Immigration and the election

Sometimes news stories make me spiral off into outer space. The premise of the story noted below is that the presidential candidates should "talk to" or go out of their way to woo the support of illegal immigrants or, excuse me, undocumented workers.

One is deemed politically incorrect, insensitive, and dare I say it?, "racist" for referring to people that either enter this country illegally or stay beyond their legal visa periods as lawbreakers. Yet "illegals" are exactly what and who they are. In politically correct circles, however, they are "undocumented workers." That despite the fact that there are no data to prove that all of them are working.

Here's an excerpt from the story printed in Long Island's Newsday newspaper this week:

"They are everywhere on Long Island, cashing checks in Hempstead, sharing multifamily houses in Brentwood, trimming hedges in Southampton. And yet they are nowhere in this year's presidential campaign. Undocumented immigrants, the subject of so much discussion just a year ago, have been forgotten in the rush to discuss America's economic woes. Immigrants flocked to Long Island during the boom of the 1990s and for a few years after. The Island is now home to at least 100,000 undocumented workers, although those figures, like almost everything having to do with the undocumented, are disputed. Under current law, those immigrants have almost no chance of becoming citizens, so they live at the margins of society. Two years ago, two high-profile senators, John McCain and Ted Kennedy, sponsored legislation to help put undocumented workers on the path to citizenship.''

The writer is correct in the sense that immigration has been woefully avoided by both presidential candidates this election season. It's too controversial and candidates are in the business of making friends, not enemies.

Yet immigration is an issue that affects every American in terms of income, taxes, the size of social programs, smog, pollution, overcrowding, competition for jobs and, well, you name it. In that sense, yes, the issue should definitely have been addressed and the candidates were remiss in ignoring it.

Should Senators John McCain and Barack Obama go out of their way to "talk" to illegal immigrants? Not in the sense implied by the Newsday piece.

Here's my suggestion. If they want to talk to illegal immigrants, the first words out of their mouths should be: "Please return to the country where you reside legally, get in line for a legal visa to the United States, and return legally, not illegally." But then, that wouldn't be very PC, would it?

Let me state for the record, when I address this most touchy of issues, I am not anti-immigrant. I am opposed, however, to massive illegal immigration.

Immigrants are good people -- I am the proud granddaughter of a Cuban immigrant (legal, I might add.) But mass immigration is not good for this country. It is in fact ruining the U.S. environment.

The most frequent argument for illegal immigration is that our economy would collapse without illegal immigrants. The current recession shows we're collapsing even with record numbers of illegal immigrants in the U.S. So there goes that idea.

Yes, the candidates should be talking to illegal immigrants. They should be telling them we do not appreciate it when others break our laws and we will, some day, enforce them. We even penalize native-born Americans and naturalized citizens when they break the law, and we should treat illegal immigrants similarly.

Will we ever hear the candidates say such a thing? Methinks not. They're too busy trying to woo every last vote. The last thing any candidate for any office would do is try to deport someone who might vote for them, whether living or dead, able to sit up unaided or not, or in the U.S. legally or illegally.

(Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe(at)CompuServe.com.)