Polimom is afflicted with a dreadful disease: open-mindedness. It came upon me in adulthood, so I was able to move through my youth and adolescence with the normal cockiness and idealism through which I expect to watch my daughter suffer move, but it has affected my life profoundly.
This disease is the reason for my politics, in fact. It is rare that I am able to look at an issue anymore and only see one side of things. Worse than that, I continue to take in information all the time, ultimately leading me to the center on many topics — like immigration. Such a sticky question; open-mindedness is really bogging me down here.
Polimom understands the rule of law, and yes Virginia, the United States has laws about visas and immigration, but if it were merely a matter of “legal” vs. “illegal”, the debate would not be roiling the country. The problems for me, with even this most simple concept of legality, are a) What do you suppose the costs would be to round up, document / charge, and eventually deport 12 million people? and b) How do you plan handle the children?
As usual, it’s the children that stick in my craw (that would be the ‘mom’ part in my name) — because if a child is born in the US, (s)he is an American citizen. Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment of our Constitution:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges of immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdictiton the equal protection of the laws.”
Chances are pretty good that a large percentage of the students demonstrating across the country are American citizens, folks, and the paragraph above applies to them. Any estimated cost for enforcing the illegal aspect (a, above) will be exponentially increased because the rights of the citizen children must be addressed. As in defended. Contrary to the simplistic approach of some on the right, the United States cannot simply “throw out 12 million criminals“.
To be clear: Polimom is not at all impressed by the historically confused who are somehow thinking to reclaim all of North America, and people who support the reconquista with any grounding in reality (there are very few of these) should review America’s policies on the subject – domestic and international. (See: Native Americans and Israel) We cannot roll back time nor re-write history; that’s just dumb.
Yet the idiocy of the reconquista attitude is evenly matched by the paranoia of the hyper-nationalists, or inflammatory suggestions about putting all the illegal immigrants into the Superdome and Astrodome before sending them back across the border. That’s vulgar, and strikes me as racist to boot.
Finally, the arguments about whether illegals are filling jobs that could/should/would otherwise be taken by Americans: Polimom is still in “information intake” mode. So far, my (non)conclusions are, “Maybe, maybe not. Depends on what job and where… and do Americans understand the economic ramifications of what they’re asking for?”
This aspect of the immigration reform debate is so complex that it needs a separate post, because there’s no black or white for me here, either (or as some see it, black vs. brown).
Nothing about immigration reform is easy, frankly, and it’s beyond me how anybody can have a firm position on it. Certainly I don’t. Yet.