Friday, May 18, 2007

Immigration

There's a new immigration reform bill that seems to be extremely convoluted in an attempt to please all sides of the issue. One glaring hole that I see right off the bat: funding. It doesn't say a thing about paying for the changes, except for fines of $5,000 for being here illegally.
Here's what no one seems to point out about the whole immigration issue: the main reason we have so many illegal immigrants is that it has become so hard to immigrate legally. Due to repeated budget cuts, the INS now takes 3 to 5 years to process a green card application. Many, if not most, of the people here illegally would rather be legal but cannot wait that long for a green card.
One of the most frustrating things about the rethuglican philosophy of cutting spending is that they cut programs that were working to the point that the program fails. Then when faced with the problems caused by the lack of a working system, they start a new, more expensive system when simply funding the prior program would be the better answer.

2 comments:

Demeur said...

You forgot to mention that it can take from 10 to 15 years to gain citizenship. At least that is what my hispanic coworkers tell me. Not to mention most native born Americans couldn't answer the questions on the test.

Anonymous said...

Labor costs are held down by keeping some portion of the population second-class.