I'm fucking sick to death of hearing about the "problem" of illegal immigration.
For the sake of argument, let's ignore the fact that net immigration across the southern border is fucking negative. More people are going South than are coming North!
Let's also ignore the fact that immigration helps the economy, and the fact that the majority of immigrants, legal or not, want to become upstanding, hardworking, English-speaking, tax-paying US citizens, and the fact that the vast majority of people complaining about immigration are fucking descendants of actual fucking immigrants, and the fact that the whole fucking country and its culture was originally based on people coming to America. Social Studies textbooks used to have titles like Our Immigrant Land, for Christ's sake.
For the sake of this argument, I'm going to assume that illegal immigration is a real and significant problem, even though it's fucking child's play to prove that this is not the case. I can solve this "Problem", really. See how below the fold.
People have been complaining about immigration in America ever since the first American Indian happened upon the first Puritan outhouse. Our approaches to handling immigration have been varied and largely ineffective in the long run. In the 1920s, rigged intelligence tests were used to prove that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were mentally inferior. Congress passed laws that severely restricted the number of those "undesirables" who could come to america. That's why, in today's America, there are no people with Italian or Polish ancestors.
In school, I learned that Mexicans are lazy. The first Spanish word I learned was "Siesta," and I remember our teacher telling us that Mexicans spent most of the day napping in the sun with their sombreros pulled down over their faces and (inexplicably) heavy serapes covering their bodies. In my memory, everyone in my neighborhood had ceramic bookends depicting napping Mexicans.
It's a wonder that such a lazy bunch could get up the energy to make a dash across the border into the USA, but a few did. We erected barriers and passed laws to keep them out. That's why there are no people of Mexican descent in this country today.
As an aside, it's well worth considering just which asshole elements in our culture want us to think that taking it easy is a bad thing, but that's another rant altogether.
Take a quick glance at a fucking map of the United States. Try to take in the sheer mind-boggling length of our borders. A conservative estimate puts the perimeter of the USA at well over 50,000 fucking miles. If I offered you $10,000, do you think you could get a person or a package across that border into the USA? For $100,000, could you get ten people in? I've been offshore fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, and the Pacific. I've never once had my citizenship checked when I came ashore, nor have I met anyone else who has.
If people want to get into the United States, they will. There is literally no fucking way to stop them. Only a pathetic dickhead too fucking stupid to walk and breathe at the same time would believe otherwise. (The same brain-dead pinheads who don't agree persist in believing that making drugs and prostitution illegal will prevent people from buying drugs and sex.)
That leaves us with just two possible long-term solutions to the problem of illegal immigration (again, accepting for the sake of argument, the notion that it actually is a problem):
- 1. We can make things so fucking crappy here that no one wants to come.
- 2. We can make things so nice there that no one wants to leave.
I know which one I would prefer. How about you?