re: #614 SixDegrees

I looked over the proposal for immigration reform this morning. Not a bill yet, but there’s little there I can object to. Payment of fines and back taxes in exchange for residency, the first step toward citizenship, with exclusions for criminal behavior and backgrounds. A requirement demanding that applicants speak English. Sounds OK to me. The only thing wrong is what’s missing - a comprehensive plan to address how so many illegal immigrants wound up here in the first place, and put a stop to it so we don’t wind up doing this every couple of decades.

Amnesty may not sit well with some, but the spectre of marching 10 million people back across the border in shackles doesn’t sit well with me. We should have enforced border security and visa expirations more seriously from the beginning; once that ball got dropped, we got stuck with the current situation. Time to deal with it as best we can, try to take serious steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, and move on.

It’s a huge border, and all that’s needed to turn public opinion against strong enforcement is a few dead immigrants, or better yet, dead immigrant families that died because they took insane risks to get around that strong enforcement. Never mind that too many illegals are working just a step or two removed from slavery as long as they believe they are under threat of deportation if they report any abuse.