The Conservative Case For Amnesty

While pleased that the recent comprehensive immigration reform legislation was defeated due to a lack of credibility on the part of our government when it comes to border enforcement, I also believe that suggesting any form of amnesty is a deal breaker is out of step with most of America and not representative of conservative ideals, as some suggest.

More than anything else, my interpretation of conservatism rests upon the concept of personal responsibility. If you have ever purchased a new home, bought produce, and or enjoyed the benefits of countless goods and services in an American economy that has given a wink and a nod to illegal immigration for decades, then you too have benefited from the cheap labor our broken system has been providing. If we as Americans are victims of our government in this sense for their failure to police our immigration policy, there are a great number of honest, hard working, though admittedly, illegal immigrants that have been victimized by it, as well.

Until the recent bill brought the issue to a boiling point, there have been no picket lines around supermarkets demanding that all vegetables be picked by legal labor, no boycotts of new housing projects so often built with their sweat. I'd encourage my friends on the Right to make a distinction between desirable and undesirable when it comes to illegal immigrants currently in the US and not advocate throwing the baby out with the bath water, to coin a phrase. And this could be achieved.

Naturally, the first thing we must do is secure our border by building the full course of fence originally legislated and beef up the departments required to genuinely manage our borders and enforce existing law. But as we move forward, I'd propose we allow employers to come forward and in effect sponsor illegals which they have been employing for a designated period of time so long as they intend to retain them as employees. And yes, they should be placed on a pathway to citizenship provided they have no criminal record and continue to be gainfully employed. Employers currently sponsor those on HB visas, so this process is not out of left field.

Certainly there are many details to be addressed. I am not at all liberal when it comes to illegal immigration. I do not want our nation flooded with undesirables who do not plan to work hard, or assimilate into this great nation. But I also have no desire to punish hard working people who have been victimized by a failed system, whether they are currently citizens, or not. No solution is going to be perfect. But if conservatives lock themselves into this no amnesty rhetoric which ignores much of America's complicity in creating our current problem, they do run the risk of looking just like the xenophobes some, incorrectly, I hope, suggest that they are.

It will take time, money, patience and some compromise to fix this problem. Yes, I understand we need to reward those who "play by the rules." But intelligent people know that almost every game has two sets of rules, the formal and the informal, or unspoken. I don't believe punishing those who played by the second set of rules is called for, especially when doing so would allow the would be punishers to ignore their own role in enabling this broken system as consumers for years.

Comments

[Matt]

The issue is simple. SIMPLE. Our borders are out of control. By design! We have laws ALREADY on the books to effectively deal with illegal immigration. There is NO need for yet ANOTHER amnesty bill to deal with the issue. The 1986 fiasco was bad enough and the results in the intervening 20 years speaks for itself, but the recently defeated, new attempt to give amnesty to up to 20 million more illegals, had provisions that were HORRIFIC. Criminal industries were poised to spring into action to provide false documents (even more than they already are), as soon as amnesty was declared. 20 million would become 100 million.
Here are the facts. You might want to consider these before you say amnesty "aint all that bad"...
over 80% of the cocaine, marijuana, heroine and meth entering this country is coming in from Mexico. The exodus of Mexico's poverty provides cheap labor for big business, but depresses wages for AMERICAN WORKERS. Tens of thousands of illegal alien GANG MEMBERS are currently in the U.S. trafficking in drugs and guns...so, making all these indigents and thugs LEGAL through amnesty is going to make the situation better??? And as to the hard working Mexicans NOT breaking the law (except for the fact that they are here at all)...they may not be terrorists or drug traffickers but they ARE the primary applicants for the false documents and the STOLEN Social Security information taken from AMERICANS who as a result, have their credit ruined.
What are Americans obliged to PAY in taxes for the privilege of supporting all of this illegal activity? BILLIONS...but true, not as much as they would have had to pay had the amnesty bill passed. The tab for that would have been 2 TRILLION! Americans should NOT be required to foot the bill for Mexico's poverty, drugs and crime being exported to the U.S.! Deportation would cost much less than we are paying now, but the solution is obvious:
SECURE OUR BORDERS! ENFORCE OUR LAWS! PERIOD.

[southdakotaboy]

The way to handle this is simple. We need to build the fence, jail the employers who break the law by hiring them, speed up the procees for legal immigrants and send out hundreds of recent college grads to these counties to set up immigration centers in every major city that we get immigrants from. Two reasons for this: first new grads would work cheap and see it as an adventure; secondly we could cut out all those crimminals who prey on the immigrants. We would fingure print them, get a picture and collect some DNA. We could give them an entry exam (speak English, know our basic laws, know basic history, have some sort of skill) the better you do the faster you get processed. This might mean that a ditch digger who scores a 75% would get in faster than a Doctor who scores a 45% (evens things out alittle bit).
This way we could keep out the riff raff but let in the good people who would contribute to our nation.

[Buzzy]

I'll bite, but how about US employers who have employed criminal aliens for a period of time either show they have withheld taxes during that time or pay it now with penalty and sponsor those illegals as GUEST WORKERS with no path to citizenship. And by sponsor I mean the employer must assume the burdens of health care etc. that the American taxpayer has had to shoulder. I cannot in good faith put illegals on a path to citizenship while a single honest immigrant stands in line legally waiting to get in.

[Dan Riehl]

"but how about US employers who have employed criminal aliens for a period of time"

Disqualified - deport them. Keep in mind, after a 90 day or so period to register, I am talking about enforcing the law. SO if they don't come forward, major fines and possible jail time for the employer, deportation for the "criminal" illegal.

[Phoenix]

Hold on........... by 'criminal aliens' you mean 'illegal immigrants', right? oysh.... the name changes...

[bloodrage bob]

"wetbacks", darlin'. "WETbacks". the old ways are still the best.

[J.B.R]

REMENBER IMMIGRANTS COME HERE BECAUSE THIER COUNTRY ISN'T WORTH CRAP OR THEY WOULD
STAY THERE. THINK OF THIS I DON'T CARE WHAT NATIONALITY YOU ARE. tHAT IS THE REASON YOUR HERE.

[bobup500]

Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.
"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
- Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Check out Oklahomas HB 1804, when are the other state's going to get some back bone.

We should hold up on the border fence in case we have to use military action to get Mexico under control as we did in 1846. We may have to move the border 500 miles further south as compensation for our expense. There is a large part of Mexico that there is no government control, I guess the U.S. may have take control of it for them