Yesterday, there were stories on this website and others about Hillary
Clinton's and Barack Obama's positions on allowing driver's licenses to
illegal aliens. I am not writing to argue about who said what when,
how, or why. These are the postions, as they stand now: Obama, yes.
Hillary, no.
I have to say here that I agree with Obama, and I will tell you why.
First of all, let me do my best to offer and then refute the main point
I've heard from several people on this website, and others,
particularly, on Huffington Post.
*Allowing illegal immigrants to have driver's licenses excuses the fact
that they broke the law to get into America.
I do not believe that is true. First of all, there are plenty of
criminals who have driver's licenses. And secondly, giving an illegal
immigrant a license is not a reward. What it does do is make sure that, 1.)
They have passed a test that makes sure they at least understand the
rules of the road, and 2.) They may be able to get insurance, so that,
if they do hit you, you will be covered by their liability insurance.
I think it is also helpful to be able to know who is here illegally,
and we need to do whatever we can to get as many as we can to come out of
the shadows. Above all, let's recognize two realities: This is not
in anyway a "good" solution, but it can be helpful. And also, whether
we give them licenses or not, the illegal immigrants will drive. We
can't find every illegal immigrant and banish them back from whence they
came. It is financially and logistically impossible.
If you take issue with my arguments, please do us both the favor and
come back with intelligent arguments, not rude, snide, unconstructive
comments that do nothing to add to anything.
To be honest here, the license issue is a tiny, and fairly
insignificant part of this debate. The larger questions are: How big a problem is
illegal immigration? And who's fault is it, really?
To answer the former, illegal immigration is a problem in this country,
but it is not an existential threat to America or American democracy,
or even the American economy. Again, illegal immigration is A FACTOR
in the US economy, but let's not pretend that it's not a factor which
is, at times, both beneficial and detrimental to the country at large.
Because, the truth of the matter is, if you really want to stop illegal
immigration, that can be done, but you have to take on those who are
ACTUALLY responsible for it.
So many people on this website and on HuffPo, especially, attacked
immigrants on a personal and visceral level. Its a classic case of
attacking the symptom and not the disease. The truth is that illegal
immigrants are a symptom, of the disease. Too many, in the comments that were
posted, blamed illegal immigrants for the low-paying jobs that they
(illegal immigrants) work, saying that those jobs pay what they do simply
because the illegal immigrants come here. To me, that's kind of like
saying the sun appeared in the sky because the earth showed up in the
solar system with life already on it, and it needed something to sustain
it.
Illegal immigrants haven't stolen anyone's jobs. Corporations GAVE
those jobs away to the lowest bidder. I beg all reasonable people, do not
blame the poor, desperate soul whose misfortune it was to bid the
lowest price. Illegal immigrants come here to work because companies, big
and small, are more than willing to hire them, so that they can save
money by paying them a tiny pittance.
What we do when we fault the illegal immigrant, instead of the company
paying him, is to cast blame on the weak, when we should cast it on the
strong. Let's consider that millions of manufacturing jobs have
disappeared in this country, not because illegal immigrants came and took
them, but because Big Business shipped them overseas to maximize profit.
The jobs that they could not ship away, they cut the wages for, and
of course, there was no way American workers could survive on that sorry
pay. So, someone whose fortunes were even lower---non-native
Latinos---whose home countries are among the poorest in the world, began to
pour into this country, legally and illegally, to do work that Americans
cannot afford to do. And since we've always had a government beholden
to money as opposed to people, very little was done to stop the influx.
It's fine if you think illegal immigration is a problem, I think it is
an issue too. I also think that the debate presently taking place
represents is the next wedge issue in a long pathetic line of wedge issues.
If good people allow this issue to become clouded, if we allow the
immigrant to become the enemy, while the Corporations represent the real
threat, we will pay the price for our petty blindness.
What's happened in this country, time and again, is that so-called
"leaders," when they've run out of places to hide, find someone to blame
for the woes of the people's whose votes they need most. In recent
elections, we've been told: "Flag burners, they're the one's who are
responsible for your lot in life....Those Hollywood liberals, they're the
reason your kids aren't learning....Those gay people, they're the reason
you're losing you're footing, and the Great Middle Class is
disappearing." And now it's "Those Mexicans, it's their fault that you lost your
job, your house, your stability---blame them!"
Are we really going to fall for this again? We've allowed people to
pit group against group, race against race, hope against hope.
When---when, I ask you, are we going to cast aside our lower demons, and give in
to our better angels? It was President Clinton who told us in 1993
that our commitment to each other as Americans was codified in the
realization that "but for fate, we the fortunate and the unfortunate, might
have been one another." He spoke of that commitment we have to one
another as Americans, I speak of that same commitment we have to one
another as human beings. The human race has wasted too many years, too many
centuries, on acrimony, division, hate, and evil. How many centuries
do you really think we have left? These questions we face are not new,
but we can CHOOSE to meet them with a new commitment---a commitment to
approach these problems from a rational, humane stance, to find
solutions that can last, and to seek a rising tide that will lift all boats.