William Larsen

Immigration - Souder Attends Lagrange Candidate Forum

A meet the candidates took place in Lagrange Tuesday night. Mark Souder was there. A retired sheriff asked a question on immigration. The sheriff stated that 30 years ago they would pick up illegals and call immigration and the illegal would be picked up and sent back to their home country. However, about 20 years ago immigration stopped picking up illegals and the sheriff department stopped looking.

Souder’s position is a fence; virtual fence or boundary must be put in place, but that placing 200,000 troops along the border was not feasible. He also stated it was not feasible to send 12 million illegals back home. In addition Souder stated sending them back home with Indiana’s lower 4.7% unemployment rate would cause worker shortage in jobs Americans do not want to do.

Reverend Boyd said it would not be Christian to send them back. It is not Christian to break our laws either and then demand we accept them either. The Christian thing is to help them help themselves in their own country. Do we not already provide aid to Mexico and other countries?

Well I disagree with much of what Souder stated. There is no such thing as a job an American will not do. In the most concentrated work classifications, which there are 35, there is not one classification where immigrants or illegals make up more than 1/3 of the work force. In addition within these 35 work classifications there are 5 million Americans employed. If there were jobs that Americans would not do, then the data would show very clear job classifications where immigrants or illegals made up 80 or 90% of all the workers within that classification. THERE ARE NONE!!! There are 14 million less educated Americans who have stopped looking for work. The unemployment rate among high school graduates has increased. It is illegals who have taken these jobs from Americans because they network better among themselves than do Americans.

I believe that if you start with a defeatist attitude you will fail. It may be true we cannot find all the illegals, but I bet we can find a lot. I bet we can within two weeks find half of all the illegals. I bet within a month we find another 10 to 20%.

The thing that irks me is they have known about this for a long time. Souder infers we need these workers otherwise our economy will suffer. This is what Steven Camarota, Research Director for the Center of Immigration Studies, referred to when he said they look the other way when it comes to illegals to support immigration.

Instead of addressing problem when they are small, they sweep them under the rug, look the other way or create action committees to study it to death.

I say begin sending them back now using current law.

Begin building a fence in the most accessible areas. Make them work to get across.

posted by William Larsen @ 10:07 AM