Raise ‘em right
NJ changes policy on illegal immigrants (Yahoo!/AP)
This is one instance where a couple of dead college students in the news actually causes some positive kneejerk change.
After many conversations with people about the topic of illegal immigration, pleading with people that there is no good in allowing a class of marginalized sub-citizens to exist among us and ghettoize themselves and their surroundings, that something needs to be done no matter what… and then being labeled an insane neocon unsympathetic dickwad…
Yeah, well, I TOLD YOU SO.
It brings me no joy to gloat. I’m really upset about these murders. It’s just by chance that some members of the absolutely pathetic “gang” that did this were adults who have no residency privileges here. (The fact that their partners were teenage Americans is just as tragic, and the most serious indictment to date of years of poor social conditions in Newark.) The circumstance simply shows that people in America who exist outside the bounds of our society - whether they were pushed out or they choose to live that way - can cause all kinds of trouble for everyone else. Depressed social and economic conditions are a direct path to crime and blight. Illegal residency is a depressed social condition. Something must be done about it. And though I would like it very much if a mass naturalization law were passed and that solved all problems, I have concerns that many illegal immigrants are here with immoral intentions and that additional steps need to be taken to ensure that all of these people - and I mean ALL of them - are not just citizens, but upright and upstanding citizens as well.
Some people take this as some sort of sign that I’m a racist or a person lacking compassion. Fair enough. Well, I have compassion, and plenty of it - for illegal immigrants, existing citizens and law enforcement officials who are stymied by this problem, some of whom live in direct danger of being violent crime victims because of this problem. Many people have already died because of this problem. “Leave ‘em alone” once seemed acceptable, but it doesn’t cut it for me anymore.
And what can you do to improve the situation? Educate and train these people to interact better with society, so that they have a better opportunity to become a part of it. Invest in programs that provide social naturalization and job training for immigrants. (Not the jobs themselves, of course; I do not disagree with job growth, but it’s been 70 years since there was a successful subsidized job program in America) Take away the social and educational barriers that prevent many immigrants, legal and illegal, from becoming functioning members of our society. (If this includes teaching them English, then, you know, MAYBE THEY SHOULD LEARN ENGLISH BECAUSE THE REST OF US SPEAK IT) And if some of them willfully want no part of that, that’s fine. They don’t have to do anything. We’ll leave them alone. They just have to leave the country, that’s all.
And again, this is all not because I want immigrants to suffer. It’s because we have a real social problem to fix, and this is the sensible way to fix it.