“Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Okay, so this is a potential hornets' nest, but it’s an issue with which I’ve been grappling for some time. A recent conversation with a friend this past weekend caused it to resurface and made me realize that I still haven’t come to any kind of satisfactory conclusion. I’m hoping some enlightened discussion will help sort things out.
The issue is the prevalence of undocumented persons in the US, as well the services and resources that are made available to them. My conversation this past weekend centered on whether or not undocumented high school students should be eligible for financial aid and/or offered in-state tuition rates for US colleges. But, I’d like to extend that to any child here illegally or whose parents are here illegally. Should they be able to take advantage of the services and resources available to citizens? Are they draining resources/taking places away from kids who are here legally? Ostensibly, undocumented people are not paying back into common society through taxes so the money that goes out to them is not coming back in. (It could be argued that they contribute to society in other ways.) However, would you deny any child — regardless of why or how they came to be here—the services they need to lead a healthy, happy life? Taken a step further, what about services made available to undocumented adults — such as emergency health care? (Undocumented persons are also typically blamed for stealing jobs away from Americans, but I would argue that the jobs they take are usually the lower-paying, menial jobs Americans don’t want.)
Anyway, this is just the tip of the iceberg but the general questions is: what to do about undocumented people in the US? Should services be denied to anyone who is not a citizen/registered alien? Should we just make everyone who’s here already a citizen so they can become part of the system, pay taxes, and so we can get an accurate picture of how much of our resources are being used and by whom? Is that too great a security risk? Do we tighten control of our borders? Is that even possible? Do we spend money to improve living conditions in our neighboring countries so that not as many people are enticed to try to enter the US illegally?
posted by ze roberto @ 6/03/2005 11:09:00 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I've waited to comment on this, because I was curious what others would say. But, here's my opinion: tighten up the immigration laws, lock down the borders, and quit extending social services and other entitlements to illegal immigrants. Sure, they're doing jobs that other, lower-class Americans don't want to do. Sure, they are here getting a piece of the same American Dream that all of our ancestors, at some point, came to this country to get. But but but... they didn't go through legal channels. They are a disproportionately large drain on our resources compared to their contributions to it -- are they not? And maybe worst, most of the money they do make working here goes back out of the country in the form of wire transfers to Central, Latin, South America and the Caribbean. Where's the fairness in that? Why do I pay taxes that get used to give illegal immigrants services, only to have our nation's resources pulled back out of the domestic economy?
As an aside, there's a local police chief in New Hampshire who has taken immigration policy into his own hands. He has decided to charge illegal immigrants in his jurisdiction with criminal trespass and demand they report to an immigration office withing 3 days of conviction. So far, a couple of arrests have been made but none of gone to trial.
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