OK, the Supreme Court said "No" to Arizona's punitive immigration law. Most of its provisions were invalidated because they "undermine federal law."
The court did not reject the controversial "show-me-your-papers" provision because it hasn't yet been implemented, and the Supremes explicitly anticipated "other preemption and constitutional challenges" to that provision after it goes into effect.
I'll repeat myself here: I absolutely agree that illegal immigration is illegal, and we should work hard to minimize it. Regulation of immigration to the United States can only be implemented reasonably at the federal level. We should have more effective regulation.
And, with trepidation, I'll repeat the tired point that many of our forebears were illegal or unwanted immigrants in the past, and look how we turned out…
Let's call it as it is. Many illegal immigrants and many legal immigrants work real hard doing work that most American citizens don't want to do.
If you think it's a great idea to get rid of all immigrants, then you have to be willing to make some very unlikely changes in your life.
Let's offer citizenship to the folks who are here—legal or illegal—and want to work hard, often in jobs we don't want to do.
A previous thought on immigration....
We've been tightening up our immigration laws up in Canada, so we're having a similar debate - my concern is for the people who follow the legitimate process of apply to move to our country - you can't reward people for jumping the queue and by tolerating it you in turn penalize people who use the legitimate process - if you can't control immigration, you can't attract the people you country needs most and instead you attract cheaters who would seem to be more likely to continue cheating and abusing your system rather than contribute to it
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to note that there has been virtually no illegal immigration into the US over the past year.
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