CommenTerry

How About This Immigration Compromise

What to do with the illegal aliens who are already in the United States? That's that the debate currently going on in Congress. One thing is for sure -- they are not going to be deported. Some kind of compromise will be reached that will allow them to remain in this country. Call it amnesty if you want, but something will be worked out to let them stay here. Everyone seems to have their own ideas about what it should entail, so I'll offer one of my own. Any compromise that allows illegal immigrants to remain in this country should include the following requirements:

1) They should be required to learn English and pass a rigorous test on it before being allowed to become U.S. citizens.

2) They should be required to sign a statement acknowledging that they have committed a criminal act by entering this county illegally. That statement should include an indication of contrition, i.e., that they are truly repenting of what they did. 

3) They should be deemed ineligible during their lifetime for welfare, food stamps, SSI, Medicaid, and other government giveaway programs. However, they would be eligible for earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare.

4) They should be subject to deportation upon their first conviction of a felony.

5) They should be required to wait at least five years to become U.S. citizens.

6) Employers should be exempt from having to pay them the minimum wage during the time they are waiting to become U.S. citizens.

7) They should not be eligible for any in-state college tuition rates before becoming citizens of the U.S.

What If Genarlow Wilson Had Been Older?

What if the news just broke that, instead of being 17 years of age, Genarlow Wilson had actually been 21 at the time he had consensual oral sex with that 15-year-old girl? I dare say that many of the people who had been cheering for his release from jail would now be calling for the re-instatement of his 10-year sentence. What a bunch of hypocrites! They are no better than those traitors who hailed Jesus on Palm Sunday but were then demanding his crucifixion five days later.

Case Highlights Immigration Enforcement Problems

The case of Elvira Arellano is symptomatic of the kinds of obstacles we face when trying to enforce immigration laws in the United States. Ms. Arellano is an illegal immigrant who was recently captured in Los Angeles and deported after having been holed up in a Methodist church in Chicago for a year. That church offered her sanctuary last August, just as she was scheduled to appear before immigration authorities for possible deportation proceedings. She had previously been convicted of using a bogus Social Security number. She has a seven-year-old son who is a U.S. citizen by virtue of his birth here during her unlawful stay.

She had planned to go to Washington in September to lobby for immigration reform. She hadn’t made any effort to become a U.S. citizen. Apparently, she was waiting for the government to pass an immigration reform bill that would have handed U.S. citizenship to her on a silver platter, as a reward for her criminal behavior.

First of all, where did Ms. Arellano get the notion that she had a right to lobby Congress? Why did she think she had a right to protest anything in this country? Those rights are reserved for U.S. citizens, not people are in the U.S. illegally.

I'm glad Ms. Arellano was seized and deported by law enforcement officials after she left the church and went to Los Angeles. However, she should have been apprehended before – from the church. Churches that knowingly provide sanctuary to scofflaws of any kind should lose their tax-exempt status. In addition, any of their property and structures used to shelter such persons should be forfeited to the government. Churches have no more right than any other entity or individual to flout the law.

Deporting Ms. Arellano did not necessarily have to break up her family, as she had claimed it would. She was free to take her son with her, even though he is a U.S citizen. Instead, she chose to leave him in the custody of the pastor of the Chicago church where she had been staying. Far too many illegal immigrants are exploiting the “birth” loophole in the U.S. Constitution as a means of remaining in this country. Our Founding Fathers never envisioned such brazen opportunism when they framed the Constitution. It needs to be amended to withhold automatic citizenship from babies born in this country unless at least one of their parents is already a U.S. citizen.

Just Another Knee-Jerk Reaction

The aftermath of that tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis has brought just another knee-jerk reaction. The safety of almost every older bridge in this country is now being called into question. Politicians and citizens alike are rushing around in effort to make sure enough money is available for support and maintenance of our public infrastructure. People are coming out of the woodwork to claim that they predicted something like this was soon going to happen. Dire warnings are being sounded. 

Every time some isolated tragedy occurs, we react by going around acting is if something similar is about to occur everywhere. In most cases, of course, it is not. But here’s another problem with that way of thinking: If it really were about to occur everywhere, why hadn’t we been doing something about it before? Why does it take some kind of cataclysmic event to force people to do things they should have been doing all along?

Our problem is that, as a culture, we have a short attention span. We tend to focus on important issues based on the latest calamity. In September of 2001, we were worried about terrorism. In August of 2005, we were concerned about our vulnerability to natural disasters. In April of this year, we were afraid of being killed by crazed gunmen. We are now terrified of crossing bridges (of all things). Don’t worry, though – it’ll soon wear off and we’ll be back to business as usual.

We Don't Need ISP Police

There is currently a move afoot in Congress to mandate that Internet service providers police the activity of their subscribers. They claim that this would greatly reduce the volume of illegal Internet activity, such as child pornography, copyright infringements, and terrorist communications.

However, I believe this a bad idea. Leave the job of policing the Internet to … well … the police. It has been proven time and again that people and entities (in this case, cable and phone companies) that are not in the law enforcement business do a poor job of it. For that very reason citizens’ arrests are generally discouraged.

Besides, even though I never intend to participate in anything illegal while surfing the Net, I don’t want my ISP monitoring my activity or keeping records thereof. Monitoring of my Internet activity is okay at the office, since the computer I’m using there belongs to the company I work for. It also pays for the Internet connection. However, when I’m at home (as I am while creating this post), I’m using a computer that belongs to me. And, to paraphrase a quote by the late, great Ronald Reagan, I’m paying for this Internet connection. So, my online activity is nobody’s business but mine.

Internet subscribers in the U.S. should demand that their ISPs not comply with the government’s demand that they spy on their subscribers’ online activities. Those who cave in to the government’s demands should be immediately dropped by each of their subscribers and forced out of business. Let’s keep Big Brother away from our home computers.

