Monday, January 08, 2007
Trite Wanderings
So I may have missed a step by talking about candidates. Who cares who they are? What is important to me? Or you? So here is my list of concerns for the next four years, in no particular order; Iraq-win or leave, Global Warming-dying polar bears and the rest of the environment, Controlling the Mexican Border, which leads into the next one-National Security, and finally balancing the budget and keeping the economy healthy. To be honest, I am don't take a polarizing view of abortion. I support it in extreme cases but not as a form of birth control. I don't advocate legalizing drugs. I support gays having the same rights as everyone else, as long as it doesn't ascend into preferential treatment. I support free trade generally, but I think Friedman makes good points about each country, company, and person being held responsible for making decisions to benefit the whole.
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4 comments:
I don't think you can credibly link the Mexican Border to National Security. While it could be a problem in theory, it isn't a security problem in reality. Additionally, I am far from sure that balancing the budget is useful in keeping the economy healthy, indeed a very good case can be made that a healthy economy required an unbalanced budget and that an unbalanced budget helps us to have a healthy economy.
Hypothetically the loose border could become a huge security threat, but moreover we have no ability to regualte the flow of immigrants into our country. I don't support a wall across the whole border, but we need to control some of the access. I think if we are able to provide jobs for these millions of Mexicans, then we should find a way to legalize this work, tax it, and identify the workers. This will provide them with basic rights, and contribute to the orderly governing of our nation.
I agree with you on what we should do about immigration. In particular, removing the immigration quotas would solve that problem in one swift stroke.
However, the 'potential' of the Mexican Border being a danger for security reasons (in the traditional Al-Qaida entering there) is vastly overstated. Our southern border is better patroled then our nothern border. Yes, a lot of Mexicans make it past those patrols, but a lot don't as well, if we caught 50% of the terrorists sneaking in, we would probably be able to stop the other 50% before they could do anything. Additionally, an Al-Qaida agent that wanted to infiltrate America through Mexico would have to be able to speak Spanish and English to be effective. For that, and other reasons (including a fairly large and fairly radical Muslim population) Canada is a far more attractive entry point.
Generally speaking, people that try to tie the southern border to 'security concerns' are either uneducated about the real situation or disengenous about what they really want (most often to keep the Mexicans out of America.)
economy is important and International security ( such as Pushing Nations to become part of the global economy and to play nice is also very important. (Syria, Iran, China)) are the most important.
When those two are secured, internal issues can be handled in due time.
immigration is proably thrid on my list, though it is close high.
Other social issues in america (guns, eminent domain, healthcare, social security, tax structure, etc), all take a backseat to those three issues.
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