Today apparently over a million supporters throughout the nation skipped work to take part in the "Day Without Immigrants." I guess I'll have to check the papers tomorrow morning to see whether or not it translated into any real economic or political clout among legislators, but so far it feels a little ho-hum. Regarding giving undocumented workers a legal status in the United States, I'm ambivalent. On one hand, I'm not sympathetic. Even illegal immigrants benefit from public goods like our school systems, which many of them don't directly pay taxes for, so who are they to complain that they are entitled to more? They are ILLEGAL immigrants. The United States should recognize their human rights, but they don't have the same civil rights as US citizens. Basically what they're asking for is to virtually give legal status to anyone that can enter our borders, whether they go through legal channels or not. Even if these people became legal citizens, the vast majority wouldn't even make enough money to contribute taxes to our nation anyway. The fact of the matter is that regardless of how poorly they feel they are treated in the US, they don't want to go back where they came from. So now they're biting the hand that fed them.
Of course, that's a little simplistic. They were, of course, protesting recently proposed legislation that would make it illegal for employers to hire illegal immigrants and criminalize those business. Now... correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that "illegal" anyway? I guess the point is that the government will be more likely to seek out a prosecute them. Without a doubt, the exploitation of undocumented workers has been central in keeping wages down in the States, and I don't really think all too many people want them to leave. So it's hard to say what the solution should be. I would have no problem with temporary legal status for seasonal workers, but I do think that most people in our nation need to be kept track of. People shouldn't be able to enter our country and just "disappear." I only have a rough understanding of the plan Bush proposed a few months ago that seemed to meet resistence, but so far that one seemed to be the most reasonable and effective. I guess we'll see how that goes.
