OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

I made a reply to a guy talking about illegal aliens. His attitude was that their presence in this country was really caused by the people who hired them. I thought this was sort of taking the responsibility away from where it belonged but he answered me in a way that made me stop and think more fully on the whole problem. Anyway, between work and home yesterday, here's some of what I came up with (after Burger King, yet).

It really does little good trying to assign responsibility here. It's sort of like trying to decide whether a "sting" operation is really entrapment. What most of us in this country are most concerned with is stopping the inflow of illegal aliens into our country, and for all kinds of reasons. At least, that's what I think we want. But the more you look at it, the less sure you become. If we could have completely open borders and it not "harm" the rest of us, I think we might even welcome them, Americans being who they are. So it really comes down to the "harm" we preceive them doing. And it's the preception differences in people that causes all the controversy.

We could quote all the "harms" that people see, all the counter-arguments that are advanced and turn this into a very long blog. But I'm going to leave that for another day (in other words, that's not what I was thinking about yesterday on the way home). What I'd like to discuss is some of the different things we might do to stop illegal aliens, regardless of whether we think it's a good idea or not.

We could just periodically (as we already have done) make the "illegals" "legal" and say, "Now we're going to get tough on any NEW illegal aliens." Sure, and the NEW illegals believe that, given what you just did with the OLD ones. I suppose this is a solution to eliminating illegal aliens, but it's easy to solve any problem if you'll just change your definition enough.

Bill O'Reilly wants to put the army on our southern border (apparently he's not too concerned about Canadians flocking here) because the border patrol doesn't have enough people (or weapons). I'm reminded of the wall running through Germany for many years. It finally succeeded in reducing drastically the flow of people from East to West, but only with a tall wall, barbed wire, guard posts within eyesight of each other, 24-hour-a-day guards, machine guns, etc.

I really don't think incrementing the border patrol's personnel is going to make much difference and neither would half-way measures involving the military. If you're not willing to put a man every 20 feet day and night, you won't make a dent. And even that wouldn't be adequate.

We've all seen pictures where a group of 20 or 30 Mexicans are "caught" by the border patrol. When they realize they've been detected they scatter. And unless you've got a couple of hundred patrolmen there, many are going to get away. And if they don't, the ones a couple of miles away, where there is no one to catch them, will.

Of course, if you'd use guns, automatic weapons, and shoot them, you might get most of them, but I don't think that's ever going to happen - shoot "innocent", unarmed civilians just for wanting to come into the land of the free and home of the brave? Not in our P.C. country. Not even in MY country.

OK, so we can't stop them. And we really can't even blame them - go to Mexico some time, look at the conditions there and you'll understand. And given those conditions of poverty and unemployment, it is going to be hard to take the "incentives" away that bring them here.

An illegal alien working at the most menial job (at minimum wage or less) here has enough money to live well (by his standard) and still send the majority of his wages home to his family. OK, take away the jobs for them. How do you do that? Even if we decide it's the employers' responsibility to solve the illegal alien problem, how does he do that? What does he do to make sure he has no illegal aliens working for him?

My sister once worked for a construction company in New Mexico (no, she wasn't a construction worker). Most of their workers were illegal aliens. But they all had a social security number. Most of them, as a matter of fact, had the same number, but they had a card (or at least a copy of one). I'm sure that the one person who really had that number ended up with a very good social security account balance.

Check birth certificates? Any piece of paper you want to come up with can be purchased on the black market. Require the employers to check anyway? Might help, some, but not much. Meanwhile, the main source of cheap labor becomes smaller and things get more expensive for the rest of us.

So, at least stop giving them free medical care at emergency rooms. Again, how do you determine who's illegal there? We might go along with the idea that we have to take our birth certificates every time we go for a job interview (gee, wonder where mine is?) but we probably don't want to have to go back to the house to get it as we're barrelling along I-394 in an ambulance on the way to Southdale Hospital.

OK, well at least deport them when they're caught, or picked up for something else. First, of course, they're entitled to a hearing. Even if you ignore things like refugees trying to escape repression, you need the hearing to, once again, determine if they really are illegal (ever see the cheech movie "East L.A."?) But what do you do with them until the hearing - locking them up is fraught with all kinds of problems, so they're turned loose. Of course, then, they don't figure there's any reason for a hearing.

Let's say we solve these problems, in whatever manner you might come up with, and they're deported. Now maybe they were ready to take their vacation anyway, wanted to go back and see their family, and you're paying for the transportation. Then, at the end of the week, they slip back over the border and show up refreshed and happy for work the following Monday, where they regale their friends with stories from back home. Or maybe they don't have any vacation saved up and they have to rush back over the border that very night. Regardless, deportation doesn't solve the problem.

Nope, after a lot of thought, I realized that there are some problems in life for which there is no solution and this is one of them. If you think about it, illegal aliens are not a uniquely American problem nor is it a problem which only exists in these modern days. No one has found a solution other than wholesale extermination of those seeking a new home. Anything short of that just isn't enough to stop people seeking a better life.