Immigration? We haz that

Most of my Filipino relatives manage to get work visas and jobs as nurses etc in the USA, then bring over mom to help baby sit as a visitor, which soon morphs into a green card. Florinda's husband not only got a green card but got his CABG paid for.

Yet my Colombian son, who decided he didn't want to get US citizenship so moved back there and lost his green card, can't even get a visitor visa to visit his brother and family. They fear he will stay and get a job.

So much for playing by the rules.

Of course folks will quickly try to get to the USA with this. If the Philippines was closer, half of the young folks in Nueva Ecija would be going there for jobs. Thanks to corruption it is hard to run a business (we are still waiting for payment from government orders from last year...originally it was probably because we didn't bribe the right folks, and now the excuse is that they have to do oodles of paperwork to check it was a legal order at a good price. Can't win either way).

One result is that there are ads all over for nursing school or other schools touting the ability to get a US/Canadian/Australian job if they study. And lots of ads for caretakers/workers/drivers in Saudi etc. or for factory jobs in Korea etc. (Korean language schools advertise too).
This destroys families, but better to have dad or mom working overseas to pay for your food and school fees than stay in the cycle of poverty.

The US is the gold standard, but we also have relatives in England, Germany, Italy, and Canada. Lots of Filipinos illegally in the US so Obama's immigration deal will be welcomed here, and the good news is that Filipinos are pretty well assimilated so rarely questioned by LaMigra.

So how good is "la migra"? Well, when my youngest lost his driver's license, he used his brother's to get a job driving a truck and was picked up and jailed. But it works both ways: When he was visiting Colombia, he was also picked up in a press gang (i.e. cops pick up young men and check if they did their national service, and if not, you are drafted into the military). Luckily, his cousin is a cop so they allowed him to get his US passport and he was released: and immediately deported since his US visa was expired. He is a dual citizen, but if he wanted to use his US passport, he had to follow those rules.

My youngest could always get a job, and many assumed he was illegal with a stolen identity since he does not have a Hispanic name. Being illegal is common, and normal Americans don't report them. Alas, it also means that some people will exploit them, not pay them, etc. For example, when my son was told to work overtime without time and a half pay, he objected, and was told if he complained he would be reported.

And of course, in construction, often the day workers salaries aren't reported nor are the taxes paid, but they will teach you how to do the job if you are willing and able. He's done a lot of this type of work too, and got enough experience that his Americorp job was teaching summer volunteers to repair houses in Appalachia.

And that part about doing jobs "Americans won't do" is right. In Idaho, one of our neighbors, being LDS, worked in the harvest and was one of the few white women there, even though we had lots of poor whites on welfare, who of course got paid for not working so why work? Ditto for the meat packing factories in Iowa, who after being targeted had to lay off their Mexican illegal workers and hire locals. They brought down Somali immigrants from Minnesota, and promptly ran into problems about time off for prayer etc.

Notice they were immigrants too? Work ethic is the key, not race.

So yes, allow illegals who hold jobs to get amnesty. But also make it easier for folks like my son to get his green card back.

Ann Althouse analyzes the legal aspects here.

My main problem: Is it stretching the law? I mean, this is not an emergency, and for four years,President Obama had a Democratic lock on congress, and even after that, could have worked bilaterally to get a similar law passed. But he is not willing to compromise and prefers to see the Republicans as the enemies, not as the loyal opposition, even those in the leadership who would work with him.

As a result, there is open revolt among the more conservative types. One Hispanic Republican even quoted Cicero (and gets mocked for it by CNN...nope no press bias here).

Well, Cicero was talking about the Catalinarian conspiracy, which in today's world would be a Republican revolt by the middle class over the rich.

A closer parallel to what President Obama is doing would be the Gracchi brother's attempt to get justice for the lower classes by trying to get around the rule of law. And that didn't turn out well for either them nor the Roman republic.

But nobody studies history anymore so why worry?