The Logistics of Illegals
Posted: Tuesday, July 06, 2010
by Patricia Johnson
Articles and Answers.com
The Justice Department filed a brief against Arizona, on July 6, 2010, as follows:
The United States of America, Plaintiff,
v.
The State of Arizona; and Janice K. Brewer, Governor of the State of Arizona, in her Official Capacity,
INTRODUCTION
1. In this action, the United States seeks to declare invalid and preliminarily and permanently enjoin the enforcement of S.B. 1070, as amended and enacted by the State of Arizona, because S.B. 1070 is preempted by federal law and therefore violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.
Source: http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/az-complaint.pdf
Whether the State of Arizona, or the U.S. Government prevails in this matter is yet to be determined and there will be enough arguments to go around whenever the court makes it decision.
In the meanwhile, there are other considerations to be taken on this subject. Americans, in general are law-abiding people, and the thought of anyone “breaking the law", as in the case of illegal’s truly goes against the grain for most of us. On the other hand, a majority of Americans polled have no objection to an illegal being here, if they have a job and are paying taxes.
Our very first problem is determining who is illegal. We do not have a set of data that lists all the illegals in the country, so our first major obstacle is finding the illegal aliens.
My husband suggested we send the police out to check papers on everyone and if the person is illegal, put them in a holding cell. That would eliminate the profiling aspect, as everyone would be questioned, but we don’t have a sufficient number of law enforcement officials to cover our towns and cities now, so giving them additional responsibilities simply isn’t going to work.
But, for the sake of argument, say we were able to do that. Then what do we do with them? Our jails are overcrowded now and we don’t have ‘holding cells’ just waiting to be filled up. But, what if we did get that far? Say we gathered up 15-20 illegals and were going to put them on the next bus to Mexico (We’ll use Mexico because it’s close and a good portion of the illegal’s in this country have been determined to be Latino).
So we find a holding cell for these 15-20 people until we get a bus full. Who takes care of them in the meanwhile? Who provides their food, clothing, medical expenses and more importantly what happens to the children they may have left behind, children that are U.S. citizens if they were born in this country?
Now multiply the expense of doing what we have done so far by 12 – 20 million. The number of illegal’s in this country has been determined to be between 12 and 20 million, so how much would it cost the citizens of this country to find them, temporarily house them, take care of their families, find transportation and return them to the border?
Amnesty for the illegal’s that are already in this country, with a 7-year plan towards citizenship is a much better plan than attempting to put out fires we can’t find.
If we give amnesty to those who are already here, and spend the rest of our resources clamping down on companies that provide jobs to illegal’s, we will eventually be able to stop the flow of illegal aliens coming in from the Mexican border.
Giving any major consideration to gathering up these people and shipping them anywhere will just be a lesson in futility.
Patricia L Johnson is a former special assignment writer/photographer.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I can imagine the storm of emotions this is going to arouse, but I think it's wonderful. I like your proposed solution to the problem. Thanks for an interesting article, and the link. Love the image you've used, too!Thank you Jennifer. There's no doubt the people in the border states have problems the rest of us don't face, but their problems didn't occur overnight. Had the Bush administration funded the border fence, we might not be talking about this subject today, but the fact is, the problem is still there. While Arizona wants the problem to disappear, I've yet to read any reasonable solutions. We're way past the days of rubbing a bottle and having a Genie pop out and make everything AOK, solving this major problem requires money, something this country is currently very short of.
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