Several years ago, we came back from watching our son perform in a high school play. When we got home, we found the kitchen floor flooded in half an inch of water. The living room carpet was steadily soaking it up. Water was pouring out of the dishwasher.
I immediately found the knob to turn off the water supply to the dishwasher to stop the flow. We then used buckets to scoop out the water. When we had gotten out all we could that way, we switched to towels and finally rented a carpet vacuum to clean the rest. It was quite a job!
Anyone facing this situation would have done pretty much the same thing; the solution was obvious. But when faced with the flood of illegal immigration, everyone seems to have forgotten the basics and are running around trying to figure out what to do with the water on the floor while the dishwasher is still pouring it out.
The first problem is to stop the flood. Clean up can come later.
The flood of illegal immigrants is caused by our need for their labor, their need for a better life, and, on some level, an acknowledgement of this that keeps us from being serious about enforcement. I am not anti-immigrant. I believe that this country was made great by people who were willing to risk everything to come to a new land. However this needs to happen in a legal and orderly fashion. We need to let in the people who will be part of the success of the 21st century and keep out drug dealers and terrorists. I suggest three steps:
- Increase the quotas for legal immigrants. Make it easier to do the right thing. Do a speedy and thorough job of checking on people.
- Implement a guest worker program. There are many people who don’t want to be immigrants, who just want to work for the season and go home. This is a traditional practice that we need to support with our laws.
- Enforce our borders. Use a fence, increased agents, whatever means necessary. If we can go to war to protect our nation, we can certainly hire some immigration agents. Mostly it requires the will to be serious not winking and looking the other way.
Once we have turned off the flow, we can then deal with the ‘water on the floor’. Just like my kitchen, there are likely to be levels of solutions that will deal with an increasingly smaller group of more troublesome people.
The debate on amnesty is unnecessary at this time. The people currently here are not the problem, the problem is the flow. First things first.