Immigration laws must be fixed

Imagine one morning, you wake up at your house, stumble downstairs ready to enjoy some breakfast and read the paper.  Only this morning you find that your neighbors decided to come into your house and are in your basement.  You tell them to leave, that they didn’t knock or ask to come in.  They tell you that it’s okay since you never even use your basement.  No one uses your basement so they should be able to.
Thoroughly confused now, you call the police.  Surprisingly, they side with your neighbors.  They tell you that your neighbors’ home isn’t as nice as yours so it would be wrong of you to turn them away.  In fact, the officers let you know that you also have to feed them now that they live in your house.
Does this scenario sound convoluted to you?
It basically sums up our nation’s current illegal immigration situation.  The battle over illegal immigration is that people should be allowed to live the American life, even if to do so means breaking the law.  It might just be me, but it’s a bad precedent when the first thing you do in a new country is break the law.
As Congress works on legislation to strengthen the laws that are meant to prevent illegal immigration and tighten up our borders, many Democrats are fighting Republican efforts to pass these laws.  Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, said that there would be repercussions in the polls for those who pass stricter immigration and border policies as they chance offending the Hispanic population.
Republicans have stood firm on this issue.  They realize that national security should come before politicking for votes.  The Democrats not only see a possible loss of current Hispanic voters but also realize that by championing illegal aliens, they stand to gain a large voter bloc if they become citizens.

We need to pass these laws that will make illegal immigration illegal again.  In this era of national security, our borders have to be secure in order to regulate who comes in and out of this country.  New Americans need to take the route of naturalization, achieving citizenship, paying taxes into the system before they expect the system to help them out.  Everyone is still welcome, they just have to use the front door and knock first.

By Bill Kuchman
wrk4947@sjfc.edu