#21 (Warning: Long rant)
I am old enough to remember when the politicians said, "Let's stop sending people to jail for taking drugs; instead, let's go after the pushers."
With the penalties removed, the market for drugs exploded. With a large market for drugs, the gangs took over large areas of Latin America.
As people start pushing for more legalized drugs, the market will grow. As the market grows, the gangs' power will grow, and they will continue to butcher civilians and anybody else in order to control their share of the market.
As the drug cartels expand, other jobs for people go away. Who wants to run a business in a city controlled by killers? (This is why businesses left the Chicago ghettos after the blockbusting realtors destroyed the neighborhood and the suburbs shot rifle bullets through the windows of Black families who tried to follow jobs to the suburbs. Then Great Society kicked Dad out of the house. He's an able bodied man; he can find a job. His job moved to Melrose Park, there's no public transportation, and somebody will shoot into your kids' bedroom window if you try to get an apartment there? What is that to the Great Society? If Dad's in the house, you have a provider and you can't get any relief. Oh, there aren't any jobs, the schools are falling apart because Chicago Board of Ed and the Teachers' Union don't give a damn for black kids? And gangs took over your neighborhood now? That's too bad. Go away now; you're keeping me from my golf appointment with my precinct captain.")
Anyway...
Without jobs, you can't eat and keep a roof over your head. So you want to go somewhere else. Somewhere safer, like the US. To file for a visa costs six or seven hundred dollars, which at Latin American income levels is half a year's salary, if you have a job. That's for one person, not your family. Then, because Immigration bureaucrats are, well, Immigration bureaucrats (you can't sink much lower), you get notices like, "Dear Senora M.. Your visa application was correct as of the time you filed it; but we changed the rules in the nine or ten months before we got around to looking at it, so now you have to refile. The fee will cost you another half year's salary."
This is why people jump the fence. And when they get here, there are politicians who depend on having a ghettoized constituency to maintain their power. Just as the bosses in Czech and Polish wards did and still do in Chicago; the immigrant neighborhoods have the same problem. Immigration only let you bring one of your five kids into the US? OK, Buddy; I'll see what I can do so you can get one of your other kids here, and I'll find a way for you to be eligible to vote so you can remember me in your next election."
Then there is the little challenge of finding adult ESL instruction. Some of the students I work with have been on waiting lists for over a year to get into my class and others like it. The demand for ESL instruction is far, far above the supply. Schools provide it for kids; but the parents have to juggle work, child care, and transportation so they can get to a class that meets one or two days a week. Some of the students who want to get into classes are working three jobs. One of my students works three jobs and gets four hours of sleep a night. Somehow he make it to one class a week.
So if you really want to solve the present immigration mess:
1. Clean up the Dept of Immigration. Dump the payrollers and crooks. Set a system that handles applications in a timely fashion and does not cost obscene amounts of money for people to apply.
2. Seal the border so that the border states do not have stampedes of people straining their resources; and so that the criminals can't get in either.
3. This is probably even harder than making ICE a functional department, but we have to try: Get across to all the potheads and aging hippies that every gram of weed and coke is watered by the blood of Latin Americans killed by the Narcos.
4. Want people to learn English? Volunteer to help teach it.
End rant.
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[BREITBART] President Barack Obama