After reading this article on Townhall.com, I felt compelled to respond with the following:
Your claim that the "anti-immigrant" crowd is driving this debate is as ludicrous as the idea that the majority of Americans don't think this way. To say people are "anti-immigrant" is basically calling them racists without using that word, and that's offensive, not to mention unwarranted.
I have no problem with immigrants, nor does anyone I know. What I have a problem with are ILLEGAL immigrants, and you and the rest of the pro-illegal immigrant crowd never make that distinction, or even acknowledge that it exists. That is where your argument becomes dishonest, because you're not addressing the real issue; just a straw man.
The fact is that illegal Mexican immigrants are always poor and they bring poverty into this country, little by little, when they come here. Without money they rely more heavily on social services. They imbalance the budget system that pays for their children to go to school. They go to emergency rooms for minor ailments and leave without paying the bill, forcing the closures of countless hospitals and e.r.'s. They make up 26% of the jail and prison systems, yet L.A. county, for example, gets reimbursed for only a small portion of the costs of housing them.
When my wife immigrated to this country, her family was required to get sponsorships so they would not burden our society while they assimilated. Illegal Mexican immigrants assimilate VERY slowly and show up with no sponsorships of any kind, nor even satisfaction of the "no communicable diseases" requirement you raised in your column. These may seem like little things, but when you consider we're already at upwards of 12 million illegals already here, those little things multiply into big things.
My main point was to say that your painting of all people who are against illegal immigration as racists was wrong and offensive. There are real, serious issues at play, here, and it's intellectually dishonest to just brush them aside as though they were figments of racist imaginations.
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