A Modern Modest Proposal

First a disclaimer: There was a late—deceased, not tardy—writer with the unlikely name of Swift who wrote on a similar topic a few hundred years ago. Not wanting to be accused of plagiarism nor of stealing his thunder, I borrowed only his title; I swear that I didn’t copy his treatise, although I know that his work reached a similar conclusion to mine. Having published my disclaimer and without further ado, here is my column…

We have a problem with our borders, one that has received a lot of publicity, not a few demonstrations and petitions and a plethora of opinions from within and without our country. It is probably an injustice to compress the problem into a single paragraph by way of explanation, but time and space are limited. Besides, if we try to debate all the side issues, especially those raised by the “victims” and their supporters, we would never get to a reasonable solution to the problem. Therefore, we must ignore the illegal mob—those who broke the laws in the first place to cause the problem—and concentrate on the legal opposition to arrive at a just solution. So herewith is a short but concise summary of the immigration dilemma as I see it. (You might have a completely opposite view, and you are entitled to it, even if it is wrong)
Every year a steady stream of over 500,000 people—undocumented migrants, Illegal aliens, guest workers without papers (stop me when I get to your definition)—enter the United States. Some of them are caught on or near the southern border by our Border Patrol or by the vigilante groups known as Minutemen. However, very few are ever sent back to Mexico. Our government practices a “catch and release” program that seldom follows up with deportation.
People come here illegally for many reasons, but mostly to escape poverty and get work and free benefits from the generous American people. (There are other reasons, like terrorism and reclamation of territory stolen from Mexico, but we won’t get into that here) Unfortunately, most of the border crossers remain in poverty after arriving here and they refuse to adopt the customs and language of America. They and their children are a drain on our health system, a burden to our schools, and cause our welfare rolls to swell exponentially. They also raise the level of poverty in our country by their presence. There are an estimated twenty million of them!
Every twenty years or so Congress and the then current president propose their solutions to deal with the number of people who reside within our borders illegally. They did so in 1966 under President Johnson and again in 1986 under President Reagan. That the problem never goes away, but only continues unabated regardless of these so-called “amnesty programs” speaks to the underlying dilemma; mainly that we—The USA—are too prosperous and too generous to ever really refuse help to the rest of the world. Those words at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor…” apparently apply to anyone with the gumption to walk, crawl, swim, fly or sail across our borders. Well, it is time that we finally find a genuine solution to the problem of unfettered and illegal immigration. That is the object and the purpose of this essay. Here is my proposal.
1. Since we are not able to properly police or seal our border, we should allow any person who wants to enter our country to do so. We should welcome them and allow them to keep their own culture, customs and language. However, they should be sequestered in immigrant camps. They will be allowed to work and mingle during the day, but will be subject to curfew at night. We may not be able to fence in our borders, but we can surely fence in the immigrant communities.
2. We have long since established that the unborn are not human beings with the Roe–vs.–Wade decision. We are also well on the way to discounting the elderly as expendable—Dr. Kevorkian is the pioneer. It is a small step from there to the realization that non-citizens are also inhuman. We should have no trouble in eliminating those whom we find to be undesirable and inconvenient to our society. A first step would be the termination of all children born to the illegal immigrants in this country. Otherwise, they would be eligible for citizenship and we cannot permit that to happen anymore. Eventually, we could expand the elimination process to teens, non-working dependents and those in ill health. Those expendables would free up our overburdened schools, healthcare system and welfare rolls.
3. With the evolution of thought that non-humans are fair game for use in scientific experiments to clone or regenerate organs and such, it is also possible to expand that thinking to the provision of food sources for the illegal immigrant camps. They are likely to be poverty stricken and undernourished since their U.S. employers will obviously underpay them. What better plan could there be for alleviating their hunger than to feed them their own offspring? It would eliminate those unwanted “foreign” citizens while fattening up our new low-maintenance workers without having to deplete our welfare and food stamps.
4. Our news media will be encouraged to provide lots of coverage of the camps with emphasis on the revolutionary and beneficial solutions to the overwhelming problems we have lived with for so many years. People who are here illegally and those who wish to cross over our borders without permission must see and read of our humane solution. It might not stem the tide, but there is a possibility that some will think about the consequences of illegal immigration.
Well, there you have it. With the implementation of this modest proposal, we won’t have to build the unsightly wall on the border, we can ease the load on the state welfare and healthcare programs and we won’t have to concern ourselves with the expense and logistics of rounding up and deporting twenty million people.

Note: Now, if you are seething and having thoughts of murder and mayhem against me for having the temerity to even suggest such a “solution”, I have a word for you to look up in your dictionary: Satire.