This is the fourth installment of the Libertarian Manifesto of Collin County Libertarian Party member Albert Meyer. Albert has been kind enough to share this with us. We hope you find it useful.
Point Four
We will secure our borders and solve the illegal immigration problem through a common sense approach. We have military bases in 130 countries, but we cannot secure our own borders? We will reverse the priorities. First our borders, and actually only our borders, but we will deal with that later on. We will engage the country’s largest consulting firms and assign them the task of making facilities available to illegal immigrants where they can go without fear of being arrested or have their personal information exposed to government agencies. Illegals will consult with these firms and make a case for why they need to be given a work visa (not citizenship). This process will reveal a long list of good reasons to justify the granting of these visas. We will narrow that down to a few criteria, but an obvious one would be that the person concerned has a job, or owns a business, has a good and hardworking track record vouched for by a reputable employer and no criminal record. These individuals will be given permanent work visas, with no prospect of citizenship. If they fall foul of the law, they run the risk of being deported. They came here illegally. They cannot be rewarded with citizenship, but we can normalize their lives, because they have proven to us that they are responsible, hard-working individual and employers value their services.To stop illegal immigration, short-term work visas will be issued to immigrants so that they can work here in the summer, and return home in the winter, without fear of never being allowed back.Don’t worry about jobs. The Libertarian approach to economic liberty produces a surplus of jobs. This is strange notion in a country run by plutocrats where corporatism, bordering on fascism, flourishes.
National (and State) borders are invisible lines drawn by humans/governments. We have no choice in what side of those imaginary lines we are born on. Yet this is the primary source of determining citizenship. It makes no sense that we make it so difficult for non-US-born individuals to become citizens. We absolutely should vet immigrants with background checks, employer credentials, etc. We need to know who is here and who isn’t because we need to make sure everyone is paying their taxes, etc. I think a path to citizenship should be available to illegal immigrants (if they pass a background check, etc just like the legal ones). They shouldn’t be punished indefinitely because our immigration system failed them in the first place. That gets into a gray area…how do you determine who is allowed to pursue citizenship and who is not? But a path toward citizenship should definitely be on the table.Furthermore, you attract more flies with honey. If you go around threatening to throw every illegal immigrant out (like some candidates/parties do), you’re going to make it really difficult to find those individuals. If you offer a benefit (e.g. citizenship, right to vote, etc), they will be much more likely to come out from behind the bushes.
Thanks for your comments. We had hoped these posts would spur some healthy debate. You make some great points.
You are correct. No immediate citizenship, which politicizes the issue. The Democrats want to give amnesty and citizenship to bait the Hispanic vote. Republicans want none of that, because they are by default against whatever the Democrats propose. The middle ground or non-politicized way is the granting of work visas with the prospects of citizenship. The current system is terribly inhumane, but then that’s the way they do business in Washington.