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Edited on Sat Dec-04-04 11:57 AM by SoCalDem
First of all, I do not see ANY way that a country like ours can EVER truly "secure" our borders. We need to accept that fact, regardless of what our legislators say and do "in our name"..
As long as employers are offering jobs, they WILL come. EMPLOYERS MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE. Until that happens, the whole border security issue is bogus. Are people flooding over the border TO Mexico, in search of jobs? Of course not. States who are REQUIRED to provide humanitarian services to anyone who manages to be IN that state, should be DEDUCTING the cost of those services when it comes time to pony up cash to the FEDERAL government.
If states have no legal ability to stop border-crossings,then they should also bear NO FINANCIAL responsibility as a state for the care and cost of the people who come here illegally. California is a prime example. Rich employers make a bundle off the labors of undocumented workers, and yet the state must bear the burden of the true costs of having them here.
EVERY DOLLAR that California spends on the undocumented workers, is a cost that the FEDS really owe US, as a state.. Until the border states unite and fight DC on this, they will have NO reason to ever really change it.. Their "funders" are the same "businessmen" who profit handsomely from the "underground economy" of the "open borders" philosophy. If it were not so, those borders would be less porous, and the undocumented would be sent back in larger numbers (we all know how bigoted the righties are, so the ONLY thing stopping them is the financial issue...MONEY ALWAYS WINS ...
The drivers' license nonsense is a sham, because the only time anyone needs to show their DL is when they write a check (less and less common these days) and when they get STOPPED by a cop. (DL is required to fly and for other things, but those are not the day-to-day issues that most people encoounter)
MILLIONS of people drive without a DL, and until they get caught, NOTHING happens to them.. MILLIONS of people do not even OWN a car, but borrow cars from people they know. These people are often unlicensed, AND uninsured, BUT if they do not get CAUGHT, nothing happens to them.. they are still "invisible"..
Given the caliber of people I have seen at DMV offices, any decent forgery would pass muster and they WOULD get a valid DL anyway.
If our government is truly serious about getting all US citizens some valid ID, all they need to do is to engage in a nationwide program to get ALL citizens a passport. They are valid for 15 years and could be made relatively cheap, if they really wanted to identify all citizens.
One of the chief reasons they will not want to do this is THIS..If every US-born black and hispanic person was issued a US Passport, there WOULD BE NO IMPEDIMENT TO VOTER REGISTRATION.. The republicans have made a cottage industry out of denying legal voters the right to vote. They see a brown face, and immediately "assume" that THEY have no right to vote, and must pass further "tests"..
A national intelligence czar is just another convenient measure to further insulate *² from any blame. Instead of ADDING layers of deniability, we need to press for LESS layers. Why would ANY thinking person WANT "all the responsibility" for our national safety to rest on the shoulders of ONE political appointee, who was appointed by a president who has NO support from at least HALF the country.. This is no FDR sitting in the hot seat at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.. This is an ideologue, who has shown repeatedly that he intends to ONLY work with people who agree with him.. This is a dangerous move, on its face..
The righties are at war with their own factions on these issues, and a smart Democratic Party would latch onto these and expose them on it.
They want closed borders, but they want cheap labor, while "hating the dark-skinned people who DO the work....
They want a national ID, but their supporters HATE the idea of "being watched and monitored"
They want an Intelligence czar, but they do not want the job to have any real power (in case a democratic president ever has control of it)
They pretend to want "fair elections", yet they erect barricades to the "underclass they despise"..
We will NEVER be "safe" in the modern world we inhabit, and we are made LESS safe by enacting do-nothing laws that pay lip service, but no nothing to solve our problems.
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