Draconian Measures to Solve the Immigration Problem

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan highlights this lovely quote from Pat Bertroche, Republican Congressional Candidate in the Iowa 3rd:

I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going,” said Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician. “I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal?

Jesus Christ! Can he not even mask his view of illegal immigrants as sub-human? This is only a small step removed from the loons on the right who believe that allowing same-sex marriage will open the doors to allowing people to marry their pets, their children, their siblings.

You know the Nazis had a really great way of tracking people in custody - numerical tattoos! There are still quite a few Jews alive with those numbers on their arms. The only reason the Nazis didn't use microchips was because they hadn't been invented yet. Does this guy not realize what he's proposing?

Sullivan links back to this piece in the Iowa Independent gets into what the other Republican primary candidates said at the same event. For example, State Senator Brad Zaun claims that illegals use up government services such as education while not paying for any of those services. The Independent article helpfully breaks down the numbers to reveal that an undocumented family typically winds up paying about 80% of the total tax contribution of a documented family of comparable income. This comes in the form of sales tax and property tax. Not to mention the cost of not allowing illegal immigrants' children access to public education will simply perpetuate their existence as menial labor. If their children have access to education (as they should because every child has the right to a free education in our country) then maybe they'll grow up to contribute more to the economy than their parents.

Anyway, does Iowa really have such a huge population of illegal immigrants? Not really. According a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, estimates put it somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of the total population which is in the bottom half of all 50 states. Compare that to California's 5%, 5.6% in Texas, 4.5% in FL, 3.33% in NY and a whopping 7.5% in Arizona (but not for long after their new immigration law).