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Borders and Immigrants: Whatever shall we do?

Guy T. Sturino
March 31, 2006
The Senate has been awash in high sounding rhetoric this week as the issues of what to do about border security and illegal immigrants are the subject of sermons. As usual, far too many diatribes purposefully mislead, and a lot of Senators refuse - absolutely refuse - to engage in honest debate.

Here is the basic situation. We spend much time and money on securing our airports from smugglers and terrorists. Our seaports are monitored for smuggling, but not so much for terrorist threats. Our lengthy seashore and land borders are relatively easy to cross by anyone with enough determination. The result is that we have between eleven and twelve million undocumented aliens living and working in the U.S.

There is no way that our government, even if it wanted to, could round up and deport every illegal immigrant. Besides, where would they go, and what would they do when they got there? Part of the reason they are here illegally is because they need jobs, we have companies that will hire them to work, and the process of legal immigration is long, tedious, and limited. The responsibility for our large population of illegal immigrants is wide spread. It is shared by several ineffective government agencies, and a multitude of companies with an appetite for cheap labor.

The House has proposed upgrading the criminal status of illegal immigrants, and shutting down the borders. The Senate is considering offering green card status to those without criminal records, and instituting a guest-worker program that would allow a half-million temporary immigrants each year on two or three year work visas. Senators Kennedy and McCain authored this portion of the Judiciary Committee Bill, and it appears to have considerable support. That said, Senators Sessions and Frist chant ?No Amnesty,? as Senators Kyl and Cornyn snipe at the definition for ?criminal? behavior.


So far, only one Senator has proposed an alternative which, at least to me, has taken the best of the House and Senate positions. Senator Byron Dorgan proposes taking in those illegal immigrants already here, closing our borders to illegal immigration, streamlining and opening up the legal immigration process and dropping the guest worker proposal from any consideration. His reasoning is clear.

Of those illegal immigrants already here, many came with their parents as babies or adolescents. They are all, now, part of our society, and to round them up and deport them would be not only foolhardy, it would be mean spirited as well. As for the guest worker program, Senator Dorgan pointed out the effect such a program would have, driving down wages and benefits for the entire work force.

Unfortunately, Senator Dorgan has often been the lone voice in the Senate when it comes to defending the wages and dignity of the American worker. I don?t suppose he will be running for President in 2008, but in memory of FDR, I just might write his name in anyway.
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Guy T. Sturino

My Name is Guy Sturino and I came to be in November of 1940 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. By the time I reached six years old my dad was back home and we had defeated both Germany and Japan.

The country was riding high. Sure, times were tough. Both my parents worked fairly regularly, but still we moved often and we spent a few of those early years in government project housing. TV came to our house when I was eleven.

When I was twelve I became an alter boy at Holy Rosary Catholic Church. Like all alter boys, I even thought someday I'd become a Priest. By the time I finished high school that illusion was gone and with it my fondness for the Catholic church. But, that's another story all by itself.

In high school Civics class we learned that we were the greatest. We learned that Democracy meant capitalism and Communism was the same as socialism. We were taught that Democracy was good and that socialism was bad. At the same time Joe McCarthy was telling us that Communists were hiding under our beds and if the bomb didn't get us those Commies sure would.

I took all that with me when I joined the Marines in '59 when my education really got started. In Thailand I learned about Buddhism, and how people who had very little and worked from dawn to dusk every day were the happiest and most sharing as a group that I had met up until that time. In Japan I saw and lived in a culture built around working together to achieve great things as opposed to the do-it-yourself rugged individualism expected in the American culture. Along the way I got to visit the Philippines and South Korea.

When I came home in '63 I drove a bread truck for a while and then hand poured aluminum in a foundry until the GI bill was signed in '65. I got a degree in Applied Science and Technology and went to work for American Motors. After a few years as a chassis engineer I moved over to quality control and eventually traveled Europe assessing quality systems in supplier manufacturing facilities. By the time I had interacted with workers in England, Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy, as well as China, South Korea and Japan, I had a totally new perspective on what was a fair return for a days work.

I worked for a couple of other companies before vacationing in Virginia Beach with my daughter and deciding that the tickets in my pocket for Riyadh and New Deli were simply too much after just returning from Beijing. I found a pizza shop for sale and bought it. Unfortunately I wasn't very successful as a restaurateur, and took a job as a substitute teacher for a year.

Undaunted, I applied for a job as a teacher assistant the next year and got it. Two years later I was teaching algebra in an alternative high school where, at 62 years old I retired.
I already had a serious interest in politics, but having the time to actually watch the House and the Senate on Cspan really got my interest. I learned things about our government that I certainly never heard about in school and I had to wonder why not. About 2005 I decided to begin sharing my thoughts on the web. By the middle of 2007 I sort of lost, not the interest, but the drive to communicate.

Recent events have changed that.

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