Sunday, May 15, 2011

Immigration Policy

CNN had a story yesterday on the new Georgia law, apparently styled after the infamous Arizona law. The anchor interviewed a representative of the Georgia restaurant association, who said restaurants were unable to find people to work as dishwashers without hiring illegals. She refused to back off even under the hostile questioning of the skeptical anchor.

The governor used the same rhetoric about people breaking the law. You know the routine, about how we all have to follow rules. But here is what occurs to me. The parenting class I took stressed that kids do not obey a rule simply because you make one. They immediately break it to see what will happen, because that is how they find out if it is really a rule or not. If consequences get consistently imposed for breaking it, then it is a rule.

But with immigration, consequences do not get regularly or consistently applied, so it is not really a rule. If we protected our borders properly, then we could stem the immigration tide. But we are too busy policing the world to police our own borders.

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