Illegal Immigration and the Need for Reform

Article: Wall Street Journal, Immigration Audits Drive Illegal Workers Underground, Miriam Jordan

Interesting article on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal, about the effect that the Obama administration's immigration policy --focusing on those who hire illegals instead of the illegals themselves--has had on undocumented immigrants.  Miriam Jordan's article centers on one Mexican couple, Alba and Eugenio, and their journey from "...prosperity to the economic margins."

from Wikipedia

It is painfully obvious that this country needs immigration reform.  We depend on undocumented workers from Mexico for too much of what gets done here (90% of harvest workers is what I read) to pretend that they are not vital to our economy and we can simply shut them out.  The vast majority of undocumented workers are here to help their families back home and are interested in working hard and staying out of trouble, not getting a free ride or stressing our healthcare, education or law enforcement systems.  Even President George W. Bush understood the importance of immigration reform.  But this one is a political hot potato, endlessly exploited by politicians who are willing to play on the small-minded suspicious nature of some voters who ignore that there is no practical way to draw a 2,000 mile long line down the center of the North American continent and say "you stay on your side and we'll stay on ours."

Unfortunately, Obama's policy of cracking down on employers who hire illegals is much more efficient than previous policies that focused more on border patrols and random crack-downs.  I wonder if Bush, a Texan, had a deeper understanding of this issue than Obama, and sabotaged his own party's ill-conceived attempts at a sealed border by allowing a lax enforcement mechanism.

This country needs to recognize reality.  There is work to be done, much of it unpalatable to U.S. citizens, and there is a large pool of neighbors to our south who are more than happy to do it.  There is no natural border between the United States of America and the United States of Mexico and there never has been.  On both sides of the line there is America, a complicated, racially-mixed, resource-rich continent with long traditions of immigration, migration and freedom.  Attempts to deny who we are will only result in misery, wasted effort and economic hardship on both sides of the imaginary line.