Thursday, June 28, 2007
Immigration issues in East Midtown discussed
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
When one gets to be of a certain age and behaves well, people react accordingly. Some of these reactions include trust and seeking of advice, even when people know that the advisor belongs, albeit part-time, to a blabbermouth profession. General questions are sometimes answered with embarrassing candor and details, leaving the questioner embarrasingly unable to close the topic.
Illegal immigration is an ambivalent topic. While the illegals may be vociferous, their employers, local tradesmen, do not want to go there, not in my east 14th Street survey area, west of Loisaida (Avenue C). One finds by roundabout inquiries that there exists some dependency on illegal immigrants for kitchen work, deliverypeople, construction workers, skilled and unskilled laborers. They will talk in principle, defending the practice, suggesting amnesty, family education and health care. The common refrain is that this is for your, the consumers’ benefit, and the illegals pay taxes.
Speaking to my non-trade neighbors, most, in brief discussions, support some form of legitimization. The opponents mainly concentrate on specific offenses, with offered broadbrush solutions that often defy practicality.
Thus, a lawyer friend will invariably lead to the probability of naturalization and legitimizing of potential terrorists. He would like to make citizenship dependent on the immigrant’s admission that the laws of a secular government supercede those of divine rule. thus excluding people who who are governed by Sharia. He would strip the defiers of secular authority of citizenship and deport them, leaving open the contradictions of the Bill of Rights and the details of execution .
That the devil is in the details is noted in the specific immigration plan of another neighbor, a professional people manager, who would offer all illegals with good records an option of signing a three-year contract of temporary residence in the US, at the end of which they would be sent back to their native countries, with the proviso of returning after three years for another temporary residence. Education for the kids would be granted, but no free health care, and no Social Security. They must pay taxes, but there would be no provisions for family or dependemnts’ return or anybody’s eventual citizenship. The details of deporting 12 million people three years hence are moot – "ok, so we will turn New Mexico into a camp, leave me alone."
Another neighbor, almost seriously, would forbid immigration altogether, and, a fourth, less seriously, joined the conversation by suggesting that we offer Mexico a statehood.
I offer the above observations not to make fun but to show the severity of the problems and the emotional levels that the problem-solvers have reached..
The use of the A-word creates the deepest reactiom from the negatively inclined. A step-wise amnesty appears to be the most practical solution to the problem, with the least negative humanitarian impact. Coupled with future enforceable restrictions on illegal immigration, it has been offered by the middle coalition of Democrats and Republicans (for once, the President of the US, is in the lead of the compromise) and fought tooth and nail, by another, a vocal mass of extremists, with Minutemen on the right and orhanized labor on the left. Seemingly, some of the unionists would prefer to leave the mess alone, while the rightwing extremists would punish the illegals, although they have been readily accepted and exploited by agribus, construction companies and the food incustry, just like prior generations of immigrants, without letting them and their children reap the eventual benefits of citizenship that the Germans, Italians, Irish and Jews enjoyed.
All of us have reaped the benefits of illegal immigration, in the lower food price that we have enjoyed over the years, much below what we would have paid for union-label products. Leaving it at a status quo would be a selfish but undersatandable attitude, but that does not compute in today’s circumstances. The flow of illegals needs to be stemmed, else we are turning into a lawless society. The status of the existing illegals needs to be stabilized, aned equitable provisions made for education, health coverage and taxation/ Social Security. The always practical federal income tax people seem to have figured out a way of collecting revenue without requiring an SS number, maybe others can learn from them.
To the more offbeat problems. The question of continued automatic citizenship that brings pregnant tourists here may have to be addressed; ditto the allegiance of the arrivals to religious ideologies that deny democracy and allegiance to a secular government. Washington is seeing to the expansion of democracy in the Middle East by providing voting rights for all, and consequently building the powers of ideologies of anti-democratic forces. Adherence to democracy does not mean just rights of voting, it means also civil rights. The good news is that there are no niquabs, the full body covers, and virtually no burkas in sight on 14th Street. Women’s civil rights among the religious radicals is the only hope for a return to a rational world.
