Comprehensive immigration reform is here. Construction on the wall, to the extent that it ever happened, is ending. Joe Biden wants you to know that you can come to America anytime you want. But why would you want to?
The Border is Open Again!
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Because the US gave some groups money and weapons to privatise all extractive industries in your country and sent death squads to eliminate all opposition to the leadership that makes this not only possible, but very easy for the requisite baksheesh???
Biden adopts 0bama’s Pen and Phone Immigration Policy: “Give US Your Sick, Lame and Lazy Yearning for Free Stuff and Government Care.”
Cactus….more likely city walls to hold back the sea ..built by the lowest bidder and or the best connected company …will the water go over the top in a storm or leaks force a move first.
A big regret I have is that any “discussion” on this topic is — as is the case with a lot of issues of importance — framed in such a nonsensical way as to render any said “discussion” pointless. Case in point: U.S. border policy/immigration.
U.S. policy mirrors, more or less, that of other first-world nations. For instance, go to the website for the Canadian government (you’ll need to be able to read Canadian) and look up how to emigrate. For all their stereotypical friendliness, they set a pretty high bar for coming to their country. Ditto the European first-world nations.
The U.S., similarly, was never a “welcomer” of the dispossessed. The U.S. has, however, always welcomed cheap labor. At least while we still had factories run by robber barons in this country. Now all the work is outsourced, thanks to cheap oil. (But this is a Marxist interpretation, and that is not allowed in U.S. schools — at least until you hit college, where he’s brought up briefly.)
As a result, we’re confronting the same reality we have had since the end of WWII: this is a technologically advanced industrialized capitalist society predicated (even if it isn’t respected) on a scientific apparatus. This is not a nation of goatherds. This is not a nation with a literacy rate in the low 60s or 50s. For all our carping, we have a school system that provides a free education, and public libraries are widely available. Europe is figuring this out too. It isn’t a question of not wanting to let immigrants in, it’s a question of “What the hell do we do with these people? We have citizens who are fully integrated into this society/civilization and some of them don’t have jobs. How are these newcomers going to earn a living?”
That’s the discussion that needs to be had: Immigration was always about cheap labor, and we outsource the vast bulk of that now. So let’s drop the crap about freedom and Americuh and have a real discussion about what’s coming: our borders will close (except for Chinese and Indian programmers who will be brought over on visa programs to do high-skilled jobs for a fraction of what an American coder would earn).