John Ridley's HuffPo Blog

I don't know how lame this may be, but I feel compelled to direct the good people who visit this site's attention to a blog on Huffington Post by John Ridley. Ridley, my kind of clear thinking individual who looks for practical results as true solutions to problems, has hit the hammer on the proverbial nail regarding Illegal Immigration (Yeah, I said it). He exposes a damaging flaw in the standard liberal position regarding the matter, because in the end, liberals who stand for illegal immigrants' "rights" are actually standing for the employers' "rights" to exploit them. He is right in pointing the unlikely (?) marriage between "'civil rights'" groups who fight for illegal immigrants to stay and Wall Street. They're marriage has been sustained because the likes of President Bush and Senator Kennedy legitimize the union.

Steps do need to be taken to solve this issue, starting with acknowledging what it is. "Undocumented workers" is a misnomer. A student I once knew used to be an "undoc. worker" when (s)he "interned" for a law firm, and at week's end, had $300 cash in the pocket. No W-2's. No Social Security numbers. Illegal Immigration is what upwards of twenty million people go through by sneaking into the country or staying beyond the alotted time on their visas. And I'm not trying to vilify folks for it. If I had the choice between Mexico City or Jackson City, it's no question.

Still, we must understand that even if people come to this country to be exploited, it's still not right. Just because there are migrants, who came and remain here illegally, willing to work for two dollars an hour with no ability to unionize, that doesn't make it right. The Guest-Worker Program smells of what Ridley calls indentured servitude. It's an accurate way to describe exactly what the business community wants, and what liberals fight for.