Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [MLUG][Politics]The great immigration wash-out

[Nathan Odle <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Mike Miller wrote:
> How much do you think it costs to find 12 million people and move them 
> to other countries?

This is the reason that a "real" close-the-borders plan would just give 
everyone currently in the country amnesty, then would shut the doors 
behind them.  You'd get a surge in illegals as that date got close, but 
it's a long-term plan anyway.

If Nathan Odle were in charge of things, I'd consider the following plan 
(applicable to ALL illegals, not just Mexicans):

1)  Give everyone amnesty that's willing to walk into a federal office 
and sign up.  The deal would be, free resident alien status for 3 
years.  If you're good for that entire time, meaning that you keep a job 
and don't break the law, you get automatic citizenship.  If not, away 
you go.  Since we have some personal info about you now as part of the 
sign-up process, at least we've got a better chance of finding you for 
deportation than we do if you're an out and out illegal.  Felons would 
probably not be eligible for amnesty.  Then again, if we caught them and 
found them to be felons, we should be deporting them at that time anyway.

2)  Everyone not willing to sign up for the amnesty deal gets cut off 
entirely.  Entirely.  No health care, no welfare, no nothing.  Everyone 
else retains normal resident alien rights.  There should be no argument 
about this...they had their chance.

3)  Close the border.  Tight.  We have ways to make this work, including 
putting some pressure on Mexico to keep them from encouraging their 
people to come up here.  An adjunct strategy would be to do everything 
we can to help Mexico improve their standards of living so less people 
actually want to come up here.  Also, given 4), less people will be 
trying to get here illegally, there's just no need now that you can walk 
up to the border and be guaranteed resident alien status if you're not a 
criminal in your own country.

4)  For all new immigrants, give them the same 3-year probationary deal 
with automatic citizenship thereafter.  Those immigrating must submit to 
whatever background check is reasonable and possible.  Other than that 
there are no restrictions.  No quotas, no BS, if you're likely to be a 
contributing member of American society you're in. 

5)  It goes without saying that there's a good chance we'd go full-on 
bilingual with this plan as the majority of new immigrants would be 
Mexican.  I'll save the debate over whether or not an English test 
should be compulsory for another time.  Part of me says that the 
economic benefit of all the new contributing citizens would outweigh the 
costs of going full bilingual since we're practically there now.  
Besides, it's a relatively short-term situation - in 100 years it'll all 
merge into one language anyway.

6)  For full enforceability, best results would be achieved with a 
National ID card of sorts for citizens and resident aliens.  Used only 
for "citizen/resident alien-only" benefits.  I'm not sure I'd be willing 
to make this leap though.

7)  It's possible that very-long-term, this plan would result in the 
merging of the US and Mexico into a single country.  Likewise for any 
other plan that results in large-scale legal immigration.


What are the advantages to such a plan?  First off, we don't keep anyone 
out that's going to contribute to our society.  Yes, immigration is one 
of the major things keeping this country healthy.  Why?  Because an 
immigrant society isn't a complacent society - they remember what it was 
like under bad conditions - and thus helps defend us from a tyrannical 
government.  Also, on the whole immigrants are interested in work and 
that helps the economy.  I don't know how many other ways there are to 
say that immigration is good for America, but it is.

On the other side of things, we wouldn't have people floating around 
that we don't know about.  National security is increased over the 
current situation.  Also, people getting the social benefits are now 
fairly guaranteed to be those contributing to society (at least for that 
3-year period, and hopefully most continue after they get their 
citizenship).  We also solve the problem of people jumping across the 
border to pick up benefits they didn't earn.

Not sure the plan I've outlined is perfect, but it's something I haven't 
really seen discussed in the form I describe.

-N


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