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Wednesday, April 12, 2006

C'mon Over!

I find it interesting that people get all hot and bothered about immigration. Call me stupid (you won't be the first, nor will you be alone), but I don't see the big deal. I say open our borders to whoever wants to come here. Open borders are, as far as I can see, much less of a threat to American's economy than so-called "Free-trade". All "Free-trade" means is that the big multi-nationals can use 10-year olds in Sri-Lanka, who work 12-hour days for a few pennies, to make sneakers that they can sell in America for a hundred bucks a pop, and not have to worry about paying an import tarif. We bitch that American jobs are going overseas and then go buy those sneakers. You cannot convice me that opening our borders to hard-working immigrants could be worse for our economy that that.

If you look back at our history, America's greatest economic booms and greatest expansion and innovation periods came during high-immigration eras. Chinese immigrants built our railways. European immigrants cut the stone and built our cities, and staffed the army that cleared the Great Plains (ok, they cleared them of the native Americans who were there at the time, but that's another issue). Immigrants worked the textile mills in New England and broke and tilled the sod in Nebraksa. Frankly, new blood is good for the country. You have folks who feel strongly enough about working hard to imrove their lives that they are ready to pack up and move themselves and their families to a foreign land? Send 'em here!

You also hear about the "security" issue from some folks who want to control immigration. I'm sorry, but that makes no sense to me whatsoever. What are they worried about, that a bunch of Mexican immigrants are going to poison our tacos? Close the doors to immigrants and people who want to come here for evil purposes are going to get here some other way-we still allow tourists, don't we? Unless you want to become North Korea, you simply can't seal the borders to terrorists who are determined to get into the country.

So like it says on the Statue of Liberty- come on over!


It's Wednesday, so there's a new Mulligrubbers post up today. Ever wonder what would happen in George Bush went on American Idol? So did I.

What's Barbara Bush got to do with all this? Nothing good, that's for damn sure...

2 comments:

Forrest Proper said...

Yeah- the thought of the Bush administration reforming immigration is scary -they have such a great track record and all...

for some reason this brought Global Warming to mind, and that wall they want to build between Texas and Mexico, and I got to wondering, which is higher above sea level- Mexico or Texas?

Phoebe Fay said...

I think the real force behind these immigration debates are all the industries that reap so many benefits from *illegal* immigration. If they had to hire legal immigrants, they'd have to give them decent wages and working conditions, but as long as they're hiring illegals, they can basically treat them like slaves.

We could probably end the problem of illegal immigration if we actually started cracking down on the companies who are making money off the backs of illegals.

But don't look for that to be happening anytime soon.