'What ARE Our Immigration Problems and Can they be Solved?'
By Mary Mostert (05/24/07)
The heated debate now taking place about the Comprehensive Immigration
Reform Act of 2007 is largely emotion with few hard facts being presented by
either side. In fact, not even the number of the bill has been mentioned
in any of the comments I have heard or read. Anyone interested in finding
out what the bill REALLY says can read it by going to this site(1) and inserting
S. 1348, the bill number, in the little box that says "Search Bill Text."
S. 1348 was introduced on May 9th, has not been even available to read until
this week, but it appears that, without reading it, most commentators
already have a strong opinion about it - either for or against it. The
bill is long. It has 832 sections and amendments are already being
introduced to make changes in it.
Some commentators are urging that it be defeated because they claim is
provides "amnesty" for most of the estimated 12 million aliens who are here
illegally. The first question that the public should ask themselves is why
ARE there 12 million aliens here illegally? In spite of claims that aliens
are pouring into this country to get free medical care and education, the
fact of the matter is - if there are no jobs available for aliens, they
either don't come or they go home.
My father was not an American. He grew up in South Africa, but was born in
Germany when his parents were there on a diplomatic mission, so he had duel
citizenship, German and British, since the Union of South Africa was then
part of the Commonwealth of Great Britain. He met my American mother while
in college in the USA and after his graduation they made their home in South
Africa, where my older brother and sister were born.
In 1926, when my brother was a baby and my sister was 2 years old, they
returned to the USA under our father's German passport and started a
newspaper in Arkansas. By 1931 in the depth of the Great Depression my
parents had lost their money when the banks closed. That caused the failure
of the newspaper and unemployment was about 30% of the workforce.
My father, as did many other foreign born people, returned to his home in
South Africa, since there were no jobs even for US Citizens available. My
parents were divorced, and, ten years later WWII broke out. My brother
joined the Air Force at age 17 to serve what he believed to be his country.
After the war, he got his degree under the GI Bill of rights, married and
wanted to vote in Chicago where he lived. He was told he could not vote
because he was what we call today an illegal or undocumented German alien
since he came to the US on a German passport. It took years for him to
eventually get the necessary piece of paper from the US Government to be
able to vote.
Why, indeed, do we have 12 million or more illegal aliens in the USA? At
least 7.5 million of those illegal aliens have jobs. Nationally,
unemployment is at 4.5%. In my state of Utah, unemployment is 2%.
Furthermore, about 1.5 million illegal aliens were prevented last year from
coming into the USA.
The total work force currently in the USA is about 120 million, which means
that 6.5% of the nation's workforce is illegal aliens. The NY Times reported
today that "Democrats plan to offer amendments to eliminate or scale back
provisions under which hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers
would be admitted to the United States each year." On the other hand, some
Republicans plan to introduce amendments that would round up the current
illegals in our workforce and send them home.
Where are our young people and why are so few of them are working the
kinds of jobs that illegal aliens are doing? Would we really have enough
workers if we sent 12 million illegal aliens home?
Recently I had a conversation with one of my college age grandsons about the
kind of job he wanted to have this summer. With 2% unemployment, he can
literally choose the job he wants from the many employers looking for
employees. The highest paying job would be in construction. Since he has
worked construction he was offered a job running a framing crew. Only, he
needs to be able to speak Spanish since most of the construction workers in
Utah are Spanish speaking. He didn't pursue the job because his second
language is Italian and, besides, he would prefer a job in an air
conditioned building rather than working in the heat of the Utah desert.
Why are there so many jobs? Well, one third of my grandson's generation is
dead, having been killed by their parents via abortion before they were
born. Those of his generation who were allowed to live are mostly in school
and are not much interested in picking fruit or even working high paying
construction jobs. One of my grandsons who did work in construction was
making $25 an hour at the age of 18 during the summer months.
I am reasonably sure that most of the politicians and the public know that
there have been approximately 5 million deaths of unborn babies due to
abortion in the USA during the same time period we have lost 3300 military
men in Iraq. Since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973, there have been about 47
million unborn babies killed. We now have an aging population who are
leaving the workforce and a very small rising generation that is not large
enough to do the kind of manual labor their grandparents did at their age.
What IS the solution to that problem? I suggest that burying our collective
heads in the sand while whining about those illegal Mexicans is not the
solution to the problem.
So far, I'm hearing mostly emotion and little in the way of intelligent
discussion of the illegal immigration problem from EITHER side of the aisle
in Congress. S. 1348 is far from perfect, but its Section 1 deals with
securing our borders, increasing border agents and implementing a biometric
fingerprint identification system to block false identification papers.
That is something we need to do. S 1348 needs to be passed.
1) http://thomas.loc.gov/
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