Karin Cooper / AP
This time, it was Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who was just nominated by President-elect Barack Obama to be Secretary of Homeland Security. Here you have a border governor who is very familiar with the issue of illegal immigration. According to an ABC News report, the governor says that tough immigration laws as we know it are just absurd. Sending undocumented immigrants back to their country "just to make us feel good, I think, is not really an immigration plan."
Not a plan indeed. The reason we have an estimated 12 million immigrants in this country is because they lacked the bare necessities in their homecountry. I'm not talking about the material things we cannot live with here in the United States, such as a laptop or a cellphone. People come here because they cannot feed their families or because they no longer feel safe in their own country. Going back to their countries is just not an option.
Immigrants are not for illegal immigration, I don't think nobody is. They just happen to find themselves in that situation given the circumstances they are facing.
Napolitano believes that a giving a legal path to citizenship for these undocumented immigrants sounds like the perfect plan. It is naive for people to think that we can round up 12 million people and get rid of them just like that. What we can do is create a fair immigration reform that will bring these humans out of the shadows and legally contribute to this society like everybody else. Not that they are not contributing already. People forget that undocumented immigrants also pay taxes. But every April, they lack a fair tax return because they lack a valid Social Security card.
Obama is approaching the issue of immigration with carefully planned strategies that may scare off people. As I've mentioned before, this country is currently a mess and he's got a tough job to do. We have to give him a chance and have, well, hope in him.
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