California has about the same population as the entire country of Canada. We're not small.
Lots of Americans come for the beaches, the lifestyle, the climate, the jobs, the glamor.
Plenty come from below, and they come illegally.
That's not new. But what we're beginning to realize is the COST of illegal immigration.
1/3 of those incarcerated are illegal aliens with no status. That's 55K per illegal alien incarcerated. That's just the cost on the corrections side.
Do we need to tighten up? You bet your damn self we do. Something drastic needs to happen. The tough part is the balance between racism and protection. EVen marginalised hispanics want jobs and a better economy.
It's easy to build more prisons and throw away illegal aliens (and criminals), but that's $$$ we don't have. It's easy to throw people back, but that doesn't prevent anybody from returning. More border agents is again, more cash, and the border is, let's face it, MASSIVE.
It's too costly to ship everyone back, and then work to prevent illegal aliens from returning. It's taht simple. That doesn't mean tougher laws aren't required, but imagine if we could capture the huge workforce here illegally......
but again, how without legitimizing coming illegally?
We could go ahead and figure out a way to improve Mexican life and make California comparatively less attractive. That would take a while though....
Even the GOP is divided on what to do. If they swing too far to the right they'll lose perhaps 1/3 of voters? In the least they'll lose the Latino vote.
Too far to the left and nothing gets done.
What's the solution? There might be a need for a mix; I"m willing to here some comments to get the dialogue going.
tough question - - i think the current politically correct thought would be (as you said) to send 'em back from where they came. but that would only be reasonable if we had better control over re-entry - and i'm not sure that there's a good answer to that either. we could hope that their 'home' government would treat criminals as criminals and lock them up in their home country when we returned them - but there's no guarantees on that either.
ReplyDeletewe could (in fact we really should) start sending a bill to the home countries of those who come here illegally and end up incarcerated - but that's money we'd never see either...
it's an interesting conundrum barry...
Conundrum to say the least. What will help a) get taxes from illegals somehow..... b) better security at border, c) better life for mexicans (again, somehow?) so they don't want to pursue the US
ReplyDeletewith respect to c) - - - i really don't have a problem with folks wanting to come to this country - - as long as they follow the rules and do it correctly (green card, apply for citizenship, take the classes - whatever all the rqmts are)!! it's the criminal, unwanted, druggies - all around nasty folks that we need be concerned with......
ReplyDeletestart by imposing a heavy fine on those who hire illegals. Not much but a start.
ReplyDelete