Part Two of "the Letter"- I'm not a Racist, because I obviously love Recessions

Now we get to the first of the qualms of this true american patriot lady (who sounds more and more like Glenn Beck himself). Anyway, demand number one:

One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.

Okay, serious, what the hell do these people do to you to deserve this undying hatred? Coddling? Lots of people break the law, i.e. by speeding and you don't march and advocate they be jailed and overly fined. If you are caught speeding, you try to get the officer to let you off, do you not? How dare you, you broke the law! Even still, you don't march on city hall because the DA's office where you live plea bargains down thousands of offenses every year to lesser charges to save the taxpayers a bit of money. Even murders get deals of minimal jail time if the circumstances necessitate it. Where's the outrage? Where is the protest?

Well, you might say, these people are guilty of serious offenses. Let's take the paltry crime of speeding. Speeding is not the same in terms of severity as is enetering a sovereign country without permission. Why? Because we attach greater value to it? Why should it be worse? One could argue that the harms caused by speeding are greater than those caused by illegal immigration, and it therefore more serious. So, if we look closely at speeding we see that in 2007 it led to 13,040 deaths, and it on average costs us around $40 billion a year (NHTSA 2007 Fact Sheet). One could hardly call that unimportant. In fact, that beats the number of illegal immigrants who are killed in the desert every year by their coyotes getting them across the border (around 500 a year) and the estimated number of people murdered in the US by illegal immigrants, which, according to the Minutemen Civil Defense Corp website, is around 4,000 homicides a year. In California, the estimated cost to the state government incurred by illegals is around 5 billion. However, since many illegals have social security cards (which are faked of course), they still pay taxes, including an estimated $12 billion to the SSA in 2007, not to mention the billions paid in federal income, and states sales, property, and gas taxes they also pay.

So before we even consider the reason behind our ridiculously overcomplicated immigration law and system, it seems that there must be something more behind this frenzied dislike of illegal immigrants. Notice how the author attaches the complaint of illegal immigrants to drug trafficking and violence. If this lady is not a racist, then why does she hate this so much? What harm does it do to her to allow poor people come to her country, make her burgers and fries and landscape her yard? Who suffers to let them have children and send them to our schools to grow up and become productive members of society? And if they don't, they are really no different than the white, black, Hispanic and Asian children already in this country who do not become productive members of society. I have heard it said by a friend in Arizona that they bring a socialist slant to politics, because many are from more leftist states in the south like Venezuela and Honduras. Even if that were true, they don't participate in politics because they can't (and illegals tend to stay away from places where they could get caught), and even if they could, there is a national trend toward more socially progressive politics in this country anyway, love it or hate it. The fact of the matter is, there are issues that leave a far more lasting impression on our country, including but not limited to speeding, that many in this country for the most part ignore in favor of demonizing poor people who come into the US to become less poor.

So please forgive me if I question our motives.

Determining racial motivations is tricky. I am not going to hash out whether or not I suspect that motivation, suffice it to say that there must be some more to the issue than legality. People are naturally xenophobic, and I don't condemn people for a slight nervousness when people all around them are speaking a different language they can't understand. Its natural to become suspicious. What is unfair is the assumption that they are criminals, and that they are some sort of pest that we must rise up against. They just want to make a living, no different from you. Leave them alone.

What is unfair, and what I think we should be protesting, is the laughable system and laws that we have in place to facilitate legal immigration. Every step of the immigration process requires upwards of $400, all of which are completely non-refundable. First, you must apply to apply. Yeah. This requires as well knowing someone who can sponsor you in case you have no money, basically stripping you of the possibility of using government welfare anytime down the road. Then, up to a year later, once you are determined eligible to apply, you must then apply, which costs around $600 plus $90 for them to take your fingerprints and take your picture. A year later (maybe less if you are white - I am not kidding either), they interview you, force you to prove all over again that you are who you say you are (by bringing in in pictures and credit card and insurance statements), an then you can be accepted as a conditional permanent resident. Remember that you can legally be denied at any one of these steps for no reason at all (too many applicants, not qualified, whatever they want). Now, only 55,000 green cards are issued a year to people with no relatives in the US and with no job in the US. So the real question is, why have we let our system turn into the application process from hell? If someone south of our border wants to not live in abject poverty, then we are practically begging people to sneak into our country to do so.

You may disagree with me on this, and that's fine, leave your comments and I will respond to them, but I do not believe that we should put so much blame on these people. It is not their fault they they are poor. People in Mexico, I know from personal experience, do not see coming into the US as some sort of moral wrong, or as any wrong. To them, it is survival, like hunting in the king's personal forest to stay alive. Right or wrong, we need to stop dehumanizing illegal immigrants and figure out how to help them, not demonize and persecute them. Of course, I am not ignoring the fact that many are actual criminals, but, contrary to many ignorant people's views, that is the small minority, and we have laws to take care of criminals that are far just that those that deal with well-meaning, but poor, immigrants.

To finish up, here's a fun fact: illegal immigration this year dropped to record lows. Why? Because it was a recession. So, if you really want to stop illegal immigration, the answer is not to build a wall, or more border patrol troops. What really works, and works better than anything else, is a recession, and an unemployment rate of 10.2%. Now there are no jobs for illegals, but then, they are also no jobs for us either. Oh well, whatever it takes to protect our borders, right?