corrente

This is a bad joke, right?

"All of the estimated 10 million to 12 million illegal aliens in the United States would have to leave the country under an immigration bill introduced on Tuesday by two conservative Republican senators...
The Kyl-Cornyn bill calls for the creation of a machine-readable, tamper-proof Social Security card that would be issued to every American in the workforce to prevent illegals from getting jobs.
It would also fund the hiring of 10,000 new Department of Homeland Security personnel dedicated to weeding illegal immigrants out of the workforce and an additional 1,000 for detecting immigration fraud.
Companies that hired illegal immigrants would face tough fines.
Additionally, the bill would authorize the recruitment of 10,000 new Border Patrol agents over five years and a $2.5 billion investment in unmanned aerial vehicles, cameras, barriers and sensors along the Mexican border.
The senators did not give a total cost for the bill but a fact sheet distributed with their proposal contained partial costs of well over $12 billion."

Aside from collapsing the economies of California and Texas, and decimating gated communities throughout the country (what could be more poignant than the prospect of the wealthy cutting their own grass, raising their own kids, and cooking their own food?), this would drain huge amounts from the treasury at a time when we can't even pay our national bills as it is.

Illegal immigrants are some of the most dedicated workers and motivated people in the world, and because of their exploitation by our upstanding fellow-citizens, they make everyone's life easier and cheaper here in the land of the American Dream. They are focused on making their lives and those of their families better, and if what they do was done by a Kenny Lay we would call it admirable and worthy of millions in stock options. No truly punitive laws have ever been levied on the employers making their fortunes on the backs of these folks because the government has always known what a cornerstone illegals have been to the economy, and so they have effectively blinked at the millions of employer violations right under their noses, and illegals have become nearly slave labor in some areas, unable to complain about wages or working conditions for fear of reprisals.

Because of this, the proposed bill has about zero chance of passing , but it does make for a nice empty gesture toward creating a demon class at a time when they so desperately want to have an enemy to distract from their many power grabs and criminal endeavors. If we really wanted to deal usefully with the problem, we would find a way to absorb these folks into the economy and accept the gift of their skills and labor. Such acknowledgement would effectively raise their wages and working conditions, helping raise the wages of many low-wage Americans in the process. They give back far more than they take, and if we want to do anything, it should be to break the back of the black market that feeds on their labor and makes billions for American business in a scenario more reminiscent of a drug dealing empire than a legitimate economy.