@ncscswitch:
It is a shame that no candidate has that ultra pragmatic position on illegals… Draconian enforcement against employers who hire illegals… problem solved, and the illegals go home at their own expense. Not even Tancredo who is now out of the race embraced that simple, practical and REVENUE GENERATING solution.
There is a simple reason for that, Switch. Do that, and you SHUT DOWN the entire construction industry in this country. Outside of Union-controlled areas up North, easily 80% of your labor on construction projects are undocumented illegals (think carpenters, roofers, drywall installers, brick layers, etc.). You shut down construction, you are guaranteed a recession for a VERY LONG time. The problem is not, per se, illegal immigration. The problem is a labor SHORTAGE in construction in particular coupled with absurdly low legal immigration quotas which forces these labor shortages to be met, through the “iron law” of supply and demand (read Adam Smith), through illegal immigrants. Fix our broken immigration policy which is based on short-sighted and nativist anti-immigrant bias (nothing new under the sun in that respect in this country – always has been that way) on the one hand, encourage investment in Latin America (on a non-exploitive basis) to lift those economies whose stagnant nature drives people here in the first place, and you have the beginnings of a workable solution. Throwing up a wall and hiring 1000 more border guards just pushes us further in the wrong direction because it denies and defies economic reality.
I will also point at that, as a construction lawyer, I have counseled NUMEROUS legal immigrants to this country (including Russians, Albanians, Croatians, etc.) who are entrepenuers and investors in our economy who have come over here with basically nothing and have created their own businesses, thereby creating jobs and, through competition, kept costs down. From my observation, it would appear legal immigrant-related businesses are largely replacing businesses started by natural born Americans in fields like carpentry, drywall and roofing for the simple reason that natural-born Americans no longer pursue these trades, by and large. Instead, the children of roofers and carpenters are going to college, or just getting by on the old man’s money (or, worse, living paycheck to paycheck), with no ambition to start their own businesses. Basically, without the “fresh blood” that new immigrants provide, I feel our country would lose its “edge” and enter into a long, slow slide into mediocrity. In fact, we might already be on that path.
So what does this have to do with the election? I have no idea – none of the candidates are addressing anything substantive, but just re-gurgitating old, largely irrelevant slogans. Romney and Guiliani are the worst offenders so far – based on their ads that I have seen. Huckabee is just an evangelical nut with a smooth delivery (which, delivery-wise, is more than you can say for Romney, that’s for sure). The Democrat nominee, whomever that might be, has to have the edge after 8 years of Bush (at 37% or whatever his approval rating is, not many Republicans like him either), but McCain may just be the one candidate who would stand a chance against Hillary or Obama as one who is definitely NOT a Bush clone who could still draw enough independents and Republicans (and even a few Democrats) who would have qualms about turning over the most powerful office in the world to a Hillary or an Obama, neither of whom truly have the experience the job requires (or should require). Of course, in retrospect, neither did Bush . . .
