I live in Arizona most of the year and I don't have to tell you, that unless you have been living in a cave for the past several months - immigration is a BIG issue here.  Last weekend over the holiday I got into a fairly heated exchange with my eldest son over the issue and it made me understand what the fuss is really about, particularly with those who support the toughening of  immigration laws.  My point was that we ought to stop fooling around with this and declare an amnesty to bring the upwards of 20 million illegal immigrants into the fold, so to speak, and allow them to work and contribute openly.  Since they are already here, and since there is literally no possible way to round them all up, we should recognize their existence and deal with the issue openly.

To this my son strongly disagreed and his basic point was twofold: First, they came here illegally so why reward them and secondly, illegal immigrants take American jobs.  To his first point I answered that regardless, they ARE here nonetheless and pretending otherwise or making some legal point is counterproductive.  We have been talking about stronger enforcement for the past 30 years at least, and to no avail.  Presidents from Carter to Obama have sent troops to the border, beefed up systems, put up fences, and had round up after round up of illegal immigrants/workers and not put a dent into the problem.  My thought is perhaps we ought to try something else as continuing these fruitless gestures are just silly.  My son replied what about terrorists crossing from Mexico and to this I replied that to date, exactly zero terrorists have been caught or recorded crossing into the US from Mexico.  All 19 9/11 Hijackers crossed from Canada where there is a huge Muslim population to blend into versus Mexico where there are virtually none.  Spanish is not Arabic, and Islam is not Catholicism, so the argument that they might be coming from Mexico is based upon Mexicans and Arabs being brown - is just crazy if not totally racist.

However, on the American jobs argument – to which many, many Americans have, this reflects a fundamental lack of understanding of how an economy works.  Simply, holding a job does not mean you take and take.  In fact you give and give.  Employed workers means more restaurants, gas stations, retail stores, and all kinds of sales of goods which legally and gainfully employed workers want to use their wages upon. I mean, they are not going to earn money and stuff it in a mattress and if they are legal they will spend it out in the open in all kinds of businesses which will employ more Americans! And as for the lower wages paid to illegal immigrants, this too would go away once they were allowed to report illegal practices openly as legal aliens as opposed to being criminals today.  Legal workers are far less likely to get paid less than illegal ones and so the edge against American workers would fast disappear.  More workers makes more jobs.  It is as simple as that.

In the end my son grudgingly admitted I had good points but then said, as my kids and friends often do, that I am impossible to argue with because I have so many facts and examples at my fingertips.  In other words, they don't like being confused by the facts from what they believe. And belief and faith are essentially holding something to be true when there are no facts to defend it from something as powerful and good as one's religion to something as foolish as arguing against realistic immigration policy.  Hanging on to a bad idea because it is too hard to let go of a bad argument is, well, a bad argument!