The latest video from Drew Carey over at Reason.tv finally puts the immigration issue into the perspective it belongs — human freedom
“I think we should welcome all peaceful people to our country,” says Drew Carey. “They get to the pursue the ‘American Dream’ and we get to benefit from all the wonderful things that immigrants bring to our country—like good old fashioned soccer. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”
April 1st, 2008 at 9:35 am
Never mind that Drew doesn’t seem to even touch the concerns over illegal immigrants, just his concerns over xenophobia. Some of those newscasts, particularly the one concerning Michelle Malkin, placed some focus on illegal immigration. In fact, Drew never once made mention of illegal immigration, clearly trying to avoidthe topic. That doesn’t fly. Saying “we should welcome all peaceful people to our country” is all well and good, but this is a little naive considering how difficult it is to test this out, particularly among those who are here illegally. It may take time and be difficult, but if it is really that important for them to come here, then the work should be worth it to enter the country legally, for their safety and our own.
As for soccer, BORING. Sorry, it had to be said.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:37 am
There would be fewer illegal immigrants if the borders were more open than they are to people who want to come here and make a better life.
There was a time when we welcomed people like that, now we call them illegals and insult their culture.
And the soccer analogy has a point — why do we praise David Beckham for coming over here and getting paid millions to kick a ball with his foot for 90 minutes at a time but we shun the construction worker from El Salvador ?
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:58 pm
It used to be that the way you would enter the U.S. as an immigrant was through Ellis Island. Someone screwed up your name, you might spend a few weeks in quarantine, your criminal background was checked, then you were in. You were probably shipped of to a neighborhood, somewhere on the east coast, that was largely inhabited by other immigrants from your country of birth. It wasn’t perfect, but it’s how your ancestors got here. Mine, too.
These days, it takes years, if not decades. Thousands, in some cases tens of thousands of dollars in fees to the government, and to the lawyers to fill out the impossible to understand paperwork. If you have a desire to come here, you have three choices: do all of those things I just mentioned, stay in your third world s***hole, or enter illegally and hope you don’t get caught.
Is it any wonder that immigrants choose the latter? The oppressiveness of the current immigration laws creates the market for the various illegal means of coming here. These illegal means inherently intermingle violent criminals with the people who want to come here to work and do no harm to anyone.
Now that the laws have over-bureacritized the whole matter to the point of creating the crime that never used to surround immigration before, some of my countrymen delude themselves that more laws will fix what the existing laws broke.
I would be all in favor of strict enforcement of immigration laws, if those laws were Ellis Island style. But they aren’t. Anyone who wants the laws or the enforcement to be any more stringent than they are now is really saying, “I want strict immigration laws, now that I’m here.”