, especially on the frontier, which officially closed in 1890.
“Americanization” came to be seen as a two or three generation process, with necessary troughs between waves to do the assimilating.
Immigration ended suddenly after World War I in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Argentina. The initial impetus was fear of a Bolshevik Russia and Europe sending over millions as fast as the boats could carry them, and thanks to the war, there were plenty of boats available.
The restrictive U.S. system was crafted by a series of laws between 1917 and 1934. The net result was a national quota system based on the census of 1890, limited to 150,000 people yearly, plus literacy and other tests.
After World War II, there began a piecemeal expansion of immigration, at first driven over guilt at not letting in hundreds of thousands of European refugees from Hitler in the later ’30s. The laws authorized entry to “war brides,” displaced persons and others, but even in 1952 the yearly total was limited to a sixth of 1% of the continental U.S. population.
National quotas were abolished in 1965 and,splendid example of unintended consequences,there began what’s known as “chain immigration,” favoring family members of those already admitted.
Immigrants learned to play the system quickly. This, plus the creation of a “lottery” for visas had the effect of ramping up legal immigration to the current 1 million or more each year. Today, there are probably 35 million legal immigrants here. We now take in more immigrants than the rest of the world combined.
What we see is a failure of politicians to deliver sound and sensible healthcare and immigration policy. The elected are more concerned with their profits, power and prestige than with your health, safety and survival. This is both heartless and immoral.
Michael Arnold Glueck
Newport Beach
