The Sins of the Fathers
This is a subject I tend to avoid because it's so volatile, but Jeff Jacoby's op-ed on the children of illegal immigrants is worth passing on at the risk of being swarmed by anti-immigrant trolls. The last graph is quote of the day:
[More posts daily at The Detroit News]
Of course illegal immigration is a problem. But it can only be solved by overhauling our dysfunctional immigration laws, not by demonizing or scapegoating illegal immigrants. Those immigrants didn’t come here in order to be lawbreakers; they broke a law in order to come here. That’s a distinction with a crucial difference - one that sensible and principled conservatives should be able to understand.A distinction too few make. Conservatives seem to forget that unless you're a Native American, we're all descended from immigrants and most illegal immigrants are otherwise honest and hardworking people.
[More posts daily at The Detroit News]
Labels: immigration
posted by Libby Spencer at 3:34 PM
4 Comments:
Illegal immigrants don't have the specific intent to break the law, no. But so what? They knowingly, willingly and intentionally break the law by coming and staying. That makes them all lawbreakers. And it is not "demonizing" or "scapegoating" them to point this out.
They're honest and hardworking? I suppose, in general, some are and some aren't. But it's hard to see how very many of them can be totally "honest" when they know they are breaking the law every day and go to great lengths to continue to do so and avoid getting caught.
But, OK, they're honest and hardworking, good for them. Let them be honest and hardworking in their country of citizenship or legal residency. Or let them apply for legal immigration. We have plenty of honest and hardworking people of our own. And we, like all countries, have laws regulating immigration. We should follow those laws, and so should these "hardworking and honest" illegal immigrants.
If you ever spent time in Latin America outside of the tourist zones and saw the poverty they live in, you might feel differently. They can't make a living in their home countries and a majority of them pay taxes and contribute to Social Security but won't be able to collect the benefits. They've in essence been propping up the system for a very long time.
Appeal to compassion in a nation chauvinistic about its "Christian Heritage?" Surely you know better.
When it comes to immigration everyone is a "the law is the law" Javert. Of course the law is the law, but the anger has other and older roots. If it didn't, we'd work out a guest laborer system that didn't exploit us and them -- as other countries have done. As it is we don't seem to be able to enforce the law equitably, humanely and without creating suffering to people who don't deserve it.
Too bad we didn't start the quota system a hundred years earlier, then we'd have a more ethnically pure country without our friend here.
You know I can't drive across town, and it's a very small town, without seeing someone doing something illegal. No one laughs or cheers when the things they do get them killed.
Two years ago, a phone pole fell on a US citizen of Hispanic descent who worked for the power company. The report of his death in the paper brought dozens of comments like "one down, 12 million to go."
I'm just sayin. . .
It makes me sad to see so much hate. Sometimes I miss the days when that hate spilled behind closed doors instead of all over the internets where it could pollute our shared spaces.
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