All Right, The Last Post of The Day

How could I not talk about this?

There's a very real danger that the issues surrounding immigration will devolve into... or I guess remain at imagining one side is nothing but a bunch of xenophobic racists and the other advocates a stick it to The Man borderless, free for all. Racists (we decided Joe Turner is) and Reconquistas (even apart from Michelle Malkins to the MAX! caricature of protestors) do have a dog in this fight, but there is so much more at stake here than whether America is a land of immigrants and how that's defined.

The way the debate is often framed now illustrates some of the ugliest tendencies of humanity. The ugly elements are there, but it's possible and necessary to get past them.

Just remember in all of it, criminalizing illegal immigration is a bad idea, so is creating an under protected immigrant labor force, so is full amnesty, ensuring fair living wages and labor standards in other countries accompany the free flow of goods from NAFTA and CAFTA makes sense, as does enforcing fair labor practices in the US.

Anyway, the moral questions about being a "nation of laws" and needing to make sure everyone lives under said laws are important. Be subject to the governing authorities and all that. But the questions raised by being a part of a system that relies so much on an unrepresented labor force must also be addressed.

It's usually not right when laws are broken. So illegal immigrants have to deal with that as any of us that break laws day to day do. But it's also not right that we ask (tacitly or otherwise) and expect people to participate in our domestic economy so we can glean benefits from their labor while keeping them wholly separate and unequal.

Like any good issue it's all over the place. It touches on what it means to be a Christian. It gets at what we think America is. It pokes at the ease of our lives. It questions how decent we think we are. A wall won't answer it. Making it illegal for churches to offer food or shelter to illegal immigrants won't either. It's a lot to examine and the people marching in the streets, or deliberately not in the streets, are making sure we know we are all involved.

Oh and so we don't have to talk out our butts, here's HR 4437.