When one gets to be of a certain age and behaves well, people react accordingly. Some of these reactions include trust and seeking of advice, even when people know that the advisor belongs, albeit part-time, to a blabbermouth profession. General questions are sometimes answered with embarrassing candor and details, leaving the questioner embarrasingly unable to close the topic.
Illegal immigration is an ambivalent topic. While the illegals may be vociferous, their employers, local tradesmen, do not want to go there, not in my east 14th Street survey area, west of Loisaida (Avenue C). One finds by roundabout inquiries that there exists some dependency on illegal immigrants for kitchen work, deliverypeople, construction workers, skilled and unskilled laborers. They will talk in principle, defending the practice, suggesting amnesty, family education and health care. The common refrain is that this is for your, the consumers’ benefit, and the illegals pay taxes.
Speaking to my non-trade neighbors, most, in brief discussions, support some form of legitimization. The opponents mainly concentrate on specific offenses, with offered broadbrush solutions that often defy practicality.
Thus, a lawyer friend will invariably lead to the probability of naturalization and legitimizing of potential terrorists. He would like to make citizenship dependent on the immigrant’s admission that the laws of a secular government supercede those of divine rule. thus excluding people who who are governed by Sharia. He would strip the defiers of secular authority of citizenship and deport them, leaving open the contradictions of the Bill of Rights and the details of execution .
That the devil is in the details is noted in the specific immigration plan of another neighbor, a professional people manager, who would offer all illegals with good records an option of signing a three-year contract of temporary residence in the US, at the end of which they would be sent back to their native countries, with the proviso of returning after three years for another temporary residence. Education for the kids would be granted, but no free health care, and no Social Security. They must pay taxes, but there would be no provisions for family or dependemnts’ return or anybody’s eventual citizenship. The details of deporting 12 million people three years hence are moot – "ok, so we will turn New Mexico into a camp, leave me alone."
Another neighbor, almost seriously, would forbid immigration altogether, and, a fourth, less seriously, joined the conversation by suggesting that we offer Mexico a statehood.
I offer the above observations not to make fun but to show the severity of the problems and the emotional levels that the problem-solvers have reached..
The use of the A-word creates the deepest reactiom from the negatively inclined. A step-wise amnesty appears to be the most practical solution to the problem, with the least negative humanitarian impact. Coupled with future enforceable restrictions on illegal immigration, it has been offered by the middle coalition of Democrats and Republicans (for once, the President of the US, is in the lead of the compromise) and fought tooth and nail, by another, a vocal mass of extremists, with Minutemen on the right and orhanized labor on the left. Seemingly, some of the unionists would prefer to leave the mess alone, while the rightwing extremists would punish the illegals, although they have been readily accepted and exploited by agribus, construction companies and the food incustry, just like prior generations of immigrants, without letting them and their children reap the eventual benefits of citizenship that the Germans, Italians, Irish and Jews enjoyed.
All of us have reaped the benefits of illegal immigration, in the lower food price that we have enjoyed over the years, much below what we would have paid for union-label products. Leaving it at a status quo would be a selfish but undersatandable attitude, but that does not compute in today’s circumstances. The flow of illegals needs to be stemmed, else we are turning into a lawless society. The status of the existing illegals needs to be stabilized, aned equitable provisions made for education, health coverage and taxation/ Social Security. The always practical federal income tax people seem to have figured out a way of collecting revenue without requiring an SS number, maybe others can learn from them.
To the more offbeat problems. The question of continued automatic citizenship that brings pregnant tourists here may have to be addressed; ditto the allegiance of the arrivals to religious ideologies that deny democracy and allegiance to a secular government. Washington is seeing to the expansion of democracy in the Middle East by providing voting rights for all, and consequently building the powers of ideologies of anti-democratic forces. Adherence to democracy does not mean just rights of voting, it means also civil rights. The good news is that there are no niquabs, the full body covers, and virtually no burkas in sight on 14th Street. Women’s civil rights among the religious radicals is the only hope for a return to a rational world.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 3:03 PM 
