America's Immigration Problem is Easy to Solve

What is lacking is honesty and political will, replaced instead by denial of reality.

May 15, 2023

The two biggest problems on SlowJoe’s plate right now, outside of seeing his son’s goose get cooked, are the migrant surge at the border, which is entirely a US self-inflicted crisis, and the unresolved debt crisis.

I have long claimed the immigration problems of this country are easy to fix in terms of what needs to happen, and they certainly do not in any way depend on a wall. They require the end of denial and pretending.

To be clear, I want to see immigration hugely reduced and the difficulty in achieving that is entirely wrapped up in the politics of both parties and denial about what we can really accommodate due to wishful thinking over realism.

You see, both parties have turned a blind eye to illegal immigration for decades because both want it. Not all jobs can be outsourced as the two Bushes did their best to do via NAFTA and free-but-unbalanced trade with China and India. There are jobs, such as picking tomatoes or cleaning hotel rooms or washing dishes and bussing tables that need to be done here in America. No one really wants to do them because they are not particularly pleasant jobs.

However, both parties lie through their teeth when they claim these are jobs America’s won’t do. The truth is that these are jobs that are unpleasant and that don't pay enough to compensate for that unpleasantry because both parties have turned a blind eye to illegal immigration. They have both turned a blind eye for decades because illegal immigrants will do the work far cheaper than Americans, who are not willing to live three families to a household in a scrappy-looking home while working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet. Immigrants that risk moving here illegally largely do so because conditions are so horrible in their own country that the conditions I just described beat what they have available at home.

Decades of allowing illegal immigrants to take those jobs have suppressed wages from growing in those areas. And that is the real reason Americans will no longer take those jobs. Pay Americans enough money, and they’ll take those jobs, but no one wants to live in a tin hut, doing tough labor, in order to compete for wages that have been kept low by the tin-dwellers who are willing to take those jobs for repressed pay and no benefits.

You see, both parties are lobbied hard by industrialists who always crave the cheapest labor possible in order to keep paying enormous bonuses to CEOs and big share buybacks and dividends to shareholders, and businesses like corporate farming and hotels and restaurants that are very labor-intensive need that cheap labor to make that model work.

So, here is corporate, two-party America’s dirty little secret: Both parties have been willing for decades to make immigration illegal with the full intention of turning a blind eye to it. You see, by making it illegal, they create a true peasant class here in the US to do the jobs that have to happen HERE IN THE US. People who are here illegally have fewer rights and no ability to vote or speak up for themselves. They keep their heads low, don’t unionize or revolt over poor labor conditions or low pay because they are desperate to have the jobs they have and know they can be kicked out of the country if they raise attention to themselves. So long as they behave along those lines, politicians on both sides will turn a blind eye to them. They are “un-landed” as in they own no land, have no ownership in the nation and have no citizenship. So, they are true peasants.

Now some people are going to respond that I don’t understand or care about the needs of farmers or I am hateful toward other races. Let me be clear. Unlike the people in the photo above, my position on immigration has nothing to do with race. I love all races. I think God intended the world to be this way in order to be more beautiful, and I think mixing races creates beautiful results like hybridizing plants. I think we express more the full range of human qualities when divergent races are brought back together; and, if I were a single man, I’d gladly marry any race if the woman were beautiful and wonderful to live with. (Who could ask for anything more?) I love biracial children. I think they are VERY often some of the most beautiful, intelligent, and talented kids on earth; and, if I weren’t 64-years old, I’d consider adopting one or two over having my own to give some bright and beautiful kids a better chance at life.

But here are my two major gripes on immigration: First and foremost, we have way too many darn people. I’m sick of overpopulation! California exemplifies peak insanity on immigration. Completely unable to find enough water in state to service the needs of the people they already had DECADES ago, they reached all the way to the Colorado River and took water away from other states, creating huge conflicts today within those states. More recently, they have wanted to reach all the way to the Columbia to do the same thing all over again. There is no end to their attempt to defy nature in order to overpopulate their own region.