When $100 Million Isn't Enough

The sister 0f a man who committed suicide as police attempted to arrest him for allegedly attempting to solicit sex from a Dateline NBC operative posing as a 13-year-old boy, is suing NBC for $100 million. Unlike many of the men profiled on the show's "To Catch a Predator" series, Louis "Bill" Conradt, the chief felony assistant district attorney for Rockwall, County, TX, did not attempt to meet the teen he had chatted with on the Internet. While I am generally opposed to large lawsuits, I hope his sister wins the suit and gets every penny of the amount she's suing for. Actually, I believe she should be suing for even more.

What Dateline NBC and its partner, Perverted Justice, have been doing borders on entrapment, in my opinion. A lot of men have sexual thoughts toward underage teens. Thankfully, most of them don't act on these thoughts. However, Dateline provides the enticement for them to do something they might not ordinarily do -- and then helps the police catch them for it. This is tantamount to intentionally leaving a roll of one-hundred-dollar bills in plain sight of a desperate, financially strapped person and then jumping out from behind a wall and cuffing them when they reach for it.

Hopefully, this lawsuit will result in NBC's perverted form of justice being put on permanent hiatus and leaving sting operations to law enforcement professionals.

Random Gasoline Rants

With gas prices the way they are now, going to a gas station is comparable to visiting a house of prostitution. (Because I try to keep this blog at a PG-rated content level, I'll let you use your imagination to figure out what I mean here). 

---

I now make a practice of bending over and grabbing my ankles just before and immediately after filling up my gas tank!

---

Something really weird happened to me yesterday. You're not going to believe this, but I swear it is true -- I drove past a gas station and the prices were exactly the same as they were the previous time I drove by it! Honest!

---

The other day, I heard about this family that decided to give up their summer vacation and take the money they would have spent on the vacation and donate it to charity. They had planned to travel about 250 miles, round trip. How generous of them to donate what had to be a gift of at least $100,000! 

---

Remember 1986? That year, gas prices dropped to as low as $0.79 a gallon where I live, before moving back up. This was after prices had risen above a dollar for the first time in the late 1970's. Remember 2001? After rising sharply early in the year, gas prices started falling in the spring and had hit a low of about $1.19 at some stations in my area by 9/11. Of course, the terrorist attacks ended that little party. If only I would have had a way of storing some of that cheap gas for use right about now!

What's Wrong with this Story?

A 44-year-old New Zealand woman, who was completely dependent on an electronic oxygen pump, died about two hours after a state-owned power company shut off the electricity to her home. Her failing health had recently forced her to stop working and she had gotten behind on her power bill. Her family now holds the power company directly responsible for her death.

However, even if we completely believe her family's account of the story, common sense demands that they shoulder some of the blame for her death. By their own admission they knew that she absolutely needed that machine to survive, yet there is no evidence that any of them sought an alternate venue for her, once her power was shut off. None of them even offered to let her stay at their home until she could find somewhere else to go and/or until her power could be restored. No, they just let her sit right there in her home with no electricity and no oxygen.

On top of that, no one called the ambulance until she had stopped breathing, and then it was too late. They claim her condition started to deteriorate almost as soon as her electricity was shut off. Why didn't someone do something then? No, they just sat and watched her as her breathing got worse and worse until she finally lost consciousness. Is that any way to treat a loved one?

It seems to me that this family was so focused on pointing the finger of blame at the power company that they didn't consider some easy steps that could have mitigated her circumstances and ultimately saved her life. Someone who is less charitable than I might even conclude that they were hoping the shutoff of her electricity would lead to her death -- and therefore a lucrative lawsuit for them.

Who's to Blame for the Subprime Meltdown?

The subprime meltdown has begun. Hundreds of mortgage companies around the country are going bankrupt. Thousands of people are having their mortgages foreclosed and are being thrown out of their homes. But who's responsible for this mess?

Obviously, greedy and unethical mortgage companies should shoulder most of the blame. In their uncontrollable lust for the almighty dollar, they made home loans available to people who would not have qualified, had they used the rules everyone played by in the past. Yet they went ahead and loaned the money to these people with questionable credit in order to command higher interest rates. Now the whole thing has blown up in their faces. They got their just desserts.

However, the borrowers have to share some of the blame. They knew their own credit histories and bill-paying habits better than anyone else did but still sought home loans that they knew would be a hardship for them to pay back. Rather than waiting to save a little money for a larger down payment, and thereby avoiding expensive private mortgage insurance as well as possibly getting a lower rate, they had to have it all now. They couldn't wait. Their impatience drove them to push the financial envelope and it ultimately burst wide open.

Everyone involved in this debacle should hang their heads in shame!

What Can Be Done About High Gas Prices?

There are some things that the federal, state, and local governments and businesses could do to provide some relief in the wake of our high gas prices. In many cases they could:

1) Offer employees the option of working four 10-hour days a week.

2) Offer employees the option of telecommuting.

3) Use teleconferencing in lieu of business trips, whenever possible.

4) Postpone temporary, out-of-town, assignments until gas prices come back down to a reasonable level.

There are also things that we, as individuals, could do as well. I'm not trying to tell anyone else what to do, but here are some things that I plan to do until further notice:

1) Turn my automobile air conditioner lower or all the way off while driving.

2) Postpone all vacations and out-of-town trips.

3) Eliminate all eating out.

4) Make one trip to the grocery store each week. If I run out of supplies before the end of the week, tough! I'll just have to suck it up.

5) Leave my car at home and "hoof it" for all trips of less than 2 miles.

6) Other than for emergencies, basically just put myself under "house arrest" and drive only to work, to church, and to get groceries.