A Southern Ellis Island
Inscribed within the Statue of Liberty are the famous words of Emma Lazarus's famous poem 'The New Colossus:'
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
For the almost 100 years while Ellis Island was in operation, those words welcomed hundreds of thousands of immigrants entering the United States. Even during the Great Depression, the hardest economic problem this country has ever faced, we as a nation welcomed all those who yearned to be free. There were a few restrictions, but those are beyond the point.
Even though official U.S. policy was to welcome immigrants, the new Americans were not always greeted with open arms by their immediate neighbors. The Irish, though the most memorable, where not the only ethnicity hated by the current Americans. The Russians, Germans, Italians, Chinese, and pretty much everyone else who who wasn't Anglo-Saxon faced a certain level of disapproval upon their entering.
Though, at first, these groups were looked at with disgracing eyes, eventually they all learned our language, our laws, and gave up portions of their cultural history by adapting to our, sometimes repulsive, cultural habits and norms.
I apologize for that history lesson, but it is imperative to realize what we're facing in terms of the 'immigration crisis' is nothing new - just a different group of people entering from a different land. We have nothing to fear from Hispanics immigrating to the US - which I'll explain later.
The solution I propose is neither of Republican or Democrat design but is formed strictly out of my own brand of libertarianism. What I propose is an "immigration center" along the Southern border to welcome this new wave of immigrants into our great country. We should cherish the idea of individuals coming here to celebrate freedom; liberty, after all, is at the very center of Americana.
Of course I also welcome border security too. Though I don't necessarily support a wall, simply due to it's impracticality, keeping those individuals which seek to cause harm to others out of the United States is practical and for the common good.
Just as previous ethnicities have faced problems in the past, the Latinos face political hardships caused by "misunderstandings" spread by liberals and conservatives to further their respective platforms.
Part of this animosity towards Latino immigrants is their ability and willingness to take low paying jobs. Though this sounds terrible, in reality the Hispanic presence simply forces others to take hire-paying, more skilled oriented jobs instead. The market is still responding to the dramatic increase in migrant labor, the readjustments will be painful but will eventually lead to a smarter, more efficient and specialized, workforce.
Furthermore, Illegal Immigrants (which are predominately Latino) who cannot afford health care receive plenty of social welfare assistance from the, legal, tax payers. This I do have a problem with! My money is taken from me against my will to pay for someone else's healthcare. I don't really care wether the person be of Mexican or British (like me) decent, but rather that my money is forced into the pockets of someone else, when I can barely pay my tuition bills as it is. By removing the socialist aspects from the U.S. healthcare system the market will react with lower costs and increase in charitable healthcare alternatives (but that's another post).
As I close this post, one should consider the numerous other side-effects a southern Ellis Island would create. With this facility the terrible crime of human smuggling would all but cease overnight. Quite frankly, there is no real way of tracking where the money generated from bringing people into the United States goes. It is all too likely this money ends up into the hands of drug lords causing violence along the Mexican border.
This facility would also decrease U.S. taxpayer burdens considerably. Instead of using valuable resources tracking families seeking a peaceful and prosperous life those resources could be diverted to stopping career criminals which actually pose a significant risk to society.