Turned away from the Columbia for the time being, they have decided to eliminate vast swaths of their own agriculture in order to get enough water to keep people from dying. So, now they will have less food to feed all the new people they want to bring in and will do less to help feed America. On top of that, they have in many towns destroyed their ability to have beautiful green lawns and thriving gardens, as if such beauty that used to add to what California was is sheer waste and the California version of sin. They already have brownouts because they cannot produce enough electricity for the people already there.

Nevertheless, they want more people so much that they will defy US immigration laws just to get them! Fact. They blame the incapacity on the climate; but if they had stopped population growth via rampant immigration fifty years ago, they’d be able to survive droughts by living within what the land can actually do, as the land in CA has seen longterm drought cycles for thousands of years. They need to learn to accept that reality and live with its constraints. I’m big on not denying reality.

These people in my mind are beyond stupid BECAUSE, at the same time, they have turned several of their most besotted major cities that are rising in crime, unrest, homelessness, ugliness and poverty because they have so many people they cannot adequately care for into sanctuary cities to attract in AS MANY ADDITIONAL ILLEGAL ALIENS as they can. How mad is that?

Many of the people they invite in do not believe in birth control and likely never will. So, California is choosing to turn all of its major cities into future Mexico Cities because there simply is no end at all to the number of people they want to bring into an area that is clearly already FAR beyond its natural capacity to comfortably hold more people. This is insane, and it is just typical Californian denial of reality to pretend it is sustainable or good for ANYONE. However, politically, it is a must-do because you are evil and hateful if you do not welcome illegal immigration OR make all immigration legal so we can have more of it.

Gripe two is cultural. If I were moving to France, I would expect to learn French. Period. Every nation that migrated to the US over the past hundreds of years had no problem with rapidly teaching their children English as their first language — even the language-chauvinistic French! Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Swedes, Fins, Italians, Germans, Dutch, etc. all learned English and didn’t complain about it.

Somehow, a lot of people from Spanish-speaking countries feel they are above all of that and are discriminated against if they have to learn English. That feels to me like a deliberate attempt to overrule and dominate the culture they are moving into. I don’t think people should be invited into any country if they don’t like the culture that exists there and don’t want to meld into it as cohesive part of it, but just want the land and riches with the wish to transform it into their own culture. That is just colonialism of another kind. It’s invasion. It is just USING another country for its resources. If I didn't like French culture, I certainly would NOT move there.

Democrats are deliberately creating an in-cohesive culture that will increasingly become more hostile because, if you cannot speak the same language and do not even agree to try, then how are you possibly going to communicate in ways that get along? We are becoming a nation filled with increasing wars for cultural dominance. Dem’s think they are being NICE. I think they are being incredibly ignorant about the realities of human social interaction and are denying those realities. I think Spanish-speaking people can and should be EXPECTED to do exactly as all other nationalities willingly did and barely even questioned.

I am also sympathetic to farmers needing cheap labor, and the problem is almost impossible for them to solve now because nowhere has illegal immigration been ignored longer than in farming. To change it now suddenly would mean wages would have to explode to get to a level that Americans are willing to work for. However, if illegal immigration had NEVER been overlooked, farm wages would have moved upward at whatever level was necessary to keep attracting the amount of labor necessary, and farming would have evolved around crops and techniques that made economic sense out of that.

I think farming is the backbone of America, and family farming is a culture that needs to be preserved. I’m not sure, now that the situation has developed so far out of balance, how to transition away from peasant labor and toward hiring only legal workers, for it truly is peasant labor in many situations. Maybe six-month work visas for the time being with a long-range transition plan; but bottom line: the nation needs to produce its own food and not be dependent upon other nations for survival, so we need to make sure farming continues to provide as much food as we need. It doesn’t have to provide every KIND of food we like. Nothing wrong with buying from other regions; but it needs to produce enough that we can survive with plenty even if we, at certain times, cannot get all of the kinds of food we prefer.

The farming problem is tougher to work out because our security depends on it. Deprive all hotels or restaurants of illegal labor, on the other hand, and they can adapt or die. The national economy will adjust to fewer hotels or pay higher rates, as the economy sorts out what is needed and survives, or fat shareholders will learn to accept narrower profit margins, but we won’t go without shelter or starve.

