Reply #184: It's such a tough issue

[XemaSab]

I think it's right up there with gun control as a really potentially divisive issue for the left.

Mexicans come to this country for opportunities they can't get at home. I've worked outside in California's central valley in the summer, and I've seen tomato pickers get to the next field over at 7 am and when we're quitting at 2 because it's dangerously hot (100+), they're still going strong. And they're probably making a fraction of what we make as biologists, and they're sending money home.

I've been to Arizona and seen jugs of water stashed out in the boonies for people coming across the border, via the most dangerous route for illegal immigrants. Collegues of mine have found dead people out in the desert.

For me, risking your life to work all day doing hot, dangerous, low paying work boggles the mind. Therefore, I'm not going to get upset with people here. They are doing what they think is best.

I think the place to combat illegal immigration is on the borders.

The US has a 2,000 mile border with Mexico. I don't know how many agents there are working for the INS, but this is not an impossible length of border to build secure fencing, put more agents on patrol, and use motion detectors and cameras to see people crossing the border.

If illegal immigration was taken seriously, this is what we would do, but no, we're screwing around. We know where they're coming in, let's create American jobs by getting serious about the border patrol. According to a former INS agent interviewed on CNN, there are a little over 10,000 agents guarding both the northern and southern borders, and at any given time about 2,500 agents are on duty. If we added 2,000 agents, we could have one more agent for every four miles of the southern border on duty at any given time. If we added 4,000 agents, we could add an agent for every two miles of the southern border. But no, we're goofing off.

And a big part of this is that Americans love cheap things. We like cheap food and we like cheap trinkets and we like cheap housing. If illegal immigration was curtailed, we'd have to pay more for American goods without a corresponding rise in consumer wages, which would in turn drive jobs overseas.

On the negative side, driving wages down for the trades depresses blue-collar wages, as the OP was saying. It creates a race to the bottom. Creating good jobs in Mexico will also keep would-be illegals at home, but it seems that a lot of that comes at the cost of exporting jobs south.

It's a tough one.