(5/18/2005) Almost one million people immigrate into America every year. Most of these immigrants are legal immigrants, but around 300,000 are illegal, and most of these illegal immigrants are from Mexico. President Bush has proposed granting a one time amnesty to the roughly 5 million people who are here illegally, just like President Reagan did in 1986.  I believe that action sends the wrong message, and encourages more illegal immigration.

In my opinion, the U.S. government should close up our borders as tight as possible, and cut back on the number of legal immigrants we allow into this country. These types of tough immigration policies would save billions of dollars, it would reduce unemployment, it would promote more innovations and greater efficiencies, and it would force employers to pay their employee more money with better benefits.

 

Lax immigration policies depress wages and stagnate the standards of living for American workers. But this fact does not bother Bush or the Republicans in Congress who champion a number of policies that are anti-worker, anti-environment, and anti-government.

The Republicans lax immigration policies are also straining our social services programs and consuming our limited resources. We need new leadership that will reverse these lax immigration policies and take additional steps to limit population growth and protect what limited resources we have left. But clearly, the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress are opposed to most policies that control population growth through abortion or family planning services, or that restrict the consumption of our publicly owned resources through tax and fee increases, and in fact they encourage the opposite policies.

The Bush administration is moving America in the wrong direction on immigration legislation just like they are moving America in the wrong direction on polices ranging from the environment, budgets, health care, social security, education, taxes, deregulation, trade, the military, corporate welfare, faith based programs, tort reforms, and the minimum wage.

After another four years of Bush running our government people may want to start leaving America to find better opportunities in other countries, but the problem with that idea is that most other countries have tougher immigration laws than we do.