I'm writing this diary in response to Virginia's illegal immigation law that Gov. Warner signed today.
OK. This is not going to be one of my most popular diaries. Speaking from California, we have some experience with this issue. The Virginia bill is probably a reasonable exercise in State enforcement of it's laws and protection of the public fisc.
It sounds like local communities are going to have negative financial impacts, but they are experiencing them now anyway.
It's time to Speak Truth to Liberals on Immigration
Just to make sure I piss a lot of people off right out of the gate, I don't care how informed you are or what your parochial interest is in this issue. If you haven't been listening to NPR and Lou Dobbs, you don't know jack about illegal immigration. Another good source of informed comment about illegal immigration for those of us in L.A. or Orange County is McIntyre In the Morning on KABC.
There will certainly be a lot of disagreement with my take. FWIW, NPR and Lou Dobbs are my primary sources on this issue. To the best of my knowledge, no other newscaster, on cable or network, is covering illegal immigration problems. If you want to be informed on this issue, listen to NPR and watch Lou Dobbs. He covers a different aspect of this problem every night on his Broken Borders segment.
Next, visit NPR and read some of their coverage. You can start at their five part series on illegal immigration and this series.
Pay very close attention to their story about The International Reach of the Mara Salvatrucha. Then ponder whether or not that dude would be willing to transport a suitcase anywhere in the United States. I'm sure he has friends who can cross our borders.
We are talking about the most serious National Security threat we have. The formula for our ultimate nightmare is Loose Nukes + Bin Laden + (MS-13) = Nuclear Disaster
That isn't the only problem we have with illegal immigration. I saw some comments about a permanent underclass. We have that now. Wages for American citizens are being depressed by illegal immigration. The poorest Americans are competing with illegal immigrants for the lowest paying jobs. Construction workers and factory workers are also having their wages depressed by illegal immigration.
Illegal immigration also puts a tremendous burden on our school system and hospitals. On Lou Dobbs last night, he mentioned that Arizona is recruiting teachers in Mexico, because that is the only way they can meet the demand for bi-lingual educators.
That's a short primer on our problems with illegal immigration. If it pisses you off, don't take it out on me or Lou or NPR. Blame the Democrats and blame the Republicans. This is what is known as a Toxic Political Cocktail. Neither party is seriously interested in addressing it for obvious reasons. They both have special interests who they are beholding to and cater to.
A recent Lou Dobbs viewer wrote in, "What's the point of changing the law if they aren't going to enforce it anyway?"
Last night a viewer wrote in that he appreciated the way Lou Dobbs talked truth to power to big government and big business. For the first time I recall Lou addressing an email, he turned to the camera and said:
Just to make sure everyone understands. We are critical of abusive big government and big corporate power on this show.
A little bit later, one of his co-workers was discussing a story about the "corporate elite." Lou turned to her and changed the phrase to the "arrogant corporate elite."
One of the reasons this is such a big problem is that the Democrats have been sitting on their thumbs and letting Republicans take the lead. Why are we surprised if we don't like illegal immigration legislation, if Democrats just sit back on their thumbs with a sock in their mouth? Until Democrats engage this problem, all we can expect are Republican solutions to a national problem.
If the Democrats are serious about this problem, the first thing we need to do is build a wall at the Mexican border and one at the Canadian border. There is no other way to secure our borders. If we don't secure our borders, it is only a question of time before Bin Laden or some other crackpot gets a loose nuke and explodes it somewhere in a city near you.
Interestingly enough, one of the genuine long term problems we have with Social Security is demographic. It won't be a real problem for another fifteen to thirty years, but sometime in that time frame we will run out of enough workers to support both Social Security and our economy without immigrant labor. But that's another story.