Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Immigration

Listening to Michael Medved's show this afternoon during an hour he devoted to this issue, it occurred to me that the first step in discussing this should be to admit that our government has been hypocritical about it for many years. They enacted laws that they knew wouldn't be enforced and had no intention of really enforcing.

If they were honest, they'd have sealed our borders 50 years ago. It angers Americans who are expected to obey the law to see so many millions flouting it with impunity. It angers them even more when elected officials don't seem to want to do anything about it. It seems that we now have a problem that can't be solved without spending billions, disrupting millions of lives, damaging businesses and punishing people who have contributed greatly to our melting pot.

It seems to me that the first order of business should be to identify everybody who isn't here legally and make them honest. It should be a felony to use a false ID, visa or green card.

But do we have the political will to do what that will take? We've got so many interest groups involved in this that getting anything done is practically impossible. I think that everyone should have a forge-proof ID containing biometric data, but libertarians and advocates for a right of anonymity are paranoid about such a thing. It seems to me that being able to prove who you are has much more value than being anonymous. It should be a no-brainer.

What people want is for everybody else to play by the rules. If we don't want to enforce the rules, then why have them? But cleaning up the mess created by years of posturing without doing anything will be a bitch.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home