----- Original Message ----- From: "John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2004 11:47 AM Subject: Re: Mexican Diplomat Charged With Helping Smuggle Arabs Into U.S.
> At 05:21 PM 12/31/2003 -0600 Robert Seeberger wrote: > >Almost a month after Ortiz was arrested, Homeland Security Secretary > >Tom Ridge said: "The bottom line is, as a country we have to come to > >grips with the presence of 8 to 12 million illegals, afford them some > >kind of legal status some way, but also as a country decide what our > >immigration policy is and then enforce it." > > > >No, Mr. Secretary. We already have immigration laws. It's your duty to > >enforce them. If the arrest of a Mexican diplomat for helping to > >smuggle Arabs into the U.S. can't convince you of the need for that, > >what will? > > > Actually, Ridge is right. If the US were to somehow manage to enforce > its immigration laws and remove 8 to 12 million workers from our economy - > the effects on the US would be catastrophic. > > As a nation, we need to come to grips to reconciling our immigration and > economic policies. > What's wrong with Ridges statement is that we already have an immigration policy. It is not being followed. It is being actively circumvented. It is not in any way a problem that people are flocking across our border. But there are problems and 2 come to mind immediately. First, the people coming across illegally are for the most part skilless, ignorant villagers fresh out of the rain forests. I am around them all the time. They are not stupid and for the most part not lazy, but they are uneducated and do not speak the language the rest of us speak. This would not be too much of a problem if it were a limited situation such as we had with the Vietnamese immigrant wave or the early Cuban waves. It could be dealt with What make this a problem is that there are millions of them and mostly they "refuse" to learn English. This is probably not viewed as a problem by people who see Mexicans as a means to cheap lawn care, but when I have to tell a guy not to spray a live transformer with a pressure washer I have to "hope" that he understands well enough and that he won't be injured or killed as soon as I am out of sight. (This is a problem I have run across many times, ignorance and an inability to communicate) The "refusal" to learn English brings up the second problem. I suppose you might call it the Balkanization of the melting pot. As long as we encourage immigrants (illegal or not) to isolate themselves from the rest of our society by providing them with preferential treatment in the form of multilingual signage for example (Please exclude airports and tourist destinations from this argument), they will continue to form insular communities. I call it preferential treatment because we do not provide the same kinds of helpful accommodations for Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Germans, Dutch, Portuguese, etc...... But at the basics, I don't care if its Tom Ridge, GW Bush or Bill Clinton, you just cannot selectively enforce laws for the sake of expedience. xponent Running Rantant Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
