KUDOS TO ARIZONA

Wow there partner! Before you send the hit squad to my office, please be informed that I, in no way, support the latest Arizona immigration laws.

However, I do offer kudos to Arizona for bringing this prickly issue to the fore front. As citizens, we have looked the other way long enough. As a government, we have ignored our southern border long enough. Simply put, the federal government needs to establish a realistic, enforceable immigration policy specifically for the southern border.

Building fences does not work. The Berlin wall didn’t work nor did the Great Wall of China. Sorry W, that was not one of your more clairvoyant moments. A full scale military assault on the borders appears to be over kill.

To ascertain what level of security we need, we first need to decide whether we want these folks in the first place. In Monday’s WSJ, there is a picture of what appears to be two Hispanic men on their hands and knees crawling along an Alabama beach picking up oil globs. At my former in-laws farm in Washington state, they use Hispanic’ workers to pick their crops on their truck farm nine months per year. The last building that I reroofed used a 100% Hispanic crew to lay shingles in July in Houston, Texas. And my favorite Chinese restaurant in San Antonio has an all Hispanic kitchen staff.

It seems to me that there is a demand for these hardworking individuals. These are hot, dirty, nasty jobs. You don’t see many Gringos or Bros doing that work. I think it is reasonably safe to say that we need the Hispanic labor force. Since we (see above) won’t do that work, I fail to see how they (Hispanic immigrants) are “stealing” jobs.

We are a capitalist society (despite what the Obama’s say), so let’s capitalize on this productive import. Why not just give these people work permits and make them tax paying W-2 employees . Have them renew their permits every six years, just like we do with drivers licenses. Then we can concentrate our enforcement effort on those unscrupulous industries that hire workers but do not treat them as taxable employees.