Sticky Illegal Immigration Questions
An anti-immigration illustration of border crossing. Photo from Bob Jones
Should illegal immigrants be allowed to vote? Of course not. Are they voting? Maybe a few here and there.
Should illegals get free hospital care or be allowed to send their children to public schools? That’s a tougher one. It’s not a problem in Hawaii. It’s a big problem in some other states. Legitimate issues for the presidential election.
Federal law prohibits a hospital emergency room from denying medical attention. You don’t have to show citizenship or insurance. That’s good moral law. But it strains many state funds because illegals use emergency rooms the way we with insurance use an ordinary doctor call – even for a torn fingernail or a cold.
School? We must say yes. We have about 12 million illegals in America. The last thing we want is for their children to live here but not be schooled. The children did not make that decision to be an illegal. So why would you deport them if they don’t have criminal backgrounds?
My least-favorite president, George W. Bush, came up with my most-favorite idea. Give amnesty to those who register and go on the tax rolls. Republicans were horrified. They want illegals deported, period.
Remember when Hawaii ended Asian sugar worker importation out of fear of a “yellow horde”? Or when Big Island plantation owners banned Hilo lawyer Martin Pence – later to become a federal judge – from enlisting ethnic-Asian workers as voters?
America started off as a come-one, come-all place.
I’m suspicious about how my maternal grandparents (Russia or Poland) got here. Maybe I’m a hand-me-down illegal.
It’s bizarre for lawyer Brook Hart to claim the guy who shot and killed a man in McDonald’s Waikiki was a federal officer doing his duty.
Christopher Deedy was a diplomatic bodyguard. He wasn’t bodyguarding. He took his gun into a bar and then McDonald’s. He’s not a policeman. That’s homicide.
Don’t get your knickers all twisted about Haleiwa Farmers Market operators Pamela Boyer and Annie Suite losing their state highway intersection site. They are running a for-rent business, not a free-bie.
The state gave them ample notice that we don’t allow commerce on state highways land and offered to help with other sites. They went the, “Oh, we’re being victimized” route.
Called the governor a liar.
You cannot sell on state highways land. It’s why we kicked out some of those shrimp trucks. My read is that Boyer and Suite need to back off, and TV reporters should quit doing sob-sister stories.
