Dine out or eat chicken, or fruit and vegetables grown in America? If yes, then an illegals was probably involved. Many of our small and large businesses depend on migrant labor.

During one of my previous occupations, I was asked to sell a landscaping business. Most of the landscapers I contacted used illegal laborers to operate. Few locals were willing to do the hard dirty work that clients could pay. I got the same responses from restaurateurs.

Many people say we should deport all illegals and then prohibit immigration. About a decade ago Alabama’s Republican controlled government passed a law punishing all businesses that hired illegals. Businesses suffered, crops rotted in the fields, and prices rose. Two years later they quietly revoked the law. The next year the families moved back and life returned to normal.

When I asked the landscapers why they stayed all year, it was because they weren’t sure they could sneak back next spring. Many brought their families up for the same reason.

The owners hired illegals because the locals didn’t want to do the work since it is dirty and hot with long hours. Alabama thought teenagers and unemployed would do the work – they didn’t.

If we had the sensible work visas that the right wing congress wouldn’t pass for the last several years, we would have a manageable immigration problem. Families would stay in their home towns and the workers would go back and forth as needed.

Trump’s wall will only boost the shovel and ladder business in Mexico. If we had a workable visa system we could save the billions he wants to waste on a wall. Visas first — walls second!

There is no other word for it. I am on the border fence because I can see many view points of the problem,

One side of the equation is tens of thousands of children are making their way to this country from the poor crime-ridden Central American countries. A few people in those countries are very rich, some people are well off, and the rest range from poor to indescribably poor. Criminal gangs recruit or kill them. Mothers pay thousands to coyotes to take their kid across our southern border to save their lives and give them a chance for a better life. Wanting their child to have a better life is normal isn’t it?

The other side is the kids are just as illegal as the adults that come across for work and a better life. Most of the arguments on this side have to do with stealing jobs, cutting wages, burdening society, and of course, outnumbering white Americans. Compassion is limited to sending them back as soon as possible and building a Berlin-type wall guarded by gun-toting military. I wonder if they would be concerned if the people were flooding across our northern border.

I agree with most of the arguments which both sides use in the debate. The one argument that isn’t being argued is the life boat scenario. The earth has limited resources which we are rapidly using up and in spite of science, will not be able to feed twelve billion people by 2100. The United States is our lifeboat on the bigger lifeboat floating in space. We already have twice as many people as when I studied the projections in college forty-six years ago. (We are still on that track.)

The fact is the conservatives are just using the issue for political gain and contributions. They want the illegal’s sent back but don’t want to fund it. They want a wall built with guards but only if we cut social spending. NOTE: The same people want to cut the taxes for the 1%, especially the top one-tenth of one percent.

So after seeing both sides if you aren’t standing on the fence with me, then your heart is either butter or granite.

5-31-2015