Discussion: Illegal Immigration

My opponent Lynda Llamas says, "No human being is illegal," and she's right. My opponent Bill Bodell says, "We can't take them all," and he's also right. However, neither position addresses the root causes of illegal immigration, nor does either side of the immigration debate propose real solutions.

Why do people come to this country illegally? Well, overwhelmingly they're doing it to find work. What type of person leaves behind their family, their friends, the entire life they know in order to sneak illegally into another country to take menial work? One who is desperate.

I work with a lot of immigrants. My employer has attorneys on staff whose full-time job it is to negotiate the legal and bureaucratic nightmare involved with getting these immigrants their green cards. The immigrants I work with are overwhelmingly highly educated experts in their respective fields, who are generally affluent. If it takes teams of attorneys months or years of work to get the wealthy into our country legally, what chance does someone whose fondest hope is a minimum-wage job picking grapes have?

The truth is, our economy depends on immigrants. Yet the system set up to control our borders shuts out the immigrants we need so desperately: those who are willing and able to do jobs, inexpensively, that we don't have the resources to get done otherwise. Because there's no way for these people to come in legally, they must come in illegally.

So why is our border so poorly defended? Well, the truth is that most people know we need these immigrant laborers. Most people know that the people who are coming to our country illegally are overwhelmingly otherwise-honest, hard-working people who just need to provide for starving families back home. Most people look the other way.

The short-term debate about immigration is whether we need easier immigration or tighter borders. My position is that we need both.

If we have a meaningful temporary worker program, one that does not require thousands of dollars for attorneys and months or years of waiting, there will be no excuse for people to sneak in illegally, and the borders will be easier to police because everyday Americans will stop looking the other way. If it's easy to enter the country legally, we can then assume that anyone entering illegally is up to no good.

Similarly, if we have a secure border, it will no longer be easier for someone to slip in undocumented than for them to come in properly, legally.

So the short-term solution is to adopt a temporary worker program, to reduce the bureaucracy at the border and in the INS, and to tighten border security. But that's only a short-term solution. Ultimately, this doesn't address the underlying problem.

The real cause of illegal immigration is poverty.

If you were able to earn a decent living, support your family, and get decent healthcare near home, would you stay at home or pack up and sneak illegally into another country to do menial work? If we want to stop illegal immigration, we need to address worldwide poverty.

So what can we do about worldwide poverty? Well, unlike the majority of people addressing this issue, I'm not going to propose taking your tax money and dumping into the corrupt governments of other nations of the world.

What truly ends poverty? A one-time handout of cash is nice, but it doesn't end poverty. The real way to end poverty is to create jobs. When people work, their standard of living rises. As the standard of living rises, they consume more, opening up more markets for American goods and services. Ultimately, if people work, they can afford everything that they hope to get here in America at home, and won't need to come here.

So how do we create jobs? Well, the first step is to do away with legislation that prohibits U.S. entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations from investing overseas.

It only takes one American business, entrepreneur, or non-profit to take a chance and build a factory (or whatever) in these poor areas to start the process. Soon, the local people are earning money and more businesses will need to start up to exploit the new market. As the standard of living rises, our unions should be down there ensuring that working conditions are good and making sure that everyone is being paid a fair wage.

Capitalism, when allowed to do its job, works! Believe it or not, the very protectionist policies we put in place to prevent illegal immigration are the root cause of illegal immigration!

If you don't like illegal immigration, let's work together to end poverty.