Legal Immigration for Dummies

Immigration is treated like a terrible thing these days. What's worse, the attitude taken toward illegal immigration tends to treat these people who want to come here as if they are terrible hateful individuals.

To steal a quote from the Wall Street Journal, "They have as much pride in America as you or me." Sadly, even though this is the case for most, this is not the case for all.

Therefore, illegal immigration tends to bring politicians' minds to thoughts of walls and trenches which remind me of the Berlin Wall. If only this were the worst of their thoughts.

Strangely, many politicians complain about Immigrants who work for lower wages than Americans, don't pay taxes, and take advantage of our welfare system according to many recent columns in the Orlando Sentinel. Most neglect the obvious solutions involved.

First, a quick solution to the lower wages is to eliminate the Minimum wage laws. This would put Americans on a level playing field and keep immigrants from undercutting American workers.

The taxation solution is already in Congress, but is coming under great scrutiny. The easiest way to stop immigrants who don't pay taxes on their wages would be to turn the taxes from income to sales. The "Fair Tax Act" is already in congress and being debated.

Unfortunately, people tend not to jump on board with ideas that they don't recognize. If you really want to slow the population of illegal immigrants, the first step is to write your congressmen about this bill.

The biggest problem many people see is that they are sucking down welfare dollars. I have a very simple solution here as well, but not many people like it. We could eliminate the welfare state. If there is no free money, then the immigrants have no reason to choose this country over their own.

Think about all of these solutions combined. If immigrants are on a level playing field with Americans in both wages and taxation, and they no longer have incentives to derive false identities to steal welfare dollars that wouldn't exist, why would they come here illegally?

Because this is the land of opportunity? Maybe, but there would be much less reasons to have such elaborate customs inspections and we could very easily allow people to enter this country legally since they didn't have as much welfare to sign up for.

I see no reasons why these actions shouldn't be implemented, but I'm also not a Republican or a Democrat. I suppose, since they are the ones in power, they know best. I mean, look at all the good things Bush has done.