Amazing Grates, How Sour the Sound
As most of you know, I have been teaching at the college level for over twenty-five years. I clearly remember in Ethics courses having class debates on illegal immigration twenty years ago. It is both amazing and grating on my mind on two accounts that the debate hasn’t changed.
Firstly, it is amazing and grating that the average person in our country has had concerns over illegal immigration for twenty years… and yet nothing substantive has been done by Congress to fix the problems. Nothing. They just debate. All talk. No action. It is amazing that the American people don’t demand solutions by electing representatives who will promise what they will do and then do what they promise.
Secondly, it is amazing and grating to me that the dynamics of this policy failure is clearly rooted in debate and action dynamics that are stagnant, and quite frankly, as repugnant as the smell of a stagnant pond full of dead and dying things. For twenty straight years, the left has focused on the plight of illegal immigrants and the individual struggles they experience. For twenty straight years, conservatives have focused on strengthening the border to reduce the numbers of people illegally entering the country. For twenty years, the conservatives have backed down, believing the left’s promises to deal with border security but only after we deal with the humanitarian needs; and for twenty years, the conservatives have not followed up with demanding that the left follow through with dealing with security needs – or even reversing the dynamic and demanding security be fixed before aid is doled out. Hence border security never gets fixed. I care about the plight of the illegal immigrants, even though they have willingly chosen to put themselves at risk. I would love to see wealthy private citizens, cooperatives of average citizens (like the bikers who brought food to the immigration center in Las Cruces), and big corporations donate humanitarian aid to these people. I realize, though, the better we make the living conditions of the illegal immigrants, the more we entice future illegal immigrant to come. This is not a sustainable answer.
What is most grating to me is that nothing has been done by Congress to deal with the underlying problem – people coming here illegally. What is amazing to me is that unless border security is fixed, our children and grandchildren will be debating and debating still in 2040… and still fixing nothing. What is amazing and grating to me is that if nothing changes, we will surrender our borders and very likely no longer be an independent sovereign nation.
For more thoughts by me on various subjects, visit my blog: https://jimshaul.org