Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exist or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy."

  -- Ernest Benn--

"He only employs his passion who can make no use for his reason."

  -- Cicero--

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.  Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

  --Arthur Schopenhauer--

I believe in the power of prayer so I pray that one day we as a nation will no longer go for the ookie-doke from politicians and start working together as a community/nation/people to honestly and effectively address problems.  Some days I am filled with hope that I will live long enough to see that day and then there are days when I am dragged back to reality.  Last week was one of those days.  Last week when I heard about the Arizona Immigration Law, SB 1070, I was reminded that a honest, productive, intelligent debate geared toward formulating a real, viable, and tangible solution to a national problem becomes impossible when passion sparked by fear is injected into the country's psyche.

It is obvious by now that I am not a big fan of SB 1070.  I am not a fan of a law that in my opinion ignores the root cause of a problem and instead tries to chip away at one of the symptoms.  SB 1070 will not make people stop coming to our country or even Arizona illegally.  All it will do is subject some law abiding citizens to unnecessary harassment, stir up a bunch of commotion, and eventually be struck down by the United States Supreme Court.  That is not what I would call a solution.  That is what I would call a distraction.

I am sick and tired of politicians, pundits, and the press dancing around the obvious.  Some people fear illegal immigrants, but businesses make money by exploiting them.  The most effective way to stop a group of people that risk injury, prosecution, rape, and even death to come to this country in hopes of getting a job that paid better than what they had back home is to eliminate the reason why they come here.  Yes.  It is true that illegal immigration is a problem that we as a nation must address.  Yes.  It is also true that people that come here illegally are breaking the law.  What I do not understand is why so many people who claim to want to solve the problem always ignore the biggest cause of this problem . . . people who employ illegal immigrants.  The basic truth is that if we spent more of our resources as a nation enforcing the immigration laws against those people, we would see a huge decrease in illegal immigration in a short period of time because we will have removed one of the biggest reasons for people to come here.

People come here from all parts of the world (If you do not believe me look at the illegal entry cases in Chicago.  It is a true rainbow coalition).  Many come here for a better opportunity, which usually means a job.  If the government makes it too dangerous (i.e. also put people in jail who employ illegal immigrants) and expensive (fines, forfeiture, etc) to employers who hire illegal immigrant labor then many of the people will stop coming.  I am no fool.  I understand there are other reasons why people come here illegally and those issues must be addressed differently.  However, the great bulk of the people that come here illegally do so because of monetary reasons.  Once those reasons are removed many may no longer come here.  I want to be clear.  I am not condoning or making excuses for people that break the law by coming to this country illegally.  I just want an immigration law to have a legitimate chance of doing what it is supposed to do and that is stop or at least severely slow down illegal immigration instead of just racially profiling people.

I understand that it is much easier to just look at the illegal immigrant with contempt and ignore the business or individual that makes money off of the Illegal immigrant.  The bottom line is that either we do what comes easy by letting ourselves be washed up in a wave of emotion and blinded to what is likely to solve our problem or we can do what is hard by walking away from fear and taking an objective, reasoned, and measured looked at a real solution.  Sometimes the hardest road leads to the best solution.