Immigration

We have thousands of miles of unprotected boarders. Barring a massive militarization of our borders we are not going to stop illegals from getting in.

It is mostly small businesses and agriculture that employee illegals in the US, and it is politically stupid to start arresting farmer John for hiring some help to get the crop in.

Current forms of ID are too easy to forge and you cannot easily hold companies responsible for hiring illegals if they have forged ID.

As I’ve said before the only rational response to illegal immigration is a national ID card. Backed up by hefty fines, you have to have an ID to get a job, rent an apartment, get a drivers license, etc. it will be impossible to live an illegal life. This does cause me some concern about maybe giving the government a little too much power, but I believe our country can strike a livable balance.

We agree on the illegal issues, I don’t want them, but we are going to have them unless we have a national ID.

What needs to be addressed is the underlying nativist arguments threaded throughout your posts, your concern that the current large wave of immigrants is regrettably altering the fabric of the United States.

I concede that this wave of immigrants is altering the fabric of the U.S., but I don’t hold regrets about it. Our culture needs to change to succeed.

It all comes down to the fact that I am not really a cultural conservative. I believe the strength of the United States is that we have the ability to change and adapt rapidly to new situations. We are an evolutionary country, a grand experiment, radically changing ourselves to fit with the times. We beat the Soviets by shedding the prominent isolationist tendencies preceding WW2 and fully engaging the world. We beat the Axis by jump starting the sleeping industrial might of the US, taking full advantage of the revolution in transportation, communications and cryptography. We radically changed the economy during the 80’s from an aging industrial economy to an information economy. We beat the Japanese through superior management and wiser investment strategies.

We change a lot. America is on the go and doesn’t have time for past transgressions. Don’t believe me? Look at Britain, Canada, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Japan and Germany. Too long ago? What about Russia? Hardly a peep from the US regarding Chechnya, the media crackdown or the outright theft of a rather large energy concern. During the cold war the US was constantly criticizing the Russians. Hell, even Jimmy Carter did it.

I am not afraid of new influences. We will absorb those that are beneficial and get rid of those that aren’t. We didn’t turn into a new Italy or Germany or Ireland from the massive immigration of the early 20th century. We will not turn into a new Mexico or Guatemala or India. Our culture is too tempting. By the second generation American cultural influences outweigh the native. The third generation is virtually indistinguishable culturally from any other American.

Our economy obviously needs this labor to compete in the world, and native Americans aren’t having enough kids to grow the population so we can keep the SS/Medicare Ponzi scheme teetering on the brink of disaster. I don’t see us fixing SS AND Medicare any time soon so keep em coming. I would prefer legally but whatever the free market will bear. The odds of a terrorist killing me or a loved one by sneaking across the border (vs. getting a student visa and living the high life before smashing a plane into a building) is smaller than the inevitable economically ruinous tax increases needed to cash-out of the whole scheme if there aren’t a whole lot more taxpayers.