Immigration for Dummies

Immigration For Dummies
The View from the Middle

To be sure, the reference to “dummies” in the title of this piece is not directed at my readers, whom I believe are some of the most intelligent and well-informed people in the country. The dummies I’m referring to in my title are the dummies in Washington DC. Our politicians are either boneheaded and don’t understand the basics of the immigration issue or they are corrupt, manipulating scoundrels more intent on their power than actually fixing the problems we face as a country. In case they are just dim witted, I have an analogy that will help them understand the question of illegal immigration.

A few years ago, our house had a leak. The water was coming in from the second floor and pouring through a first floor window and eventually dumping gallons of water on our dining room’s hardwood floor. At the end of the stormy night, there was damage done to the ceiling, walls and floor in our dining room. What to do?

Some people were very willing to come in and fix all the water damage to our dining room, but Brenda and I had to think longer term than the next few days or even weeks. What if we fixed the dining room and then it rained again? If we hadn’t found and fixed the leak (the source of the water) we would be right back where we started after the next rain storm with a water damaged dining room.

So, Brenda and I decided to find and fix the leak before we fixed the damage done to our dining room. Now, I don’t want to paint my wife and I as some sort of geniuses. We just applied common sense and decided to mend the leak to avoid future damage before we repaired the dining room walls, ceiling and floor.

So let’s apply common sense to the illegal immigration problem in America. We have between ten and twenty million illegal aliens in this country who have come across our southern boarder over the years. Now, some politicians will tell us that we need to handle their fates right now and then down the road we can talk about securing our boarder. Isn’t that like fixing our dining room before we identify the leak and fix it?

Common sense would suggest that we need to address boarder security before or at least simultaneously to resolving the mess that our leaky boarders have created in the US. We need a wall in some places. Technology can plug some holes and people can be used in other areas to stem the tide of illegal immigration. If we can get Mexico to pay for it later on by reducing our aid to them or charging some tariffs on their exports to our country, that would be great. That would be like Brenda and I getting our insurance to cover our leak and damage. But, if Brenda and I couldn’t get insurance to pay for it, could we just ignore the problem? Of course not. We had resolve the issue no matter what, and the same thing applies to our southern boarder.

The President’s first offer to fix the DACA / boarder problem is actually very reasonable. It offers a path to citizenship for almost two million DACA adults and their parents. It requests $25 billion for boarder security (that’s more than just a wall). It doesn’t suggest to end chain migration, but to tighten it so that it can only be used for the nuclear family (parents & siblings) and it does suggest an end to the visa lottery program, which is to be replaced by a merit based immigration system to be devised in the future.

This all sounds like a great compromise and a lot of common sense to me. Beware of those who would demonize this plan. I would suggest that they either don’t want to solve the problem at all (Nancy Pelosi) or they just want to fix the dining room without finding and fixing the leak in the ceiling. They are either ignorant or corrupt and I will reject their denigration and ridicule as a lack of serious study or common sense.