Earlier this week, I made a comment to a post on Reach Upward, a blog I enjoy reading when I have the time... Scott is thoughtful and open minded - especially when compared to others in this state... Anyway, his post was with regard to immigration reform and how best to begin the arduous task of curing the problem, being humane, respecting the rule of law, etc.
http://reachupward.blogspot.com/2006/04/immigration-reality-it-aint-pretty.html#comments
I commented that in my view the best way to stop the flow of humanity over the fence, is to remove that for which they are coming: the jobs. I submitted that the government needed to find a way to punish those who are giving these people jobs.
Then last night on the news, they reported that ICE had swept up at a national palette company and gathered up just over 1000 illegals for deportation. So maybe somebody heard my plea. Ummm... Hardly, I don't give myself THAT much credit.
But anyway, I was then reading in the paper this morning that the parent company of this palette company is from the Netherlands. Then I got to thinking... was it not the Netherlands, about a year or 18 months ago, that instituted a policy to simply round up and expel ALL illegal immigrants to their country? Am I wrong? I don't remember for sure if it was Netherlands, or some neighboring country. Pretty interesting coincidence if that's the case...
Anyway, although the Federal Government here in the US has a long way to go before effective systems are in place to deal with corporations who flout that law, this publicity is good news in the right direction.
2 comments:
The Netherlands has had a very strong debate going on about immigration ever since Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Dutch-born Islamic fundamentalist in November 2004. Francis Fukuyama writes here about what the Dutch are doing.
The Dutch started to do the illegal round-up, but mellowed a bit after it got underway. But they really didn't have that much of a problem with illegals because their legal immigration policy has been so incredibly lax. They now believe that this laxity was folly.
Each country needs a balanced immigration policy that works for its logistical and demographical situation. We don't have that in the U.S. today. We have official laws, but we enforce them schizophrenically. So we have a de facto policy that runs counter to the actual laws that fails to serve us well. That needs to be fixed.
thanks for the further info, Reach.
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