Well, the “illegal immigrant” debate still rages within the country. It is complicated, to some degree, because human beings are involved. As I have attempted to understand what the real issue is, the “human issue” is (as I understand it) the point for the more liberal view of the situation. They simply have a hard time turning down aid to someone “trying to take care of their life” or “get out of their bad situation.”
So, to that liberal person, coming to the US makes tons of sense and as such, the rest of the country should see that need and desire to help. Thus, any law about entering the country is broken willingly because they see themselves holding to a higher law, some moral law about helping people.
It’s a tough argument to deal with unless you are happy being the “mean jerk” who hates people. However, it must be dealt with if we plan on holding firm to the idea of “nation.” Now that idea is probably too large to address in this post, but at the root of those who are clamoring for a tighter system of control is the desire to hold the line about what a nation is or means.
However, for now, I wanted to throw out an analogy about the problem with just saying, “let anyone come however they can” to our country.
Imagine you live in a nice neighborhood. Perhaps not a “gated community” but a regular somewhat upscale (middle class for sure) neighborhood. Everyone takes care of their lawns. There are no junky cars around nor trash in the streets. Everyone has running water, electricity, lights, air conditioning and so forth. The kids go to school and everyone pays their taxes to support the schools, firemen, police and public services. Not every family has the same amount of money, but within the range of the neighborhood, everyone has basic medical insurance. It’s a nice place to live, kind of like where many of us live now.
However, one day you notice that some people have just come in and taken up residence in your neighborhood. They’ve pitched a tent or are perhaps sleeping in their car. Maybe they’ve just waltzed into your spare bedroom and are sleeping there. When you ask them what they are doing, you get this story about how hard things are where they are from, how conditions are poor and that they need a chance to get ahead. Worse, however, than them just living on your street or spare bedroom, they send their kids to the school and yet pay no taxes for it. They expect you to just share some of your food. They also plan on you paying for their medical expenses when that need arises.
Now reading this, it is not hard to know what most of us would do or think. And for the sake of argument, let’s admit that their story is true—it really is bad where they are from. It’s a tough thing! But, and here’s the rub, no matter how bad it is, that would not give them the right to just move into your house or live in their car on your street. You know, as I do, you would get them to move on and if need be, you would call in the police. There would be no question about it.
And that is where we are in the immigrant issue. Few, if any, of the people I know or have heard who oppose the illegal immigration are mean nor are they not without sympathy to the plight. They (and I) agree that people deserve chances. We’ll even work with pro-immigrant groups to work on the rules about immigration; perhaps those rules need tweaking. However, they can’t just show up in our neighborhood (the USA) uninvited and expect us to foot the bill while they live.
Like it or not (and many liberals don’t like it), we have worked hard over 200 years to build a nice “neighborhood.” We are pretty open about other people moving in (a lot more open than most nations, I might add). Yet, we want some order to the process and we want to ensure that the people in our neighborhood are basically safe and decent people. We just want to continue to see the neighborhood improve and get even better for our descendents. Yet, if we just allow anyone to move in with whatever values they may bring from their admittedly bad neighborhood, then goodness knows what they will do to bring DOWN the area. Sure, if they desire to learn our ways, copy our style, speak our language, understand our history that BUILT the nice neighborhood (that they wish to move into), then cool. Come on down. Do the legal thing and “buy a house” in our neighborhood. We’ll welcome you with a plate of cookies.
But if you plan on just sneaking in and being a squatter in my spare bedroom, then we must oppose that. Far too much is at stake if we don’t.