If I could ask Mayor Rahm Emanuel one question, it would be “what do you think of being called a ‘neo-liberal’ along with Gov. Bruce Rauner, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher?” In an op-ed on Friday, Chicago attorney Thomas A. Durkin laid out an interesting case for just that.
Juanita Jarard, Homewood
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Scholarships for undocumented make a mockery of law
A Chicago Sun-Times editorial on Friday spoke to one of the painful realities of this whole immigration mess. Millions of people were brought here illegally as children, and compassion and common sense say we need to help them in some way.
But we are not addressing the bigger problems that make solutions impractical.
Our country was built on immigrants, but we miss two important facts: There were no government assistance programs back then, and we had jobs for the immigrants who arrived.
Our country is $18 trillion in debt, and our economy could easily collapse if other nations were to decide the dollar is no longer the world reserve currency. This could happen later this year.
When a country makes all of its own stuff, the number of jobs increases with the growth in population to meet the greater need. But we sent millions of those jobs overseas in the name of free or fair trade. Most of the remaining jobs don’t pay enough to buy these things, and too many people rely on the government to borrow money to give to them.
So frankly I am torn. I am quite content to let millions of people become legal if they did it the old-fashioned way — appear before immigration officials and be accepted or rejected face to face. But to just blanket accept millions of people without even knowing who they are seems a bit irresponsible to me. Is 11 million people too many to practically do that? Hey, that’s what happens when you don’t address a problem right the first time.
So what about the Sun-Times proposal to allow illegal immigrants an equal shot at state scholarships? I think to do this for somebody who is admittedly illegal makes a mockery of our laws.
Larry Craig, Wilmette