Immigrants at the Gate

Fresh back from a business trip, I checked my answering machine. There were two blank messages, the kind where you wish the person on the other end would at least breathe heavily so you can get something out of it. The third was from former Colorado Lieutenant Governor Dick Lamm and by default the Ueberfremdenfeindlicher Tom Tancredo, unfortunately the representative from my Congressional district. The Dick wanted me to support his efforts to deny state services to illegal immigrants.

First, the two of them being against illegal immigration is hypocritical. The McMansions out here housing most of Herr Tancredo's constituency were built primarily by day laborers, a pleasant aphorism for illegal immigrant workers. If those houses were built by American workers getting American wages and with American health care, they would be unaffordable by most of us normal wage earners. The groundskeepers, the cleaning ladies, the people maintaining those horrible communities without theme or architectural continuity aren't white Anglo-Saxons. They're dark and, if they speak English at all, it's with a horrible accent. I rather doubt the necessary background checks to determine these workers' status have been performed. I'm against illegal immigration, wink, wink. Here's your cash.

The plan to deny state services to illegal immigrants is, on the surface, a good one. It will do nothing to stem the flow across our southern borders, setting up another problem I'll get to later. Denying services will hurt the illegals, withholding drivers' licences, social support, even schools. Here's where I begin to have problems with the plan. Will medical services be withheld from the children of the illegals? Those who are here through no plan or action of their own will be denied the right to an education? Will they starve because mother and father can't receive aid? This would seem to be the Republican plan for ridding ourselves of undeniables. The ghosts of Hitler and Eichmann are laughing in hell as the Shining Light of Freedom once again sputters in the Republican wind. Will the next idea be a Guantanamo Bay for illegals?

Denying services to those already here is cruelty. Better would be a two-pronged attack by improving border control (but that costs money and the Republicans have broken the bank) and encouraging economic development to keep immigrants working at home (by perhaps paying a fair price for imported goods instead of the Bushit called globalization). Both of these aren't popular with Compassionate Conservatives (sic) because they cost us money. A third plan that would be effective is some form of guest worker identification, again, something that costs money. It's easier to the Compassionate Conservatives to withhold medical treatment and schooling from a child brought with her parents into this country illegally than to do something truely effective against illegal immigration.

Plus there's the element of criminality. Criminals, excuse me, contractors here will continue to pay for the cheap labor because no one has the money to go out and enforce draconian immigration proposals in the field. The criminals, er, contractors will just pay less because they can. Criminality will increase simply because people will become desperate. Immigration reform as proposed by Herr Tancredo and his lot has some appeal because it appears simple. In fact, it's a simplistic proposal to solve a complex problem, best suited for campaigning than actual implementation.