Saturday, August 14, 2010
Time For Lindsey Graham to Channel His Inner Everett Dirksen
The illegal immigration issue seems like an extremely solvable one to me. It will, however (and, yes, folks, herein lies the rub), take a couple of things that this country doesn't seem to be all that good at lately; a) compromise and b) a lowering of the temperature...........................................................................................Just for the record, here are what I feel to be the necessary components of an effective policy. 1) A fool-proof/biometric I.D. card that a person (any person) has to have in order to get a job in this country. 2) Stiff (and, yes, I mean very stiff) penalties to businesses who refuse to comply. 3) Beefed-up security on the border to deal with drug/human trafficking. 4) A guest-worker program (to those on the right who refuse to think that this is necessary, I ask you, go to southern California and try to pick lettuce and grapes 9 hours a day in 120 degree weather for minimum wage - the flat-out truth, folks, is that Americans really and truly DON'T want these jobs, and unless you want to start paying 8-10 dollars for a head of lettuce....). 5) A path to citizenship that 1) we make difficult and 2) starts to get the bulk of these people out of the shadows, paying some taxes, etc.. If you want to call this a form of amnesty, fine, call it that. But, I'm saying, short of up and deporting 10-12 million individuals, it's really hard to think of a better idea at this point...............................................................................................Comments, suggestions, I definitely welcome them.
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4 comments:
I ask you, go to southern California and try to pick lettuce and grapes 9 hours a day in 120 degree weather for minimum wage - the flat-out truth, folks, is that Americans really and truly DON'T want these jobs, and unless you want to start paying 8-10 dollars for a head of lettuce...
Damn straight! Hey you might get seriously out of work Americans to pick crops but like you mentioned sanctimonious suburbanites will get very upset when their Caesar salads start costing a lot more.
On the other hand the borders have to be sealed if for nothing else but to slow the traffic of weapons to Mexico.
It's like you said on another thread, double b, the left - they want the votes, the right they want the cheap labor. And, yeah, you got it, in the meantime nothing happens.
The "lettuce argument" has been debunked. According to the "Immigration Myths and Facts" page on "Montanans for Immigration Law Enforcement"...
"if a head of lettuce costs $1, about 6 cents of that pays the field workers. So if we tripled wages for field hands -- at which point Americans would do the jobs -- we'd boost the cost of that head of lettuce to $1.12".
This information is the result of research conducted by an agricultural economist at the University of California.
Also, why should the Democrats NOT get the votes of any current illegal alien who, after several years of following a "path to citizenship" (which YOU said you are in favor of), eventually gains the right to vote?
Should we make them citizens but NOT allow them to vote? It was the Republicans who set this situation up with Reagan's amnesty and Bush's "guest worker" (slave labor) proposal... Democrats most certainly SHOULD use the situation to their advantage.
I can't tell if you're in favor of illegal immigration or not. It's kind of hard to tell.....Yes, I am in favor of a "path" to citizenship. But the right to vote, along with the other rights of citizenship, comes at the end of the path, not during it......The field workers make (according to CNN) $8 an hour. And you're saying that if we tripled those wages to $24 an hour, the cost of a head of lettuce would only go up 12 cents? Now THAT is interesting. And you also have to realize, $8 an hour for these Mexican nationals is a whole hell of a lot better than they could make on their side of the border......I thought that I had come up with a pretty balanced plan here. Oh well, I guess that you can't please everybody.
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