Under a proposal before the Metropolitan King County Council, health facilities run by the county could not deny care based on immigration status, and sheriff's deputies could not ask people for immigration papers, or investigate, detain or arrest people for immigration violations. - Seattle Times
So my mind started thinking about "What If".
What if there is a traffic accident, with one witness to the accident who might not speak English very well. A huge insurance war erupts, with each side blaming the other. Where is the witness? Well, the King County Sheriff had asked about immigration status, and the witness was returned to her home country before identified as a witness.
What if there is a fire, and a silent hero rescues 3 children. The family and neighbors plan a great big celebration as a thank you, only to find out that the hero, who was silent because of a language barrier, cannot attend from the INS detention center.
Immigration is an issue. It's an issue of how strong we are willing to build our communities. I don't believe that anyone should be breaking laws to come to the United States. But we have people who are without employment not because the employers don't have positions available, but because those employers are more than willing to skip the immigration question in the hiring process. That's where our enforcement dollars need to go. It's those employers who need to go to jail, not members of our community who are trying to build a future for their children in the land of opportunity.
Oh, it's about taxes? Francamente, no doy un maldito.
4 comments:
Do you know what an anchor baby is? I do!
Yes, that's where foreign nationals take advantage of the 14th Amendment to have a child on our shores just so they can be a citizen of the United States. It means that INS is not able to deport the parents.
Our immigration system works in reverse as well. If a very young child comes to the US, goes to US schools and graduates, they either have to go through the naturalization process, or go "home" to a country that they know little to nothing about.
Both sides of this coin are wrong.
Immigration is a thorny issue. I can see valid points on both sides.
Agreed that employers who hire illegal immigrants should be the focus of enforcement. This goes to the heart of the matter; exploitation of low wage workers who are in an inferior bargaining position AND the constant draw of jobs here that still pay substantially higher wages than in Mexico for industrious and/or desperate individuals who are trying to feed their families. In the long run families in both countries suffer while unscrupulous businesses prosper. The availability of slaves beat down wages hurting the American poor the most while enriching corporations that do not play by the rules governing the social contract (we protect their wealth if they abide by society's legal constructs). Illegal immigrants reaching for some measure of prosperity here in the US are not in the streets agitating for social/political change in their home country, dooming those that do stay to a grinding status-quo of state corruption.
Corporations in the developed world violate their social contract by exporting jobs at home in a race to the bottom...line, and the corporate/political establishment in the "other" world exports their industrious social change agent population to ours in order to maintain the grip elites have on society. This is a deleterious quid-pro-quo arrangement by elites who now thrive quite nicely in both worlds.
Just a few thoughts.
Seattle, WA
Sorry, the 3:45am from my previous post is Seattle local time. We are vacationing in Antibes, on the Mediterranean coast of France under a pleasant canopy of palm trees and scented flowers....wonderful, except for the oppressive humidity.
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