Politicians also turn a blind eye to illegal immigration because we like to build housing as the foundation to our economy, and immigration always requires more housing. That is a non-sustainable plan that obviously requires endless population expansion and sprawl in order to continue and endlessly strains farmland, leaving less food for all the people that it adds. It also requires endless new job creation for the new families brought in so it is self-defeating as a job-creation program for our own naturally growing population. However, money always wins that development argument.

The solutions to the immigration that is completely overwhelming our systems is simple. Number one, walls are stupid, ugly, ineffective and unnecessary. A far easier solution has alway been available, it requires the political will to do what it takes, and it doesn’t take a lot, other than a lot of common sense:

Require full proof of citizenship or legal right to work in the country at every employer (as is supposedly required now, but not enforced). Fine employers substantially for each worker for whom they do not have adequate paperwork on the first offense. Warn them strongly about the next step: Upon a second inspection and offense, fine them and give them a one-month mandatory jail sentence for having undocumented workers. It is amazing how people who are willing to absorb a fine because the savings on labor outweigh the fine are not willing to go to jail just to save money. On the third offense, increase the jail time to half a year!

You’ll see all employers suddenly getting very serious about making sure they have the right documentation on file for everyone and will see all jobs for illegal immigrants dry up in just a few months time. (I've worked in management, done plenty of hiring and know this is NOT hard to do. Keep your files up to date and under lock and key.) It is NOT the employer’s job to make sure the documentation is legal; just to make sure they have it for everyone they employ. Deal with illegal documentation as a separate criminal offense for those who create it and for employees who knowingly use it. NO WALL NECESSARY, just real enforcement. You don’t have to capture or jail the illegal immigrants; they’ll walk home on their own if they have to once the jobs they came for all dry up.

You have to also have the will to cut off all welfare programs for illegal immigrants, including schooling and healthcare. If it is illegal for you to even be here, and we’re serious about enforcing and protecting our borders and our own culture and no longer creating and justifying or ignoring a peasant labor class, then why should we owe those who are illegally here welfare? That, too, is insane. Are we just automatically required to be the welfare drain for the entire world?

Most illegal immigrants are economic immigrants. Take away the economic incentives you are readily providing to those who are breaking the law, and they will leave on their own. You won’t even have to bus them. They are here because survival here as a person living here illegally is easier and less risky than in the land where they were born. They will walk home on their own.

Without the massive influx across the border for economic opportunity, it will become possible to dedicate existing border resources to stopping smuggling, which is what they should be focused on.

Do I not care about their economic needs? Sure I do. But help via volunteer charitable programs within their own nations if you care so much. We have too many people, too much gridlock, and are overtaxing the land. We are doing immigration in a way that creates massive in-cohesion and hostilities. We have too much crime already. We have too little water, too much land-fill waste, too much pollution in many of the areas taking in more migrants, and too little electricity. It is time to get real and live within what our land can actually comfortably and beautifully accommodate.

Finally, American’s, as people who like to think they are internationally significant, should be able to easily marry any immigrant from any land so long as the immigrant passes security screening. That kind of immigration that brings new blood in via strong family connections will create cohesion, reasonable economic opportunity, solid families, integration and community as people naturally try to select for compatibility. I’m all for it, and it will not happen at near the present insane rate, so we can accommodate to it at a reasonable rate that does’t over-stress our culture and resources.

I like the cultural and racial diversity, and I’m not suggesting that, because people need to fit into the culture they are moving into, that they have to give up their own culture. It is possible to have a second language and to retain cultural practices in addition to taking on some that are new … and be richer on both sides! Why do so many liberals consider America the only nation without a culture worth preserving?

Now, Dems and Republicans need to also work together to make sure we don’t get a credit downgrade well ahead of default because credit agencies are NOT going to give them the time they think they have. They made that mistake in the past. Credit agencies downgrade credit ratings BEFORE default. So, trouble is closer than they they think — closer than 2-3 weeks away.

(Headlines related to this editorial are, as always, in boldface below.)