Letter: We need to change the conversation about immigration

Posted 3/7/19

The border wall serves a purpose, but it isn’t to keep out illegal immigrants or drugs. It is a monument, an organizing tool, for those who oppose immigration, in particular from Latin America. …

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Letter: We need to change the conversation about immigration

Posted

The border wall serves a purpose, but it isn’t to keep out illegal immigrants or drugs. It is a monument, an organizing tool, for those who oppose immigration, in particular from Latin America. It is the anti-Statue of Liberty.

The real issue here is not illegal immigration; it never was. It is a classic bait and switch tactic. Get people angry about illegal immigration, so they can attack all immigration (from non-white countries). And yet, the real problem is, Democrats, researchers, authors, think tank experts and others allow them to get away with this. This is because they lack a real understanding of the heart of the issue.

Illegal immigration would effectively cease if our immigration system allowed for our labor needs. People outside the immigrant community, on both sides, do not seem to understand this clearly. No one will come to the United States if there is not a job waiting.

We have a tremendous lack of blue-collar workers in the United States. For example, there is a critical shortage of: plumbers, electricians, factory workers, CNA’s, LPN’s, and mechanics, to name but a few areas. In spite of this, the extreme right and anti-immigration promoters demand a restriction of legal immigration.
Sixty to seventy percent of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people, but that has basically been taken off the table. Democrats and pro-immigration advocates are fighting back attacks on the immigrant community, which they should be. But the problem is they allow the extreme right to define those issues (i.e. the wall, DACA, abuse of people at the border) because they have never clearly defined their own stand on immigration, or understood the issue from a labor force perspective.

We should have a labor-based immigration system, not a racial-based immigration system. A racial-based immigration system is effectively what we have now, because the quota system prevents blue-collar workers from coming into our country legally, from the countries that would naturally supply that labor.

It is reasonable that every country has a limit on how many people it can accept, but we are not even close to that. We need people to work. At the very least, that’s what we should be talking about. And the silence is deafening.
There are three myths that need to be challenged; that immigrants can get welfare; that they take jobs away, and they undercut wages of Americans. In order to challenge these myths, we need a group of people who will educate themselves and others, and speak out for those who have been denied a voice.

We desperately need a national conversation about our immigration system as it relates to our labor needs, especially going into 2020.
The Truth in Immigration Project was started for that purpose. We need volunteers to do basic research and learn how to present this issue intelligently to the American public. If you are interested, please check the website at www.truthinimmigrationproject.org and contact us at truthimmigration@gmail.com or call 401-253-6741.

Greg Hall
Bristol

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