The Good 'Ole (not Ole') Immigration Debate- w/ a Twist

I'm not sure how many of you heard about the (black) kid getting gunned down by the (Mexican) pandillero in Central L.A. a month or so ago. The victim was a (american) football star at L.A. High School, and I believe a 17 yr old junior.

People were understandably up in arms due to the shooting, but even moreso because the alleged shooter was reportedly in the country illegally and had VERY recently been released from jail. This comes at a time of some states passing tough (anti) immigration measures, I assume largely out of feeling that the Federal government is not doing enough about it. The LAPD has had a policy, Special Order 40, related to it's authority and intent to question an individual's immigration status. S.O. 40 reads, "officers shall not initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person."

The story has been reported in the L.A. Times a fair amount, most recently today: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-specialorder17apr17,0,6757309.story. One result of the crime is that the high schooler's parents are trying to get the L.A. City Council to act to alter or rescind S.O. 40. In another recent L.A. Times article, the website let readers post their opinions on the issue. As you can imagine, there were comments all over the spectrum, but if I recall, it was about 75/25 for posts favoring cracking down in illegal immigrants. If I can find a link to the posts, I will past it here.

Anyway, all of those posts made me feel like adding my 2 cents. The prpoblem was that my 2 cents was more like $20 in length, and it wouldn't fit into the alloted space. Thus, I post if here for all of you to read:

It seems to me that many who are posting here against illegal immigration are tending to generalize and target their comments toward hispanics. In the US southern border states, hispanos may comprise a large portion of the immigrants, both legal and illegal. However, that still does not justify sweeping generalizations. Think about how you like (and how accurate are) most of the generalizations about a group to which you belong, be it black, republican, texan, muslim, etc.
I do understand the frustration coupled with illegal immigrants committing crimes, especially violent crimes. However, that frustration should apply equally to anyone who commits a crime.
If we separate violent "illegals" from the non-violent, I have yet to see a post that hits at the crux of the problem, with a few execptions-- ECONOMICS. If you lived in Country X, making $500/year, and you heard that you could make $500/week doing the SAME thing in Country Y, what would you do?? Of course, we would not ALL immigrate, but many of us would jump at the chance to earn multiples of our normal wages for our same hard work. It's like going the the UK and earning the same amount you make in the US for doing the same work-- guess what, these days you would have 2x as many dollars, just like that! What would you do if your salary was suddenly doubled, let alone quintupled or 50X'ed?? Of course it is not so feasible for someone in the US to skip across the border to the UK.
This border osmosis, driven by labor supply-and-demand, exchange rates, and the relative economic health of neighboring countries is not unique to North America. Other countries have similar immigration dynamics/issues-- Chile with Peruanos, and the UK with some former Eastern Block countries. If they were able, most people in the world would choose to make lots more MONEY for doing the same thing-- for the most part, we all want the best for our families and ourselves.
This is not all to say that illegal immigration is o.k., but that if you truly want to solve wat you feel is a problem, you must first look at the root cause. And illegal immigration will not just stop because we crack down on it- it largely boils down to supply and demand- look at how well prohibition went and the current war on (all other) drugs is going. I mean I never hear of anyone using drugs these days. Take it from a former, temporaryily-illegal immigrant-- don't worry, it wasn't in the US!

So, enough venom aimed at illegal (read "hispanic") immigrants already.


I do find it ironic that the article quotes Chief Bratton as saying, "If you are an illegal immigrant out there and basically you are obeying the law and you are not preying on others, you don't have anything to fear from the Los Angeles police in terms of us approaching you solely on the belief you are here illegally." I think the Chief needs to look up the word illegal or we need to relabel the term. :)