My take on illegal immigrants

Well, I suppose that I must comment on the whole illegal aliens thing. No one in congresss is getting this right. They are, as usual, illustrative of the absurd. On the one hand we can ask illegals nicely to please let us know about them and then charge them a fine roughly equal to a month's wages in a $7 an hour/60 hour a week job, after all it's not like they live below the poverty line or anything. On the other, we can grant them blanket amnesty and go on with our lives.

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm as white as they come. The number of Hispanic friends I've had throughout my life could be counted on one hand. I grew up in a place called White County, Indiana, for Pete's sake. So, I can't say that I'm any kind of expert on Hispanic issues or anything like that. On the other hand, I was the only Spanish-speaking teller at a bank in an affulent area of a large city. I saw more than my share of illegals trying to cash checks and open accounts. Most of them didn't have any ID, not even a Mexican driver's liscence (one guy did, but we couldn't accept it as ID). Generally one guy would have ID and would cash a large check, then pass the cash out to his buddies. So, I do have some perspective.

Here's my proposal:

1. Close the borders. Hire 50,000 border agents, put up a Berlin wall-esque fence, whatever. Before we try to deal with the ones already here, we ought to stop new ones from coming in as much as possible.

2. Grant blanket amnesty. You heard me. I'm a die-hard conservative, but this is the only thing that makes sense. The main issue we have with illegals is a security one. We need to be able to separate the sheep from the goats, and the only way to do that is to give them an incentive to show up. Give them a certain amount of time, say a month, to register. All they would need to do is provide an address and proof of employment.

3. Grant the employers amnesty. Employers would have to provide proof of employment for people, so they would need to be protected from prosecution, or they won't provide the proof of employment.

4. Remove impediments to hiring legal migrant workers, the only requirement should be that the job pay at least minimum wage and relevant taxes. (Don't want to pay the taxes? Hire the migrants as contract employees and make it their responsibility.)

5. After a month, anyone without a temporary green card gets deported, and anyone employing such workers is subject to heavy fines and mandatory jail time. Provide incentives for reporting this. Anyone with a temporary green card who leaves the country will not be allowed back in. Fines go directly toward the INS budget. Remove all temporary workers from public assistance and redirect that money toward the INS budget.

6. Hire the necessary number of INS agents to conduct background checks on registered temporary workers and to deport illegals. If a person can pass the background check, provide a green card, if they can't, deport or arrest them (depending on whether they pose a terrorist threat or not).

7. Put a hold on all immigration except that of dependant family members of U. S. citizens. The moratorium would be something like 6 months to a year, how ever long it would take to do the background checks.

8. When immigration is reopened, make it easier for people to emigrate. Toughen the background checking on new immigrants, but ease the financial requirements. Right now it is ridiculously difficult for a person to emgrate to this country unless they have a job waiting for them and an employer willing to jump through hoops to get them here.

I think this would solve most of the problems we have with illegals, and it would certainly address many of the security issues.