Im sure that some immigrants are abusing our system, but everything I read suggests that the net long term impact of immigration, authorized or not, is positive. If you have run across any solid data that indicates otherwise, I would love to see it. I am a data driven realist, with a bit of compassion thrown in.
Shutting the border completely and absolutely would devastate our economy due to the direct costs of building and maintaining a Berlin Wall edifice and the indirect costs associated with losing access to the low skill labor we need to keep our economy humming. And I don’t think that the majority of Americans want that kind of jack boot approach to solve the problem, else congress would have passed laws to do this twenty years ago.
I ge that some Americans are uncomfortable with people who don’t speak our language and come from a different background. But immigrants do the work that natives Americans won’t do, whether it’s crop picking, animal butchering, or low level manual work needed in construction or road maintenance. If we throw them all out, our economy would grind to a halt. We need a solution that reflects that reality, and treats immigrants with dignity reflecting the fact that many have been here for a full generation. |
