Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that over on the Washington Post, there is a lengthy article about how the GOP Presidential front-runners are remaining silent or (in the case of John McCain - backing away) from various immigration proposals before the US Senate right now. An interesting quotation from the piece:

Activists on both sides of the debate say the presidential candidates are becoming more conservative on the issue, believing that GOP primary voters who will decide the Republican nomination want tougher positions on how to deal with illegal immigrants.

More than one-third of Republicans said in exit polls after the 2006 election that illegal immigration was extremely important to their vote. More than two-thirds of conservative Republicans surveyed by Pew Research in March said that newcomers from other countries threaten “customs and values” of America.

Your Maximum Leader is nominally a Republican. (He describes himself as a “conservative.” A label which, it seem in the sense your Maximum Leader understands it, doesn’t immediately afiliate one with either party immediately. Although in the past 30-odd years the Republican party has generally supported a “conservative” agenda.) He, like other Republican voters, wants a tougher position from politicians of all stripes on immigration and illegal immigration.

But he also wants to be sensible. Lets throw out a few unsensible items to consider… Mass deportation. Read your Maximum Leader’s lips. Not. Gonna. Happen. And frankly it can’t and shouldn’t happen. It would be devastating to our economy - which depends on illegals in a host of different ways. And frankly, your Maximum Leader feels that deporations are out of character for our nation historically.

Here is a second thing that isn’t going to happen… The creation of any workable way of transitioning current illegals into some legal status that doesn’t ultimately give amnesty to the illegal in one way or another. Some say that making illegals pay a fine for breaking our laws isn’t amnesty. Really, it is in that if you levy a fine that is not onerous on the person paying the fine it is hardly punishment. And if you levy an onerous fine, the person being fined (who is not known to you now because he has no official status) will not come forward and volunteer to be fined.

Finally… Your Maximum Leader will come back to the point that he’s made time and time again… Nothing the Congress, the States, or the President does will make a damned bit of difference until the border is secured. Back in the Reagan years the first big amnesty was going to “take care of the problem.” It didn’t. It didn’t because we as a nation can’t secure our borders with Mexico or Canada. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t like the idea of a wall or a fence or any sort of barrier. He thinks that it is out of our national character. But he does believe that we have to do something to stop illegals at or very close to the border. If that means a fence or a barrier - the he will reluctantly agree to one.

In your Maximum Leader’s mind, he would like very much to raise our low quotas on immigration. He would like to see a legal “guest worker” status for those who want it. But he would also like to see corruption and inefficency in Mexico decrease so that Mexicans don’t feel as much pressure to go north. He would like to see the ability for Americans to be guest workers in Mexico so that we could take our expertise and try and build businesses in Mexico that would benefit both countries.

There is no one solution to our immigration problem. But ultimately there can be no attempt at a “solution” to the “problem” until we can control the border. Anything done before the border is secured is just a small cork stuck in a single hole of a leaky dyke.

Carry on.