Maggie's Farm

Yet another opportunity for some smart republican politicians to take advantage of. If only they would stand still long enough to think through some of the many opportunites available to broaden their constituency. Instead, they play trivial tit for tat games with the progs. Name calling does not advance the ball. Real life options do. And embracing the asian immigrants, along with the Hispanic immigrants, is one of the paths to take. Of course, pro-growth economic policies of simple, fair, stable taxation and predictable, practical and effective environmental regulation are required. As are the re-establishment of meaningful citizenship, controlled borders, clear pathways to full citizenship and easy to use worker visa programs. The U.S. can still grow more food than anyone and has enough gas, oil and other resources to sustain major economic growth.

Right now the Hispanic community has a chioce between the dingy government handouts keeping them poor, in ghettos, in transient, low paying jobs and in crappy schools and most of the repubs screaming about "illegals" overrunning the country, needing to be hunted down and expelled pronto. Not much of a choice. My option is better and would help us all. Look, 10 to 30 million illegals have been here for many years. They have not burned down any cities. They come here to work and improve their lives. They want to succeed. They just need a coherent, practical policy framework to function in. In fact, we all do. The policies we have in place and the manner in which they are administered stifles growth, creativity and ambition. Tax regulations are insanely complex and counterproductive and they change constantly. Businesses have to wade through piles of jibberish and obtain multiple permits for every little thing. It's not the immigrants who are the enemy, it is the regulatory maze and it's killing us all. Let me think out loud for a bit and see how these ideas grab you. Grant worker visas to everyone now in country and give them ID cards. This way, they are accounted for, are accountable, pay taxes and are legal. Some basic social services would need to be offerred of course. More on that overly complex topic another time. Forget about all those punitive regressive tax penalty ideas since collecting on them would cost three times as much as it would ever collect and it retroactively punishes people who may wish to become citizens. Which is not a good way to earn loyalty. Forge a realistic pathway to full citizenship and make it meaningful. As in not too easy and not too fast and requiring some demonstration of loyalty to this country. Maybe some military or other service. Most self respecting nations require no less. Those who just want work can come in on a worker visa. Mostly, we need to let businesses do business and let people work who wish to work. I didn't forget about real, actual border control, which I insist is an essential requirement for national sovereignty.

Yeah, none of this hapens in a vacuum, which I think I made abundantly clear. The point you raise about the blacks is really part and parcel of the broader policy issues. At present we are a nation pre-occupied with labels and categories. Just about everyone is a minority or a victim or both and each of the sub groups has many sub, sub groups. It continues to evolve along those lines because the overarching government policies demand it. In order to qualify for anything, you have to fit into a particular category. And there are thousands of programs for thousands of categories. It's all quite insane and most Americans are too narrow minded and self centered to see it for what it is. Thay are too busy bitching about what others are getting and trying to grab more for themselves. This results in a splintered, fragmented and alientated populace fighting among themselves for scraps from the federal larder. These destructive policies have to change. In a nutshell, it should primarily matter that you are a citizen and qualified for substantially the same stuff and responsible for substantially the same things across the board. The rest of the bullshit just gets in the way and the costs continue to escalate in a mindless maze of micro-regulation. If this doesn't change and soon, this fragmented, hostile society will inevitably devolve into fulll fledged tyranny. Or worse. Which, we are well on our way to doing.

History does indeed roll on and things change over time. No mystery about that. But, there are ways to manage demographic changes if you prepare and adopt the right policies. This nation has absorbed many millions of immigrants sometimes in large waves and has survived. There were many problems and issues associated with those waves of immigrants to be sure. Yet the nation survived. The only question today is this, are Americans smart enough to get in front of the latest immigration wave or not? If not, we do face the possible readjustment of borders. To the hysterics out there, I say get a grip, nobody is going to turn back the clock to suit your pleasure. So, deal with what is and deal with it constructively. Or get plowed under.