The problem with the President's plan

Some people are just plain dense. And apparently, when it comes to immigration, everyone in America is dense. The President's speech last night was fairly good. But it ignores two key realities. Our country attracts MILLIONS around the world each year. The reason we have a problem with Mexican immigrants is because it's so easy to get here from there. But don't you think there are just as many, if not more, poor Africans, poor Asians and poor Eastern Europeans that would like to be here. The current immigration law limits legal immigration to a lottery system and puts a very heavy burden on anyone who wants to come here to live. So any solution that doesn't address this pent up demand is not a solution.

Let's look at the other flaw in the President's plan. The plan, as outlined last night, does not seek to address the fiscal problems associated with immigration. Some immigrants are a drain on society and some system needs to be put in place to filter those individuals out. My suggestion is limiting access to social services for a short period of time after arriving here. No unemployment, no social security, no medicare, no food stamps. This sounds harsh... and it is. But those are safety nets for people that have paid into the system. They are not, and never were intended to be, net cash flow TO individuals over a long period of time. Anything we can do to restrict that cash flow will both save us money, and discourage immigration from people that are coming to leech or coast.

Our society has become greatly imbalanced against unskilled labor. The fact that so many people want to come here to work in fields and on construction sites is proof of that. Our immigration law greatly favors those immigrants with some sort of upper level job skill. Our school system emphasizes training and where my parents thought that a college degree was a big deal, a college degree is now required for many jobs (witness the NC State basketball coach). What we are witnessing is the free flow of capital that capitalism needs to work. In this case, it's a flood of immigrants ready and willing to work at jobs that we've turned our back on. The solution is not to turn our backs on those facts but to embrace them and come up with solutions that match our goals with reality.