Politicizing the 2010 Census

I like this Letter to the Editor originally published in The Pottstown Mercury from a Chester County resident who is concerned about how the Obama Administration is planning to conduct the 2010 Census.

Why is the Census counting illegals within the U.S.?

Are you aware that undocumented aliens will be included in the 2010 census? The primary beneficiaries of this "count" will be border states whose seats in Congress and shares of federal grants will increase. Pennsylvania is likely to come out the poorer. For these reasons and so many others, yet another hot button issue is heading our way. Should undocumented aliens be afforded a 'path to citizenship'?

What advocates of the citizenship option fail to appreciate is that we are a nation of laws. If that is ever forgotten, we become the less for it.

Rather than a path to citizenship, the debate must be refocused on a path to guest worker status. As a cattle ranch manager in Canada, I learned that it was common to supplement labor shortages through the Canadian guest worker program. Upon completion of employment contracts, guest workers returned to their countries of origin. It was a win/win proposition for all parties from many perspectives.

The question then becomes one of how we get to a controlled guest worker system from where we are now. Obvious elements would include enhanced border security, universal adoption of the E-verify program and crippling penalties for all who would subvert the lawful immigration process. Resident undocumented and document-expired aliens should be given one opportunity to come in from the shadows and be registered as temporary contracted guest workers. This would require a mechanism of sufficient scale, funded by guest worker employers, to manage the registration of millions within a predetermined timetable.

Given the inability of our government to efficiently process "clunker" rebates, it would be necessary to contract this short-lived program out to more capable private sector interests with albeit, federal oversight. Concurrently, a mirror image and successor to the temporary U.S. model for large scale guest worker contracting would be established outside our borders in a multitude of venues.

With a natural population growth rate of barely 1 percent, a robust and well-reasoned immigration policy is necessary to sustain our domestic economy. The violation of our immigration laws and disregard for our institutions however, must never be co-mingled with a path to citizenship. Such advocacy is not just un-American, it is anti-American. Elected officials who fail to grasp this point should be welcomed back to the private sector post haste.

MARK FURLONG
North Coventry