OK.....I'll Start by addressing the fence.

My naive efforts at promoting some initial traffic to this blog haven't been extremely productive. I wanted to let the discussion about immigration start at a point that was dictated by whoever was interested enough to post a comment, but I received only one comment (from my wife), and got just three people to answer my poll (me, my wife, and one other person who I'm hoping just happened to find my page while searching the web). I guess I'll just have to begin the discussion with the information I have.

For those who may be reading this after the poll has closed, it was a simple question that I meant to use as a political barometer of sorts. The question was whether a border fence, a guest worker program, or amnesty would be the best solution to the illegal immigration problem. My wife and I both voted for the guest worker program, and the one other vote was for the fence. I'm going to pretend like my wife and I don't count, and declare that the fence wins by popular vote, 1-0-0. The rest of this post will explain why I disagree with the "majority" in this case, and why I voted the way I did. It's up to the rest of you to tell me why I'm right or wrong.

I will have to start by assuming that the "majority" of respondents who voted for the fence did so because they are concerned about making borders physically secure. I agree that this should be a primary concern of immigration reform, but disagree that a fence is the most important reform we can make to promote security. The fence should be used in conjunction with other measures if we want it to acheive it's objective.

What we need to do first is be able to separate the people who want to come to the US and work to support themselves and/or their families from those who have more devious reasons for entering the country. Those who want to come to work do not pose a physical threat to our country (and if we regulate the rate at which they come they will not pose an economic threat either). The way to make this separation is to create incentives that induce anyone who wants to work in the US to do so legally. If this can be accomplished, then we could be reasonably certain that anyone who persisted in entering the country illegally had a less than noble reason for doing so.

To create the proper incentive for "worker" immigrants to come legally, we just need to make it more attractive for them to enter the country legally than otherwise. If employers faced real consequences for hiring illegals, and were able to employ legal immigrants to fill job vacancies for which no qualified US citizen applied, this goal should be easily accomplishable. These policies would reduce the rate of illegal immigration considerably, making it much more practical for ICE and the border patrol to find and punish anyone who still did not enter legally. Perhaps most importantly, the immigrants who still entered the country illegally at this point would most likely be the ones who we really wanted to keep out anyway.

The guest worker program, in my opinion, is the best way to ensure that we expand legal immigration in a responsible way. We could ensure that those who were entering the country had jobs when they got here, we could ensure that they were treated humanely by their employers, and we could ensure that their presence did not adversely affect US wages and unemployment rates.

To expand on a common analogy, we would be able to stop illegal immigration from "flooding" the country, and put it into a pipeline with which we could ensure that it was clean, and that it was only used by those places that were not receiving enough rainfall naturally. The enforcement provisions can be viewed as the dam that actually stops the flood, while the guest worker program takes on a more complex function. It acts first as a pressure release valve,helping to ensure the dam's integrity, and second as a combination water treatment/distribution system that ensures that the water is not contaminated and that it is used in the areas in which it is needed. My argument is that while the fence and other enforcement measures are certainly necessary, the guest worker program is needed primarily to ensure that the enforcement is effective, and secondarily to help the economy continue to function in an optimal manner.

I realize that this short post only scratches the surface, and does not address immigration reform in a manner that is anything close to comprehensive, so please use it as a jumping off point and write about what I left out.

We've Got To Start Somewhere

Alright everyone, I created this blog to be a forum for those who want to talk about what changes can and should be made to our country's current immigration policies. I intend to voice some of my own opinions, and hope to get some good feedback and insight from others who are interested enough to comment.

I am not interested in bashing politicians, political parties, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, non-immigrants, or anyone else for that matter. I want to hear facts, opinions, and debate on what kinds of policies make the most sense. I'd like to hear from anyone who has anything constructive to say.

I don't feel like making a starting point for the debate myself, so instead I am going to work on getting other people to visit the page and let things fly. That being said, give me something to start with as soon as you get here!