Immigration Nonsense...

I am not exactly sure why this has crept up into a top tier issue. One would suspect Republican shenanigans, a la Gay marriage bans, except it appears to be uniting Democrats and tearing the Republicans apart. Go figure.

I agree controlling a border is a good thing for a sovereign nation to do. I am, however, fairly certain it is not the horrible national dilemma that is being described. Unless you don't want the U.S. to become majority latino and Spanish to rise as a true second language, that is. Yes, what makes my skin crawl is that the strong "base" for immigration reform just doesn't like all these damn funny-talking Mexicans. And how they want to impregnate our women. Damn you Paco, stay away from my daughter. Ba-CHOW! <--(Shotgun noise).

Putting that aside for the moment, National Guard on the border ain't gonna help. Big walls and laser turrets ain't gonna help. It is 2000 miles of border and nothing we can do will really stop people from coming, outside of getting batshit crazy (i.e. start shooting, permanently imprison, etc.). What will slow immigration is to remove the jobs. If they can't work, they won't come.

Fine and great and all, but while it is simple to say, I have done a rough estimate of what that would entail and I am leaning strongly towards the "ain't worth it" camp.

OK, to get rid of people hiring illegal aliens requires strong enforcement. Raids. Investigations. Imprisonment. That is a lot of new law officials, training them, supplying them, more jail space, office space, etc.

It would be wholely unfair to fine (or even jail) people when they can not really tell who is legal and who is not. So we need a new social security card/work card. NOT the same as a national ID, which I find creepy, but simply a new social security/green card that one needs to bring on hiring day. This means issuing it to everyone, a major logistical nightmare in itself. You need to pay to develop it, make it as secure as presently possible. Pay to have some sort of national computer system to properly keep track/issue them. You will need offices everywhere to respond to people who lose them, etc. Some of this stuff can be piggy-backed on existing systems, but it will require a ton of new bureaucracy nonetheless.

We will need more law enforcement to fight counterfeiting, trade in stolen cards. We will have to get tougher, requiring more jailing.

We will need to set up a system to allow presently illegal immigrants to attain a legal status, otherwise the new card system is tantamount to eviction of 11 million people. Not only is this a bad idea, it would never work, lead to riots, etc. Someone needs to run this system and it must be fully functional before we require the cards to work.

So I have expanded several law agencies and created a couple new bureacracies that are social security administration big. Every hiccup in this process will lead to mass chaos, lawsuits, angry marches, businesses closing, etc. And all this before expanding Border Patrol, which is really the only logical way to close our borders to unwanted traffic (the Wall idea is Sooooo dumb). What do you suppose the total price tag of this whole effort will be?

And for what, to increase the price of lettuce? Give Janitor jobs back to our inner city youth?

I just think there are better ways to spend our money. Of course I think we have little reason to fear that anything so comprehensive will come out of this congress. I expect stop-gap, under-funded efforts that sound great but actually make things worse.

You heard it here first.