Thursday, March 30, 2006
This Immigration Thing
My Kind of People
So much to say about the hand wringing here in DC over immigration reform...but I'll try to keep it short. Bush is right, or at least the right-est person in the whole debate here and I strongly support his efforts to allow more immigrants into the country legally. If our economy is to continue to grow and we are to support the retired baby-boomer generation, we need more, not less, hard working people willing to come to the U.S. and work. In fact, more than 1/2 of the growth in available workers in the U.S. comes from immigrants. Also, despite the rantings of Lou Dobbs, immigrants as a group, are less likely to be on welfare or other public assistance programs than your average Joe.
So, as this whole debate rages on, lets just remember that we need folks willing to work hard, and we need a better system that allows folks into the U.S. legally that doesn't take thousands of dollars and years to achieve...and these folks should be allowed to earn citizenship rather than be permanently relegated to worker-bee status.
And can we all be just a little bit less smug about this whole thing?
So much to say about the hand wringing here in DC over immigration reform...but I'll try to keep it short. Bush is right, or at least the right-est person in the whole debate here and I strongly support his efforts to allow more immigrants into the country legally. If our economy is to continue to grow and we are to support the retired baby-boomer generation, we need more, not less, hard working people willing to come to the U.S. and work. In fact, more than 1/2 of the growth in available workers in the U.S. comes from immigrants. Also, despite the rantings of Lou Dobbs, immigrants as a group, are less likely to be on welfare or other public assistance programs than your average Joe.
So, as this whole debate rages on, lets just remember that we need folks willing to work hard, and we need a better system that allows folks into the U.S. legally that doesn't take thousands of dollars and years to achieve...and these folks should be allowed to earn citizenship rather than be permanently relegated to worker-bee status.
And can we all be just a little bit less smug about this whole thing?
