TAM,The Annoyed Man wrote:Sure they are possible, but like you pointed it, it requires the stomach for it. However, the nation won't develop the stomach for it because we (the collective "editorial we") are soft, and more than half of the electorate has lost a due reverence for the rule of law.....and it keeps getting worse, not better.flintknapper wrote:Trump's proposal is NOT single tiered. He isn't suggesting that a wall ONLY is required.
Guys.... there most certainly IS a way to secure our borders, send back illegals and enforce current laws. Don't tell me these things are not possible, they are!
All that is needed is for the public to develop a 'stomach' for it.
Even if we don't succeed completely at first, we MUST make a start. Most of Washington and a good portion of the populace need to be taken out to the 'woodshed'! Our Country can not continue down this path!
Some hard decisions need to be made....... and then implemented.
But I confess to being conflicted. I WANT the law followed, but as I pointed out in my previous interminable post, I fully understand what motivates a Mexican parent trying to raise children in poverty on the "wrong" side of the border to take desperate measures to try and better his family....even illegally. I'm not without compassion for that person. I don't want him to break our laws, but in his shoes, I might do the same thing.
Why? Because:
If someone has trouble believing (A) or (B), just ask someone who actually DID come here legally from south of the border just how complicated it is, and then ask them how long it took for the process to complete. And meanwhile, gov't is actually encouraging people to come here illegally. So what possible incentive is there left for an immigrant from south of the border to do it legally? You can't blame it entirely on democrats, because even republicans are in on the scam to essentially invalidate American immigration law by repeatedly passing "amnesties", etc., etc. So what is an illegal immigrant from south of the border to think? He sees an essentially desultory effort by the US gov't to pay lip service to border protection. He sees a deeply divided American electorate on the issue of what's to be done about it. He sees a justice system that essentially abdicates any responsibility for punishing and/or deporting illegals. The message is clear as a bell: "COME ON OVER!!!"
- under current law, it is TOO hard to get here legally; and
- gov't is so massively inefficient that it makes a difficult process that much more difficult and drawn out.
If we want control over this thing, I think we need to make it a WHOLE lot easier, less expensive, and less time consuming to enter the country legally. If we can do that, then when a potential immigrant balances the effort, cost, time, and danger of dealing with a coyote and sneaking across the border with a 100 lb pack of weed or coke on his back on the one hand, against the ease, cost benefit, reduced time, and lowered risk of entering legally, on the other hand, they will begin to do just that - enter legally.
And when they enter legally, we can account for them, weed out and reject the criminals, tax the legal ones, and subject them more easily to the same laws the rest of us are subject to. The proportion of legal immigrants who are good decent people will eventually so outnumber criminals who came in illegally, that it will be a safe bet that criminal aliens can be safely deported without arousing the ire of all the bleeding hearts.
I want to be clear.... I am NOT in favor of an open border. But the current system is badly broken, and the way it is currently configured, it requires a political will that this nation no longer has in order to be effective. Therefore, it will never be effective again. We don't have the will to enforce the law, and we don't have the will to grant amnesty (which I don't think would be a good idea either). The path of least resistance is what, realistically, we can get done - and that is to make legal entry easy enough that people will choose doing that over choosing to risk their lives in the desert southwest.
We can not be the worlds's savior. We can not continue to allow illegals to pour into the country by the hundreds (sometimes thousands) every single day. The purpose of legal immigration is to control the number of people adding to the populace as well as vetting them so we don't end up with undesirables. That is the right and responsibility of any sovereign Nation. It must take precedent over 'compassion'. As a nation we can (and do) come to the aid of other countries and cultures. I can think of no more benevolent country than the U.S.A.' I also can think of no more gullible nation... than ourselves.
It is NOT the fault of the USA that Mexico is corrupt and continues have a large portion of its people living in poverty. It's not like they don't have natural resources, we support their tourist industry, we buy their exports, we send and operate OUR businesses over there, etc. etc...
It is high time that Mexico fix Mexico's problems, but they won't. So it is time to play hard ball and make them. There will be time for more 'compassion' after we get things straightened out here. Our nation is about to bleed to death, it must stop. It is not our duty or obligation to insure that no one ever lives in poverty, only to do what we can, as we can...with respect to the laws that govern us all.
Immigration reform, OK, but I submit it should NEVER be easy, just reasonably attainable. Of course, at the current influx rate of illegals... it won't be necessary anyway, since Mexico (and South America) will simply have expanded themselves into the U.S.
No one is stopping any person or organization from donating to the impoverished of other countries. But we don't need to allow unfettered (and illegal) access through our borders under the guise that 'compassion' is the answer. It is not sustainable.
