Invasion of the Immigrants - Part 1

 

Crisis at the southern border

       President Biden, like all U.S. presidents for the last few decades, have been struggling with the immigration problem, and what to do about it.  You can read about Biden's challenges here: Biden's challenges at the border - BBC News

      Your favorite blogger is, of course, not going to let this hot issue pass him by.     

The original Americans

      A good discussion of the current battle over immigration in America must start at the beginning.  For we Americans, that story started 500 years ago when Europeans began migrating here.  The continent was not exactly unoccupied at the time; indeed, there were people already here, the original "Native Americans".  And the European settlers did not exactly go thru designated border entry points and apply for residency or asylum or anything like that.  Rather, they pretty much just barged their way in, overpowered the original natives, and then declared themselves the "natives".

      Eventually, the descendants of those European invaders established borders and implemented controls and immigration laws.  Essentially, they slammed the door shut and said that it's Ok for us to be here, but anyone else who wants to come here must get our permission.

      This brief history lesson is here to illustrate that there's a bit of hypocrisy behind the "Immigrants go home!" mentality taking over our political discussions.  For the real "immigrants" are the descendant of the European invaders, and that (gulp) includes me.

Immigrants welcome here!

      Ok, it's probably not feasible now to stuff that genie back in the bottle.  It's been 500 years now, and countless generations of us European descendants have called this land "home".  But we did establish a nation based on minimal government and maximum individual freedom.  That made America the envy of the world, and a place where everyone everywhere dreamed of coming to.  And so we put that statue in New York Harbor - you know, the one inscribed with: "bring me your tired and poor … yearning to breathe free."

border between USA and Mexico

     National borders are a funny thing.  They're so … arbitrary.  For example, Hawaii is officially part of the USA.  That's quite interesting, if you think about it.  From my home in Texas, Hawaii is like 4,000 miles away, halfway across the friggin Pacific Ocean.  I don't know anybody from Hawaii, and do not interact with anybody from Hawaii.  But Mexico is just a stone's throw from here.  I interact with Mexicans all the time.  But Mexico is on "the other side" of some line drawn on a map, so the law heavily limits what people can do and where they can do it.

     Of course there are many reasons given for having borders, controlling who crosses it, and ignoring the Statue of Liberty, and the historical hypocrisy.  Probably the biggest justification is that immigrants are supposedly violent murderers, rapists, terrorists, and thieves.  Indeed, anytime an immigrant commits a crime, it's all over the news, and people exclaim:  "These horrible immigrants are invading our country and killing our people!" 

     But you know, it's like an airplane crash:  when it happens, it's all over the news and everything thinks that commercial airplanes are death traps.  But get past the emotion and actually look at the numbers, and you will see that air travel is actually very safe.  It's the same with immigrants:  get past the rhetoric and look at the actual numbers, and you will see that immigrants - even ILLEGAL immigrants - commit less crime per-capita than native-born Americans.   See this article: Immigration and crime

      Clearly, the government is deporting the wrong people!

      But what about - what about - what about - all those other reasons to keep immigrants out?!?  I will address those arguments in my next article.