Immigration and the Border
Watching the local congressional candidates on TV highlights the issues of living near the Mexican border. Here's a couple of reactions that I have taken away from the politicians ads. We spend $10 billion a year trying to control the border and there are 13 million illegal aliens living in the US.Let's get real and let the marketplace regulate the order. Right now, smugglers can command $1500 per person for everyone they can get across the border. You get a van of 5-6 people across the border and you can imagine there is a high economic incentive to get illegals into the US. Like anything else the government prohibits, the laws create a huge black market that enriches lawbreakers.
Two things shape my view on immigration. We are a country that was built by immigrants, typically the most educated or industrious people are the most likely to leave their home and travel thousands of miles to make a new life in a different country. The second thing is that my social security check is going to be paid by younger workers and that the Boomer generation hasn't done a good enough job creating offspring to finance the future pensions and health care costs of the US. We need immigrants and we need young strong workers to keep our economy growing.
Let's get the politicians in the mode of selling citizenships. We can start with all the guest workers, illegal or otherwise and really ramp up a plan to generate some revenue. Add a million new citizens and that generates lots of demand for homes, cars, food, jobs, etc. The citizenship fee should be enough to pay deportation costs if one of the new citizens gets into trouble before their citizenship is vested - say 5-10 years.
I would be in favor of giving discounts to the Canadians and Mexicans as a good neighbor policy. It's cheaper to put them on a bus and send them back.
Now I just hope that none of those idiots in Congress pass laws that will increase the amounts that smugglers can charge to bring in illegals. But then, smugglers are probably making political contributions to pass more stringent laws...
posted by Michael Sick @ 4:58 PM
1 Comments:
Perhaps the US should determine what benefits it wants to derive from immigration and then develop an immigration policy that meets the goals. The US immigration policy has as a primary goal the reuniting of familes while the immigration policy of other countries such as Australia and the UK is deisgned to acquire needed skills. Wouldn't it be better to develop a policy that brings us more engineers and computer scientists rather than more grandparents?
Also, the influx of unskilled immigrants to the US threatens the economic security of legal immigrants more than the general population. The illegal unskilled immigrant is competing for the jobs (landscapers, kitchen help, etc.)of many of the legal immigrants thereby depressing their wages.
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