Sunday, June 26, 2016

Just blowing smoke, they are.


For as long as I can remember people have been coming into our country without going through the proper channels.  Historically we think of these "illegals", or "undocumented workers" if you prefer, as being Mexican, although many come from Latin America, too.  Today we're hearing more about Muslim immigrants, but by the numbers, it's still overwhelmingly an Hispanic issue.  Point is, they are here among us now.

There's a lot of hot air being spewed by our political candidates this election year telling us we need to "get all the Mexicans out and take back our country!" It makes for a good 30-second sound bite, which coincidentally is about the limit of the average voters attention span.  The more simple minded say all 11,000,000 (?) illegals should be rounded up and deported, just like that.  Easy peasy.

Just think about that for a second.  Who would be doing the "rounding"?  Do we have enough law enforcement to pull some off crime detail and charge them with stopping all brown-skinned people on the street and demanding proof of citizenship?  Correct answer:  No.  And if we did, how long would it take for someone to challenge said roundup in court?  Correct answer:  Maybe 15 seconds.

But lets assume we did have the manpower to round up all brown-skinned people and the courts looked the other way.  How many could we round up per day?  10,000?  Do we have enough spare holding areas to put up 10,000 detainees a day, every day for years?  Correct answer:  No.  

But assuming we did, do they get their day in court?  We just can't assume brown skin = illegal....many are no doubt native born or naturalized US citizens.  After we determine which brown-skinned people are US citizens and which aren't, do we have enough lawyers to represent the undocumented, or enough judges and courts, to hear 10,000 cases a day?  Correct answer:  No.

But assuming we did, do we have enough guards, or food preparers, or doctors, etc, to look after 10,000 more people a day who are in our custody?  And if we did, can we afford them?  Can we afford 30,000 meals a day?  Correct answer:  No.   

But if we could afford it, and if our legal system could process 10,000 cases per day and order them returned to Mexico (or Guatemala or wherever they were from), do we have enough buses to actually transport them all?  At 55 seats per bus, that would require 82 buses a day, every day.  And you can't get from Chicago, or Oregon, or New York to our southern border or beyond by bus in one day....it might take 6 or 8 times that many buses.  (Hmmm....wonder what the gas mileage of a Greyhound Bus is?)

And if, after 3 years of intense round-up we could deport all 11,000,000 undocumented workers, and assuming no new illegals crossed the border in the meantime, who would pick our crops, or pave our roads, or roof our houses, or bus our tables, or mow our lawns?  Are we all of a sudden going to get industrious and do all those things for ourselves?  Correct answer: Not a snowball's chance in hell!  (And if we tried, we'd realize fast we need them as much as they need us.)

I rest my case.  There is NO WAY we're going to deport 11,000,000 people!  So the next time you hear a political candidate say he "wants 'em all out", just know they're blowing smoke up your ass skirt, and then ask yourself, what ELSE are they blowing your way?

Yes, we need a workable plan to bring our undocumented workers here now into our system and make them honest taxpayers, and to control who crosses our borders into our country, but this hair-brained scheme isn't it.

And besides, the overwhelming majority are just like us, decent people simply trying to make a living. Think, my friends. 

S

10 comments:

  1. Some politicians speak in hyperbole, many voters understand this. If an illegal immigrant is caught doing something illegal, can we deport them? Is that asking too much, or should we just let everyone in who wants to come in and give them housing, health care, a drivers license and let them vote? Is there a line to be drawn? Probably not, then don't call them illegal aliens, call them welcome invitees.

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    1. Ummm..."send them all back" seems like plain English to me.

      Of course if an illegal commits a crime, they do the time. They blew their chance, bye bye! And if they don't pay into the system, they shouldn't enjoy the benefits of the system. But if they're offered a chance to come clean, pass a background check, have been good residents for a while, etc, then why not let them work their way to a good life? It's just another of those "not going back in the bottle" things, Joe.

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  2. It depends on what the meaning of "all" "are." (Paraphrased from BC)
    Read between the lines, Donald isn't stupid and those that support him are not either, as much as the other side wants to portray us. Send them all back means "Don't F up if you are here illegally and you don't get benefits for breaking the law. I get it, Trump is not a politician and often speaks in hyperbole...I don't hold his not being a politician against him.

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    1. I agree, Trump is NOT stupid, and if anything I LIKE the fact he is not a professional politician. But I heard him say they must all go back, and then they were eligible to re-enter if they went through proper channels. Is his plan to build a wall, a high wall, hyperbole or literal? I could write a post about that, too, showing how it would be virtually impossible to build that 1000 mile wall he proposes....not enough materials or labor or time, not to mention his promised method of payment would be virtually impossible to collect. Like politicians everywhere of both parties IMO he over-promises.

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    2. Trump's "hyperbole" is also a dog whistle for the racists.

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    3. I resent that Bill, I am not a racist...you should apologize. But you won't.

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  3. We can store them in the same camps, transport them by the same railroad cars, round them up with the same military forces (suspend posse comitatus), etc that were used when Fuhrer Trump rounded up the Muslims.
    As to us taking what Trump says with a grain of salt and a 'wink wink, he don't mean it', that's pretty much what the Jews were telling each other in 1935.
    One doesn't have to be unintelligent to believe and do bad things. Most of the men who were tried in Nuremberg in 1947 were quite smart.

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  4. I've said all along that there was no way we could deport eleven million people, even if we wanted to destroy our economy by doing so. Only morons think this is a possibility.

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  5. Agree with you! Western New York, where I lived for a long time, is not known for being wealthy or even prosperous. It's known for small(ish) family farms, apple orchards, corn fields, etc., eking out a living. It is also not known for being a place with high Hispanic population. But one year, illegal aliens were scared off by tough-talking politicians...and they stayed away in droves. Farmers had fruit and vegetables rotting in the fields...

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