A Stitch in Haste

Here are my hasty stitches on the President's speech on immigration reform, and on immigration policy generally:

--Is there anything this President won't do to scare people out of joining the National Guard? It used to be quite simple really: If you wanted to be a part-time soldier you either joined the Reserves and ran the (lower) risk of overseas combat, or you joined the National Guard and ran the (higher) risk of combating local disasters. Neither option necessarily trumped the other and was a matter of personal preference. Today, thanks to Afghanistan, Iraq and Katrina, and now Bush's proposed elimination of the Posse Comitatus Doctrine (and don't forget stop-loss), there simply is no coherent distinction between the Guard and the Reserves anymore. To this administration, "parts is parts" and "the part-time military is the part-time military." And that cannot possibly be good for the National Guard's recruitment goals. (Also, let's keep in mind that activating the Guard is not a cost-free proposition — it disrupts the Guardmembers, their families, their employers and their hometown tax bases in a way that is not true for the far more logical alternative of simply "hiring more Border Patrol").

--If "the border is broken" (I'm not convinced that it is), then I say go ahead and build a wall. This country has never shied away from building large, wasteful and expensive public works boondoggles allocated to politically favored districts — why start now?

--The President's "guest worker program" is one of the stupidest ideas I've seen emerge from a White House since Hillarycare. Legal "guest workers" will behave no differently than illegal immigrants. When their guest period expires, they'll simply vanish (assuming they haven't married a citizen or had a child during their residency). If the incentives don't change, then the behavior won't change and the outcome won't change. This is not a difficult concept.

--As a member of the most recent group of "Others Who Are Ruining America"™, I can certainly commiserate, at least to some extent, with Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. And I'm amazed at how quickly and efficiently the right-wing bigot brigades were able to redirect their energies and their agenda away from gays to their new-found threat: illegal immigrants (who, apparently, only just started coming here). In any case, consider yourself warned, mi mis amigos: you have no idea how mean, spiteful and downright vicious today's radical social conservatives can be toward whomever they target as "Others." (Well, okay, maybe you do have some idea.)

---

Regarding the "meta-problem" of illegal immigration (i.e., "Why is this even happening and why should we care?"), I think it reduces down to two core questions:

1. If conditions in Mexico are so bad that so many of its citizens are fleeing to the U.S., then shouldn't we be asking, "How is it possible that the United States borders a Third World nation?"

2. If the illegal immigrants from Mexico (and elsewhere) are competing with U.S. citizens for low-paying manual labor jobs, then shouldn't we be asking,"How is it possible that the United States is producing its own ultra-unskilled workers who cannot even compete with illegal immigrants?"

I think the two-word answer for the first question is "crony capitalism" and for the second is "public schools." If you want a long-term solution to the illegal immigration crisis, then you simply have to address those four simple words.