Illegal immigration: Are we just too stupid to solve it?

FRANK MIELE

You would think that "immigration reform" would have something to do with immigration, but it really doesn't.

Immigration is the orderly process of entering a foreign country by applying for a visa, meeting certain requirements of residency, waiting in line, and then being invited to cross the border.

Of course, it has not always been that way. I suppose in the 13th century when the Mongols invaded Europe, they might have thought of their sweeping presence as a kind of "immigration" - and who in Austria would have had the temerity to stamp "visa denied" on the broad swords of the khans?

Come to think of it, perhaps immigration these days really isn't all that different from the 13th century - at least that is what you would believe if you listen to President Bush and many leading Democrats talk about "immigration reform."

Although the invasion of the United States by Mexico has been much less violent than the invasion of Europe by the Mongol hordes, it should not be considered any less significant. There are at least 12 million people who have swept across our southern border in the past 20 years, and now they are asking the government of the United States to surrender to them.

"Our numbers are too great for you," they say. "Resistance is futile."

And if you only listened to our nation's leaders you would have to conclude that the illegal immigrants are right - apparently there really is nothing to do but surrender.

It appears we find the task of building a wall across the southern border, or otherwise policing it, to be an insurmountable obstacle. What the Chinese people were able to accomplish more than two thousand years ago when facing their own Mongol invasion, we today can't do. "It's just too hard," we are told. "The border with Mexico is 2,000 miles long and can't possibly be closed." Funny that the Chinese were able to build a wall 4,000 miles long without any of the benefits of modern technology. I guess they were just smarter than us.

Another thing we apparently can't do is police our homeland. We are told that there are just too many illegal aliens already here, and there is nothing we can do about it. Police departments across the country don't even consider being an illegal immigrant to be a crime. It's just a tip o' the hat and "Have a nice day, ma'am," as they send them back into anonymous obscurity.

And then there is the infamous argument of economic necessity - we can't stop illegal immigration, and should actually promote it, because we need the workers. This is the grand doozy of all the foolishness that is spouted on this issue, so let's consider exactly what it tells us.

First, breaking the law is acceptable as long as it is profitable to do so. Farmers say they need pickers. Builders say they need carpenters. Packing plants say they need meat cutters. And the entire economy will grind to a standstill if these companies begin to follow the law and hire only legal residents.

Ridiculous. It's as if no one has ever heard of using your imagination to solve a problem. As long as we have the illegal immigrants doing the job, why should we think of a legal way to fill our worker needs anyway?

Well, let's just imagine that we were serious about not "immigration reform" but rather "illegal immigration solutions." All it takes is two things: A way for employers to verify employment eligibility, so that illegal workers come off the payroll, and a new source of employees to fill the gap.

The first part of that - employment verification - is already being proposed as part of "immigration reform" legislation known as the STRIVE Act of 2007. It is the second part which seems to stymie further discussion, but there are several easy answers.

If employers are really determined to hire Mexican workers, and the U.S. Congress determines that it is in the best interest of the nation to hire more Mexican workers, then the Congress can do what it has always done - increase the quota for legal immigration.

There is no need to reward the lawbreakers who are already in our country because they snuck across the border, as the president proposes. As soon as employment verification is in place, most of those illegal workers will be forced by economic necessity to return to their Mexican homeland anyway. As we are always told, they came here for the jobs. So when the jobs are gone, they will return to Mexico.

Cruel? Unusual? Punishment? How exactly? The nation of the United States has a right to enforce its citizenship and residency rules, and we are under no obligation to provide jobs to people who should not be here in the first place. If you cannot understand that, then you simply don't understand the concept of nationhood.

So let's encourage a reverse migration of illegals to the border where they can sign a form of some sort admitting that they had no right to be in the United States and are leaving of their own free will, and then let's start bringing law-abiding Mexicans in through the front door.

But wait! Perhaps if we took control of our own immigration process instead of leaving it up to the human traffickers and the thuggish coyotes, we might be able to figure out an even more beneficial way to select new citizens for our country than to just invite Mexicans. Mexicans could certainly apply, but why exactly should they get priority? They don't seem particularly inclined to assimilate to our American culture, certainly not to our primary language. English is the second language in their communities, and sometimes not spoken at all. Some of them indeed profess that California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are rightly a part of greater Mexico, not really part of the United States at all. Such people might not make good citizens.

So why not open the door a little more broadly. If we have too few citizens in our country to do the jobs that need to be done (a side effect of legal abortion, some claim) then we really ought to have a national policy to address that shortage. Is it possible that Congress could develop a national policy that would work better than the international policy given to us by the coyotes?

Perhaps if we opened up immigration to other nations, we could find people who speak English and would embrace our American culture instead of revile it. There are many citizens of Europe who would welcome the opportunity to move to the New World, just as their cousins did years ago. There are also millions of people in Asia and Africa who would welcome the chance to enjoy the opportunities of American citizenship.

Indeed, perhaps our country could repay a great debt to the continent of Africa by bringing to our shores in this century willingly as many sons and daughters as we stole from there during the many decades of slavery. That might be a true and just reparation our country could make instead of the absurd notion of paying modern African-Americans a settlement to apologize for the great wrong of slavery.

But wait again! That raises one more possibility, apparently not yet gleaned by the great minds who have studied this issue of the economics of illegal immigration. We are told that there is no one to do the jobs that illegal immigrants do. But what about the people in America who have no jobs?

In March of this year, unemployment for the nation as a whole was a very respectable 4.4 percent, but unemployment for blacks was 8.4 percent. Unemployment for blacks in major urban areas is even higher.

So do we just write those American citizens off, and say they don't want to work? Do we let them founder and fail because they live in drug-infested, crime-ridden communities and it is easier to shut them in than to bring them out? Or is it just possible that with a little imagination, with the spirit of American ingenuity, that we could think of some way to solve two problems at once?

Most young black men who are unemployed don't work because they don't have anything to work at. If there really are so many jobs in our country that are fair-paying, non-abusive, and unfilled unless illegal immigrants fill the gap, then I propose a much better solution would be to put our own citizens to work.

This kind of National Economic Security Job Corps would not be modeled on the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps or even on the modern-day Job Corps, which is a campus-based job training program for young people ages 16 to 24. What we really need is a way to recruit and transport American workers from where they are to where the jobs are. That would not only benefit employers, it would also benefit whole communities. The government could subsidize training opportunities for the new workers, and possibly even subsidize their housing for the first year in their new location. They could ensure that workers who do not have a high school education get one by making night classes a requirement.

Think of how much better off our country would be if instead of leaving poor blacks to the hopeless cycle of crime and poverty in the ghettoes of our big cities, we were to find a way to give them the same opportunities we afford to illegal immigrants.

Or just think about how hard the whole problem is, and decide to bury your head in the sand again. It's just possible you might meet a member of Congress down there, or two.