In response to Matt's comment (this felt too long for a comment box):
Matt noted the complexity of the immigration issue and insisted the dichotomy of "leave them alone" or "kick them out" is too simplistic.
I'm agreed, of course. These issues are incredibly complex.
However, we need to aim for the highest possible goal: fair, humane, just treatment of every person. Which to me means letting more immigrants in legally, and offering amnesty to those who apparently are desperate to live here.
Perhaps the largest population is Mexican, but there are other nations to whom we are not offering amnesty. For instance, Iraqis. This article in the Boston Herald notes that Iraqi's who have helped Coalition troops in Iraq are threatened, yet the U.S. is not offering them visas for entry to the U.S. Last month we offered one Iraqi a visa.
If we start with guiding principles that hold all humans as irreplaceable and equally valuable, instead of arguing from standpoints of "profit" and "anti-terrorism", I think we'll discover our goals and the goals of legal and illegal immigrants are similar and could benefit from collaboration.
I take my main issue with the devil-saint model of immigration: illegal immigrants are not enemies. They're future citizens.
Rather, it seems that they argue from a standpoint of "nativism".
ReplyDeleteAnti-terrorism, profit, crime, public expenditures are all involved but ultimately it is valuing one person many times more than another.
Reading your blogs reminds me of the famous Winston Churchill quote, "If you're not a liberal by the time you're 20, you haven't got a heart; if you're not a conservative by the time you're 40, you haven't got a brain...
ReplyDeleteHm, I wonder how come people turn conservative as the grow older.
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