Village Board Meeting tonite

Due to the New Year’s holiday, the Village Board meeting that would normally have been held on the first Tuesday of the month, will be held tonight at 7:30pm at the Village Hall Board meeting room.

The agenda for tonite’s meeting, which contains no new business, can be found here.

The Third Side on Illegal Immigration

Could it be that some are actually starting to listen to what I like to refer to as “the third side” on the topic of illegal immigration? You know, “the third side” … those who oppose illegal immigration, but understand that piece-meal approaches at the state and local levels is not a good solution.

Today’s Courier-News expresses an editorial view that there are “No shortcuts to fixing problem of illegal immigration” by pointing to Arizona’s recent actions to deal with the illegal alien population in that state.

Combine [an Arizona] crackdown on employers [through tougher employer-sanctions] with aggressive enforcement by police and sheriff deputies at the local level and you can see why economists, immigration lawyers and others agree that some illegal immigrants are packing up and leaving Arizona. Some are going to other states, and others are headed home to Mexico.

Of course, as some have pointed out in the past, there are no hard statistics, beyond estimates, on the number of illegal aliens in our country (let alone in our town). Therefore, it would be difficult to say where exactly they are moving to. The likelihood is that, of those that are leaving, most are moving to other states.

[F]leeing to neighboring states doesn’t solve anything. It just moves the pieces on the chessboard. Adios, Arizona; hola, Colorado, Utah or Iowa.

Neither does fleeing to neighboring towns, when local governments, such as Carpentersville and others, take on the near impossible task of creating their own immigration laws.

There are no shortcuts. Putting an end to illegal immigration requires a comprehensive approach that combines border and workplace enforcement, tamper-proof identification cards, new and expanded avenues for legal immigrants, guest workers and other initiatives.

State and local governments can contribute in establishing these things, but they cannot act in isolation.

Putting all that together is the job of the federal government.

Which takes us to the Letter to the Editor of Dr. Jospeh Rosenfeld, an Elgin resident.

Dr. Rosenfeld makes several pertinent observations about the issues of illegal immigration, but none are so elucidating as the following two points.

First …

When the anti-immigrant folks start checking on the legal status of the people who roof their homes, tend their lawn, shovel their walk, bus their tables, pick their vegetables, slaughter their meat and string their cable TVs, then they can insist that the city of Elgin waste my tax dollars doing the same thing.

Obviously some of these things come from outside the local area and even the state … so it must fall to the federal government.

Second, and more important …

The anti-immigrant folks fall into three categories. First are the manipulators, opportunists and haters. This group will use the immigration issue to further their own agendas and will use anyone else they can to further their aims. Immigration is just their issue of the moment. At other times, it is taxes, terrorism, drug dealers, the poor, the sick or other minorities.

The second group consists of those who are fearful of losing what little they perceive they have — those who never attained their dreams or who feel that opportunity has slipped away from them. They are looking for someone to blame, and the opportunists above are more than happy to promote a scapegoat.

Finally, there are those who just dislike change. Different people with different customs, who speak a different language, or who have signage designed just for them. This group will also be manipulated by those cited above.

That pretty much sums up where I’ve seen most everyone standing on the issue from the “anti-immigrant” side. In the Village of Carpentersville, one trustee went so far as to say that said ordinances and resolutions on illegal immigration were relevant to Carpentersville “because we have a 45% Hispanic population.” Which group do you think she falls into?

I would urge my fellow citizens to avoid being used by the haters and manipulators. They are not interested in you, just in themselves and their agenda. Let’s turn them away as we always have, and keep our country the greatest in the world.

Hear hear!

And, finally, some have accused me of not looking at news across the country because I focus on what is being said and done in the area. But, I am and have been looking at what’s going on across the country — on the many sides of this issue. When those same points are raised by those in our area, I choose to focus on them, because they often bring those points home to address what is important to our community. Arizona and California and Texas and Pennsylvania may have similar points, but also have ones that are unique, just as we do. That is why I choose to focus here, with an eye and ear on the rest of the country.