Guess Who...

No matter how much the world changes, there are some things that never seem to change at all. The immigration issue is not a new one, but it's become a hot topic over the last few years, as some try to paint it as a national security issue. Today I came across a quote from a former president. Can you guess who said the following:

"It makes one wonder about the illegal-alien fuss. Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal-alien invasion or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won't do? One thing is certain in this hungry world: no regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters."
No, it wasn't John F. Kennedy, or Jimmy Carter. It wasn't Bill Clinton, either. It was Ronald Reagan. It's amazing how much more liberal guys like Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush sound now than they did 20 years ago. It points to how far the conversation has shifted in recent years.

As Fareed Zakaria points out in this week's Newsweek, current facts confirm Reagan's view: "The six states that get the largest inflow of illegal immigrants -- New York, California, Illinois, Texas, Florida, and Arizona -- have unusually low unemployment rates." Four of those six states have unemployment rates below the national average of 4.5%.

There is also strong research showing that American wages are not being suppressed by the illegals in the workforce, and that they complement the native Americans by doing the jobs that native Americans will not. Furthermore, without the 12 million immigrants contributing to our workforce, our economy could not have maintained the growth we've seen over the last several years. Think about it this way: If we were to force all 12 million illegal immigrants to leave our country immediately, how would their work get done? Companies are already struggling to find suitable candidates for vacant jobs. Imagine if there were suddenly millions more vacancies in the workplace. Our economy would surely take a large step backward. You'd think Republicans would understand this, but now there are grumblings coming from big businesses, voicing concern over conservatives' attempts to crack down on the illegal immigrants in the workplace. Will they listen?

My fear is that illegal immigration is being used as a pseudo-national security issue. Republicans want to appear tough in issues dealing with National Security, and they think that they can fool the average American into thinking it's a national security issue, just like they fooled 70% of Americans into thinking Saddam Hussein was involved in planning the 9/11 events. (For those of you unwilling to face the truth, various members of the administration have admitted that there was no connection, so please stop trying to make an argument that even the Bush administration is unwilling to make.) I call the illegal immigration issue a "pseudo-national security" issue, because the two have little or no connection. As the argument goes, if we aren't protecting our borders, terrorists can get in. However, none of the 19 men who carried out the 9/11 attacks entered our country illegally. Why would terrorists go to Mexico, and attempt to cross the desert into the U.S. illegally, when they don't have to. As the 9/11 terrorists proved, it's so much easier just to get a student visa, and come to the U.S. legally, without taking the risk of exposing their plan by getting caught sneaking across the border.

Let me draw an analogy: A person driving down the highway with a trunk filled with marijuana knows better than to drive 20 mph over the speed limit. He would know that he doesn't want to draw any extra attention to himself. He would want to portray himself as an honest, law-abiding citizen, in the hopes that he never has to answer any questions. Similarly, terrorists know that their chances for success are greatest if they mind their own business, following all of the laws until the appointed time has come. If protecting our border is so critical to our national security, whey aren't we talking about a similar wall along the Canadian border? It isn't terrorists that we intend to keep out of the country with the wall; it's Mexicans.

Spare Change?

I find myself drawn to innovative products. They don’t have to be life altering to interest me. A few great examples in the last several years: the lever-pull wine-opener; the heating/cooling automobile cup-holder; and the impending elimination of the automobile gas cap.

Notice that there was no mention of any Ronco product, even if Mr. Popeil’s rotisserie oven does allow you to “set it, and forget it.” Also intentionally absent from my brief list are all of those Coinstar machines. (Don’t most banks still do that for free?!?)

I guess I could have mentioned lotion-filled toilet paper, but I touched on that in an earlier post, and still haven’t actually tested it for myself.

Did you notice that two of the three things I listed at the beginning had to do with innovations in cars? Some who know me may think it was no accident, and they would be correct. It is not, however, because I work in the automotive industry, but, rather, because I wanted to make a smooth segway into my proposal for a long-overdue innovation in automobiles. (The Segway certainly could have been listed as a cool innovation, though!)

