Filibuster Cartoons
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In what has been cynically analyzed as a last-ditch attempt to find a winning issue for his party, President Obama recently declared that the time is ripe for a new immigration debate in the United States. America’s present immigration system “is broken,” said the President. “And everybody knows it.”
As evidence of its brokenness, Obama called attention to the ongoing fallout over the controversial Arizona “show us your papers” law, which was of course prompted by the larger problem of illegal Mexican immigration in the Southern US. The latter issue is the narrow focus of nearly all immigration debate in America, and the prescribed “solutions” from the political establishment are usually amnesty schemes in one form or another. President Obama says he does not favor a “blanket amnesty” and wants illegals to be “held accountable” for breaking US law, but beyond fines or temporary trips back to their home country, he still supports — as do many Republicans — some sort of “path to citizenship” for them in the long-term. Anything harsher is both cruel and impratical, they say.
It may well be. But immigration is a bigger issue than just that. When the President proceeds to declare that any future immigration bill must likewise “make it easier for the best and the brightest to come to start businesses and develop products and create jobs,” he is acknowledging the fact that most immigrants to the United States — even the legal ones — are not being imported for any clear economic purpose. It’s a little-discussed fact that most legal US migrants in any given year are simply refugees or the family members of existing immigrants, with qualified, accredited, ready-to-work professionals only representing a minority.
At some point Americans need to have a frank discussion about what they want and need their immigration system to actually do — both for the betterment of the nation, and the interests of its existing, native-born citizenry. Illegals may grab everyone’s attention, but they are hardly the only issue in a very complex and multi-dimensional national dilemma.
October 5th, 2011 at 10:00 am
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