The benefits are arguable on both sides. My illegales friends are happy with the situation, sending in 10x the amount of dollars they'd have back in the Old Country doing labor, and some look forward to establishing home in the US after getting education and experience on life here. In my consulting company I've sponsored H1B visas for immigrants with engineering educations, some of whom have gone back to Latin America, and others have settled down.
The point I've come to is that either maintain the law, or let the pressures build to change it, and change it. To do otherwise guts the American proposition of living under the rule of law, discourages transparency and causes all kinds of other illegal activities to find root, and pretty soon we're like Italy or Mexico with corruption through law enforcement and all the way to the top, which is already too much the case.
Re: the slave-master gains -- in truth, capital-holders gain anyway, with or without the rule of law, and its in the interests of citizens for the rule of law to be maintained, or to be outright opposed by civil disobedience or legislation. Accountability and personal courage is so lacking among government, politics and RWE apologists we're becoming the banana republics we despise.
Re: Curie quote -- excellent, perhaps the definition of the difference between cynical reactionary and more general liberal views: improvability of human condition. If you don't believe it, might as well have fascism as a more efficient way to organize affairs. If you do, you are in accord with Jeffersonian democracy, that the people will individually and collectively improve. |