Here is my (perhaps less than brilliant) suggestion for the next automobile innovation: A chute, leading from the side of the driver’s seat, down to a compartment in the center console. Before you judge the idea, let me explain…

I was driving down the highway recently, when I heard the clinking of coins falling from my pocket. I muttered to myself, while reaching down quickly beside me, in a futile attempt to snatch the coins. I don’t know if your car is anything like mine, but when coins fall out of my pocket, they don’t just slide to the back of the seat cushion, to be retrieved once I get up from the seat. In my car, there is a hole in the seat, through which the seat belt extends. When coins fall from my pocket, they are very carefully funneled through that hole, disappearing beneath the seat. It would be bad enough if the coins stopped there. At least then I’d have the opportunity, every few years when I actually clean the interior of my car, to retrieve the coins from under the seat. Unfortunately, the sadistic designers of my car were more creative than just that… After falling through the crack in the seat, coins are then funneled into a channel of the bracket supporting the seat. The bracket passes through the carpet and is fastened to the floorboard of the car. By entering the channel of the bracket, the coins manage to pass through that small opening in the carpet, never to be seen again. After muttering to myself, knowing that more coins had disappeared forever, it occurred to me that if designers can so effectively design a chute to direct my change to some unreachable nether-regions of my car, they should be able to funnel the loose change to somewhere useful, to be removed when I need an extra nickel for a slushee at the gas station.

Remember a couple of decades ago when we needed drink carriers from fast-food restaurants, because cars didn’t have cup-holders? These days, most people wouldn’t dream of buying a car without at least a few cup-holders – and more is better! The other innovations listed above certainly haven’t transformed the market the way the automobile cup-holder has. (Surprisingly, the cup-holder is still noticeably absent from many European cars, and Ferrari does not make a single car with built-in cup-holders.) Give the others time, though. They may yet see their day. And remember, twenty years from now, when you’re driving through a tollbooth, and you reach into the compartment beside your seat for loose change that had fallen from your pocket, you read about it here first.

Don't confuse us with the facts...

In last week's Republican debate, Rudy Giuliani scored major points with the audience when he rejected the suggestion by Ron Paul that U.S. foreign policies contributed to the terrorist acts on September 11, 2001.



The unfortunate truth is that Ron Paul is right. It is important to make a distinction between what Ron Paul said, and the ridiculous remarks of people like Rosie O'Donnell, who believe something other than airplanes brought down the World Trade Center.



"...first time in history that fire has melted steel"? Rosie must be unaware that the process of making steel uses heat to liquify it. Apparently, we defy physics every day just by making steel. Out of fairness, though, I must also contradict what the blonde on the other end of the table was saying. There wasn't any real evidence that Iraq was directly involved in 9/11, then or now. To suggest otherwise just proves that The View can present both sides of the argument incorrectly. If you watch The View, please stop. Now.

Back to the point, though. It's much easier to paint the world in black and white, and to picture ourselves as the good guys -- especially when an event as horrible as 9/11 occurs. It's easy to stand in front of a crowd, talk about "evil-doers," and use platitudes such as, "They hate us because we're free." Osama bin Laden couldn't care less that we're "free." His primary desire is not to destroy our freedom, but to free the Middle East of U.S. influence. Sure, he hates America. He would ruin us if he could. He is an enemy of our country and our way of life. But if we ever hope to be successful in "winning" the mythical "war on terror," it is important that we understand its roots.

Terrorism has been around in one form or another for thousands of years, so the idea of "winning" against terrorism is absurd. However, to minimize its impact on our way of life, we need to understand the motivation of terrorists. We can try to foil their plots for an eternity, but one successful attack that slips through the cracks of our defenses is one too many. Therefore, the only way to truly win is to eliminate the desire to attack us in the first place. I'm not suggesting that we "surrender" to terrorists' demands. We must continue to root out terrorists wherever they are, but we must also learn, as a nation, to behave in a way that doesn't breed terrorism. Many of our foreign policies have been ill-conceived or even hypocritical. We claim to champion freedom, but have frequently bolstered monarchs, tyrants, or despots, because we valued the stability they provided in a region. We must acknowledge that when we support a tyrant, even for the benefit of our national security, there is a price to pay. The people who suffer at the hands of that tyrant will place at least some of the blame for their suffering on the United States. We can expect, in an increasingly global world, that when those people choose to strike back, their aggression will not be contained to their corner of the world. They will attempt to strike at us wherever they can. We can hate them for their acts, but until we recognize our role in encouraging hatred, we will never be able to "win."