Determining America’s needs and capacity for immigration

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Muhammad Ali

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uploaded by YankeeJim

Bring it on

To begin the discussion, I share one of hundreds of stories that introduce President Obama’s call for bipartisanship in fixing the immigration system. I have written before that 1) government, 2) businesses, and 3) immigrants are a part of the equation. That is a no-brainer.

In the referenced story, the President wanders in his remarks to explain how he believes that families should be reunited whereas some people are in the US while others live abroad. Well, that is the type of rhetoric and drifting that has strong political appeal to those who are citizens and want all of their families to join them, but it is way off course on the primary subject and problem of illegal immigrants. To get serious, cut the happy talk Mr. President and let’s get down to business.

A theme of the Obama presidency is “transparency.” You can’t have accountability without transparency. When it comes to discussing immigration, one must begin with the facts about what it is and what we’re trying to achieve in measurable terms.

That is a problem for Mr. Obama as he seems to have more moves than Muhammad Ali when it comes to nailing down details.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/

"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” Obama

Here are the critical questions about which we need answers. America does not have unlimited capacity for population growth? True or false?

If you answer true, then what is the ideal population goal for the Nation at this point in time and projected for the next 100 years? Anyone have the answer?

Optimizing the performance of the Nation, that is the President’s primary job, is to balance the ratio of the population to available resources. At present, the population is consuming greater natural resources in the form of fossil fuels, for instance, than it can afford for both economic and environmental reasons. True or false?

If you say true, should that not put a lid on population growth as the Nation works to optimize the balance? True or false?

How many immigrants were planned to be added to the US population in the past 10 years?

How many illegal immigrants do we have? (Roughly 12 million)

What is the difference between these two numbers?

How much would it take to defend the borders and for the immigration service to process "x-planned" number of legal immigrants?

How much is budgeted for?

I don't know all of the answers but the answers exist. It is the administrations job to answer the questions and make the answers transparent. At that point, we can begin to address essential subjects: 1) What should be the legal constraints on immigration? 2) What should be the process? 3) What should be the resources – human and technology for supporting the process to achieve desired and planned results? 4) What are the desired and planned results?

This is the job of government to answer these questions.

YankeeJim
Solving the hard problems begins with asking the right questions.