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

Trouble in Paradise?

Refugee centers in Sweden are being burned to the ground in what appears to be a statement against the significant number of refugees the country has allowed in.  The multiple arsons have all been at facilities which house or are slated to house immigrants.

[>100K immigrants are expected to arrive there in 2015.   Sweden's current total population is estimated to be 9.8M]  

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Sweden has long had a reputation for being hospitable to asylum seekers, apparently up 'till now.  It seems there is a backlash growing against the sizable Middle Eastern community of refugees that have made their way to Sweden in recent years.  There are even a number of areas (55) where police, fire, and EMT service is not readily available due to Muslim "gangs" who are terrorizing their neighborhoods.  The gangs run things there, not the civil authorities.
  

The Swedish EMT union (?) has even declared that they would not respond to calls to those areas unless they were provided "military grade" equipment and protection.  [NOTE:  That was in 2014.  I'm not sure if that situation still persists today.]

Here is the real world we face:  Refugees are welcomed in, given all the advantages of their host countries social welfare system, yet are not being assimilated into the mainstream of society. They remain isolated and often unemployed, leading to social unrest.  This is common in much of Europe, and has led to the rise of many nationalistic, anti-immigrant political parties.
  

Just opening your doors out of the kindness of your heart, then walking away while patting yourself on the back is just asking for trouble.  Without having a long term top-to-bottom plan to assimilate new immigrants, including having at least a reasonable hope of jobs available for them when they get here, is just moving problems from one place to another.  

In a perverse way, this kind-yet-not-well-thought-out gesture is actually playing right into the hands of terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.  Masses of poor, isolated, and unemployed youth are fertile recruiting grounds for evil doers.  It's happening every day!

"Yeah, but that's over there, and we're here.  No problem, right?  Right?"

It's a crazy, dangerous "damned if we do, damned if we don't" world we live in.  Just sayin'.

S