Another round of immigrant raids

I don't know if many people have been paying attention, but the frequency and size of the immigrant round-ups has been increasing over the past several months. Firedoglake has a disheartening story about the children of the illegal immigrants. Many have just been left to fend for themselves. When I think about these government assholes leaving children stranded and alone, it makes me want to puke.

What ever happens to these people? What happens to their families? Are there cases where the families have been permantly seperated? Are there children who have been permantly seperated from their parents and put in the foster care system because their parents committed the grave crime of crossing an imaginary border? It all sickens me. What sickens me more is that I am in a very small minority that thinks that the hysteria over illegal immigrants is rediculous. I rarely see much difference in views on this issue between the left and the right. All I see is American-centric xenophobia all around.

I really didn't have an opinion at all on this subject until last year when I went home for Christmas. I was discussing this with my dad and he said very pointedly, "We should just make them all citizens." That was the first time I had heard that opinion. I respect my dad's opinions very much and after thinking about it for a while, I agreed. If they are citizens, they will pay taxes and have rights. The big corporations will lose their slave labor. Then instead of spending all this money on trying to track millions of people down, we can focus solely on the corporations and businesses that bring illegal immigrants here and put them to work at very low wages. How about we actually punish the businesses that import and hire illegal immigrants for low wages? Why is it that we punish the immigrants but never punish the companies that facilitate the problem? The fact that we would have about 12 million more tax payers would boost tax revenue. Win-win as far as I can see.

A common reason that people use when explaining why they are against illegal immigrants is that illegal immigrants are leeches on our system. They don't pay taxes, etc. But, if they are made full citrizens and start paying taxes and were contributing to society, wouldn't that actually fix a large part of the problem? Of course not, because the real problem people have is that they are not white. Most people won't say it, but that is a major reason that illegal immigrants are hated so much.

Of course, this is not a fix to the long term problem, but neither is deporting millions of people, building a fence, or having a guest worker program that makes it legal for compainies to exploit poor people. The long term solution is to fix the economic problems that are endemic in Mexico and South America. Problems that our big corporations have caused in a lot of cases. We have had big corporations running huge plantations ran by cheap labor in South America for a century and we continue to look the other way as more corporations take advantage of the poor in these countries. For example, CAFTA doesn't require American corporations in Central America to follow basic worker's rights and safety laws. American corporations in Central America aren't required to pay their workers fair wages or ensure safe working environments. Could this be contributing to the stream of people coming to America? I think so. The root of the problem is in South and Central America and with the companies who profit off of a permanent lower class. No wall or mass deportation is going to fix that problem.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. --Mahatma Gandhi