IMMIGRATION
of the matter
One of the worst habits we must break is foolishly believing the promises made by politicians who have zero intention of keeping them and, as a result, allow our problems to get progressively worse. Sure, maybe hearing some of the pie-in-the-sky b.s. our politicians throw at us may help us sleep better tonight, but the perpetual charade of political theatre in this country depletes us of two things we simply do not have: time and money.
We have a decision to make, America, and we need to make it right now: Either we can continue to believe empty promises, or we can start intelligently solving our challenges once and for all. We strongly suggest the latter. We have to start clearing the deck on some of this stuff.
The last major immigration bill to pass Congress was the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Well over 30 years ago! Meanwhile, year after year, politicians act like they are gung-ho about tackling comprehensive immigration reform on the campaign trail but avoid it like the plague in-between elections — while billions and billions of dollars fall through the cracks.
And let’s be honest: Despite what they say publicly, it doesn’t appear anyone in Washington even wants to do anything about this. Even though most of them love to say otherwise on congressional panels or in front of television cameras, they have proven time and time again they don’t have the appetite to round-up millions of unauthorized immigrants and deport them — even if we had the logistical capacity to do it, which we don’t.
Their behavior should come as no surprise. Immigration has always been the poster child of our nation’s fly-swatting-policymaking approach. For decades, this topic has given our politicians the perfect opportunity to pander to their base with flawed terrorist rhetoric and fearmongering.
Instead of constructing intelligent and thoughtful ideas, many in Washington have repeatedly lobbed a rhetorical Molotov cocktail of anger, frustration, blame, and fear (we're looking at you, Republicans).
Because they have zero ideas — beyond making America a cement-walled compound — they try to make the issue as complicated as possible by adding domestic disorder, national security, and America’s “rule of law” into the mix. This is an effective means for them to gain support, because between cultural chaos, terrorism, and “illegal” aliens, almost every fear that Americans harbor can be exploited. This tactic is extremely dangerous, however, because it prevents accurate, independent definitions of the prevailing challenges and further distorts the already blurry line that exists between them. The more tangled and convoluted these problems get, the more impossible they seem to solve.
But, believe us, they can be solved! Once we untangle all the concerns, we can appropriately break down the elements of each and finally assign them achievable solutions. In this case especially, doing something cannot possibly be worse than never doing anything at all.
When it comes to immigration, it doesn’t really matter what we believe should happen. Or even what is fair. We have a majorly complicated challenge on our hands, and the only way to truly find sustainable solutions for majorly complicated challenges is to build strategies within the context of the realities of the situation, not what we wish the realities were.
Before we get started, let us say this. Not everyone can live here, and we totally get that. And there are people who will vehemently disagree with some or even all these ideas, and we get that too.
But as we come up with solutions to this challenge — whatever they end up being — let’s please not lose the essence of who we are. First and foremost, we are the country that welcomes the poor, the tired and the huddled masses. We are the country that celebrates life, liberty, and justice for all. We are the country that perfected the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion. We are the United States of America!
At the end of the day, even with the most open-armed proposals, there is simply no choice but to turn many people away from this glorious country....
.... but we don’t have to be jerks about it. At our best, we’re just not that kind of country. And, deep down, we all know it.
Citizenship and, as an extension, immigration have been highly debated issues since the beginning of the Great Experiment we call the United States of America. First there was the Naturalization Act of 1790 which offered citizenship to “free white people,” then the Naturalization Act of 1870 which extended citizenship to African slaves not born in America.
Sprinkled throughout 1812 to 1902, there were political parties like the Know Nothing Party, which was anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, and laws like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act which, if you didn’t quite get it from the name, excluded Chinese immigrants from entering the United States. There were also the Wars of Expansion and other brutal conflicts fought to expand our nation’s territory: Creek Indian War (1813-1814); Trail of Tears (1838); Mexican War (1846-1848); Bleeding Kansas (1854-1856); Battle of Little Bighorn (1876); and the Spanish-American War (1898).
This all eventually led to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart–Celler Act. The Hart-Celler Act abolished the 1920s-era National Origins Formula, a series of qualitative immigration quotas based solely on national origin. These quotas significantly restricted immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere. Or, to put it more bluntly, the National Origins Formula blatantly discriminated against Southern and Eastern Europeans, Asians, and other non-Western and Northern European ethnic groups.
So, we obviously have a long history when it comes to these issues. But it’s now high time to stop the nonsense and get realistic about our situation. Immigration is one of those issues where we desperately need to move beyond ideology and just do the math.