What Comprehensive Immigration Reform Should Be
A recent editorial about ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform suggested that solving the illegal immigration cancer takes more than laws. It also takes money. And money is a commodity in short supply, not only for Florida but every State except North Dakota and Utah. Here is a version of comprehensive immigration reform that is without cost and does not involve amnesty. The cornerstone of the reform is pulling up the welcome mat where illegal immigrants are concerned.
Pulling up the welcome mat to illegals does not have to cost taxpayers a dime and will reduce the incoming ‘tide’ of illegals. Illegals will self-deport. The tide will go out. Not all, but more than would go back home otherwise. No police state tactics, as the writer suggests, are required.
What’s the welcome mat? Things like employers giving them jobs and landlords (public or private) giving them housing, ‘in-state’ tuition discounts, sanctuary cities, ‘anchor’ babies, all the social, medical, and educational benefits that legal citizens get. Pull it.
Imagine the effect of a financial reform law that allows international transfer of money by legal citizens and legal tourists only? Lacking the tool to send ‘remittances’ back home would be a major ‘mat’ to pull. Pulling the mat is part of immigration reform.
Another part is getting control of the border to the extent that crossing it illegally would be difficult if not impossible. There are hundreds of miles of border control barriers not completed and just as many miles totally unprotected. Complete it. By the time these two phases are completed, the number of illegals remaining would be those who are productive and have a place to live. Then, and only then, the last phase, guest worker status with intent to assimilate into American society can begin. If they just want to use America instead of become American, then they will not meet the minimum requirement for the path to ‘citizenship.’ There’s nothing wrong or un-American about this country being a so-called melting pot. What’s wrong is to let the pot melt.
This is not the amnesty that Reagan tried or that Obama wants. This is getting in line behind the immigration requests filed in accordance with our laws. To do that, they must come out of the closet and register themselves as an illegal seeking to stay here under some earned legal status. It will take as long as it takes for them to get their chance to become an amnestied American citizen. However many years that may take is what it will take. And to remove the political motivation from the equation, amnestied American citizens will not have the right to vote in federal elections. After all, this is supposed to be a humanitarian issue, not a political one.
Although it is a crying shame that Mexico’s state of affairs is as bad as it is, it’s their problem to fix. Maybe the prospect of millions of illegals returning home would help them fix their corruption and economic problems once and for all?