Migration, immigration, emigration...

So James Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin, and Peter King, a Republican from New York want to build a wall to block people from immigrating to the U.S. Here's what will make that plan even better: Ask Germany to donate some of the remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall so when builders break ground on this wall the ceremony will have just the right kind of symbolism. This wall will follow suit with the one the Israeli government built to block out Palestinians, but I think the only reason they didn't use pieces of the Berlin Wall was because of some weird history with Germany or something like that, but otherwise it would've made just as much sense.

Debating what is legal or illegal is secondary in this discussion to the right way to treat fellow human beings. When I lived in Atlanta it was perfectly legal for the city to remove poor people from their homes so they could build a better Braves stadium right next to the old one. It wasn't right, but it was legal. Somehow there's nothing illegal about imprisoning black men at disproportionately higher rates than any other group for same or for lesser crimes, it's not only legal but to some of people it makes sense. There was a time when slavery was totally legal. Jim Crow was totally legal, so forget about what's legal or illegal. When the law doesn't work we make new laws, we make lawmakers to change the law. And always when we look back we can see the fallacies in the old law.

Quit calling people "illegal." Migration, immigration, emigration, it predates any American laws, it's a phenomenon that is part of the age-old story of humans all over the planet. It takes place here, it takes place overseas. It happens every generation, it will continue to happen as long as people need to feed their kids. Change is inevitable, the goal for any smart society is to learn to adapt to change without turning inhumane.

Debating what to do with all these Mexicans and where to put Mexicans, Arabs, Africans, Asians, sounds terribly reminiscent of debates from a hundred years ago about what to do with all these ex-slaves. After all, black people wound up in the U.S. illegally as well, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was the world's worst example human rights violations. The reason the union wanted to end slavery was to open the West to northern whites looking for farmland as opposed to Southern whites looking to build more plantations. So a whole war was fought so that people could move. The simple fact is, people always move. We continue to move. In the case of Mexicans in America they are actually moving back. If you really want to stop it then you might want to enlist here.